IIRC, the gun lawsuits were threatened because the gun companies were pushing a LOT of guns in states that had less strict gun purchase requirements and that allowed them to trickle in to states that had more stringnent rules in order to prevent crime. Their distribution policies were undermining public safety efforts.
if anything , it's a testament to the crappy way big corporations treat loyal and qualified employees
Exactly! Instead of figuring out ways they can be rid of the expensive employees, why don't companies see them as valuable employees? People who have been in the industry that long have valuable experience and so what if they are not working on the project of the moment. I have met people like this. You don't fire them, you beg them to stay and hope your junior employees don't piss them off.
The capricious way that companies seem to be doing this (I shudder to think what else will happen during this merger), is staggering. If I ran a company I wouldn't let experienced engineers loose on the streets and give them a possible reason for a grudge. Someone is going to snap them up and the short term profit of axing them will be a pittance compared to the revenue and goodwill you lose from them in the long run. Think about what DEC/Alpha engineers did for AMD and then think about what these people could do for IBM or SUN or any number of companies.
The analyst in the article said it does not make any sense and he's right. This leads me to believe that their strategy is not as coherent as they claim. What's going to happen when they tell their customers "Not only are we giong to sell you an Intel box for your server, but it's not going to have HP-UX on it." Thus, the original reason for buying an HP (their architecture and software) is now gone. If they think their "brand" is something else, then they will be horribly surprised when their customers say "well as long as we're changing platforms and OSs I think I will check out what Sun and IBM have to offer." No one is strong enough in times like these to crap on valuable employees and customers this way. Doesn't anyone understand that this is the time to keep valuable employees and steal them from others? When the dust settles it will be painfully obvious that they need them.
...so far for an argument against something that it makes you sound this ignorant:
Kids in many nations of the world run around naked until well after puberty.
then you need to evaluate why you really oppose something. Even if it's true, it's such a minor concern. Could you really go before a congressional committee and say "What about all of the naked children of the world who will be excluded from this domain?"
There are numerous other arguments against this that do not reference naked children and are a bit more obvious/important. What about varying levels of maturity among children? Should thirteen year olds be restricted to content that is appropriate for six year olds because their school's content software only allows.kids domains? Will it privilege religious content (often seen as inherently good) over content that is more controversial or socially critical simply to shield children from complex issues?
> All whites are racist... i guess that's just what blacks want us to believe.
WHAT?!! You got modded up for that BS? I know it's flamebait, but it disturbs me that you think that's viable social discourse.
Can we for one second examine your conclusion? Let us take it as true that Blacks want us to believe that all whites are racist. Why would that be? I know, it's because that'll guilt all of us into giving them special rights and privileges and all the good jobs. So when did all the black people of america get together and decide this was the plan? I must have missed that meeting while I was trying to convince my boyfriend he's a racist.
And as for Black people living in places where it's cold and dank. If you had perhaps studied american history you will see that people move where the jobs are. That is why cities like Detroit and Chicago (way colder than Seattle) had a large influx of Southern Blacks during the post-war boom period. First-wave minorities (Blacks and Hispanics as opposed to Asians and Indians) have traditionally not been encouraged to enter the realms of math and science. This has changed today, but even now when I go to conferences and things I am a (surprise) minority.
Now understanding that there are barriers to entry in this field (requires a college education with a strong math/science background that is sorely lacking in most inner-city and poor rural schools which up until recently, at least, constituted the two major locations of Black-Americans) you may perhaps realize that the reason a lot of Black people haven't moved to Seattle is that they have not been trained to do those kinds of jobs.
What do you think Black people say? "Microsoft has offered me, a Black Software Engineer, a job for 80K. Are they stupid? Don't they know we don't live in cold dank places like Seattle." Get real.
I know this is probably offtopic but whenever people say things without backing them up I have to question them.
>I'm not trying to be a bigot, but in sports I think it's almost detrimental to be white nowadays.
I don't think you are being a bigot but there are some misconceptions about race in sports. For starters, it's hard to say whether or not it's better to be of any race whatsoever in anything. That's dangerous territory. Modern cultural criticism has shown that racism/sexism/heterosexism, etc is just as damaging to the dominant group as it is to the subordinate group (check out _Gender Trouble_ by Judith Butler and numerous works by Michel Foucault). Furthermore, can you point to one instance where a player experienced reverse discrimination?
As far as owning teams goes the overwhelming majority of teams are owned by white men. In basketball and football this should seem odd since so many of the players are Black. Coaching staffs are usually predominantly white as well, though this is changing.
I am not in a position to say whether or not there is "reverse discrimination" in sports or an advantage to particular races. A very well-written article in The Village Voice actually addresses this issue in the context of Venus and Serena Williams (http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0045/noel.shtm l).
I am, however, in a position to say that people should back up their assumptions and actually investigate them rather than perpetuating these half-truths.
Does anyone know of a program that would be good for modeling lego structures?
Perhaps there is a market (albeit small) for a program that let you model structures using lego bricks and then calculated how many you should buy of each color and size used.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, the gun lawsuits were threatened because the gun companies were pushing a LOT of guns in states that had less strict gun purchase requirements and that allowed them to trickle in to states that had more stringnent rules in order to prevent crime. Their distribution policies were undermining public safety efforts.
The capricious way that companies seem to be doing this (I shudder to think what else will happen during this merger), is staggering. If I ran a company I wouldn't let experienced engineers loose on the streets and give them a possible reason for a grudge. Someone is going to snap them up and the short term profit of axing them will be a pittance compared to the revenue and goodwill you lose from them in the long run. Think about what DEC/Alpha engineers did for AMD and then think about what these people could do for IBM or SUN or any number of companies.
The analyst in the article said it does not make any sense and he's right. This leads me to believe that their strategy is not as coherent as they claim. What's going to happen when they tell their customers "Not only are we giong to sell you an Intel box for your server, but it's not going to have HP-UX on it." Thus, the original reason for buying an HP (their architecture and software) is now gone. If they think their "brand" is something else, then they will be horribly surprised when their customers say "well as long as we're changing platforms and OSs I think I will check out what Sun and IBM have to offer." No one is strong enough in times like these to crap on valuable employees and customers this way. Doesn't anyone understand that this is the time to keep valuable employees and steal them from others? When the dust settles it will be painfully obvious that they need them.
Kids in many nations of the world run around naked until well after puberty.
then you need to evaluate why you really oppose something. Even if it's true, it's such a minor concern. Could you really go before a congressional committee and say "What about all of the naked children of the world who will be excluded from this domain?"
There are numerous other arguments against this that do not reference naked children and are a bit more obvious/important. What about varying levels of maturity among children? Should thirteen year olds be restricted to content that is appropriate for six year olds because their school's content software only allows .kids domains? Will it privilege religious content (often seen as inherently good) over content that is more controversial or socially critical simply to shield children from complex issues?
thEn for sEquence
WHAT?!! You got modded up for that BS? I know it's flamebait, but it disturbs me that you think that's viable social discourse.
Can we for one second examine your conclusion? Let us take it as true that Blacks want us to believe that all whites are racist. Why would that be? I know, it's because that'll guilt all of us into giving them special rights and privileges and all the good jobs. So when did all the black people of america get together and decide this was the plan? I must have missed that meeting while I was trying to convince my boyfriend he's a racist.
And as for Black people living in places where it's cold and dank. If you had perhaps studied american history you will see that people move where the jobs are. That is why cities like Detroit and Chicago (way colder than Seattle) had a large influx of Southern Blacks during the post-war boom period. First-wave minorities (Blacks and Hispanics as opposed to Asians and Indians) have traditionally not been encouraged to enter the realms of math and science. This has changed today, but even now when I go to conferences and things I am a (surprise) minority.
Now understanding that there are barriers to entry in this field (requires a college education with a strong math/science background that is sorely lacking in most inner-city and poor rural schools which up until recently, at least, constituted the two major locations of Black-Americans) you may perhaps realize that the reason a lot of Black people haven't moved to Seattle is that they have not been trained to do those kinds of jobs.
What do you think Black people say? "Microsoft has offered me, a Black Software Engineer, a job for 80K. Are they stupid? Don't they know we don't live in cold dank places like Seattle." Get real.
-a
>I'm not trying to be a bigot, but in sports I think it's almost detrimental to be white nowadays.
I don't think you are being a bigot but there are some misconceptions about race in sports. For starters, it's hard to say whether or not it's better to be of any race whatsoever in anything. That's dangerous territory. Modern cultural criticism has shown that racism/sexism/heterosexism, etc is just as damaging to the dominant group as it is to the subordinate group (check out _Gender Trouble_ by Judith Butler and numerous works by Michel Foucault). Furthermore, can you point to one instance where a player experienced reverse discrimination?
As far as owning teams goes the overwhelming majority of teams are owned by white men. In basketball and football this should seem odd since so many of the players are Black. Coaching staffs are usually predominantly white as well, though this is changing.
I am not in a position to say whether or not there is "reverse discrimination" in sports or an advantage to particular races. A very well-written article in The Village Voice actually addresses this issue in the context of Venus and Serena Williams (http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0045/noel.shtm l).
I am, however, in a position to say that people should back up their assumptions and actually investigate them rather than perpetuating these half-truths.
-a
[Mr. Burns Voice] Excellent! [/Mr. Burns Voice]
I bookmarked the page and I will defnitely check out the program when I have time.
Thank you very much.
-a
Does anyone know of a program that would be good for modeling lego structures?
Perhaps there is a market (albeit small) for a program that let you model structures using lego bricks and then calculated how many you should buy of each color and size used.