"Bulls**t. When she was hired at HP she had seemingly done a good job at Lucent and clearly deserved a shot at the position.
Turns out she was a fraud,"
It was the overheated, go-go 90's market. Everyone was making money, and frankly, Darl McBride could've taken Lucent to the top. This was the age of the Internet Bubble. It was hard to tell just who was a good manager, and who wasn't, because of strange, once in a lifetime unnatural market conditions, everyone was succeeding, no one was failing. So HP can be excused for not seeing that Carly was a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
But please, don't pretend that her being female didn't give her a leg up on the competition in getting the job. It most certainly did, as HP never missed an opportunity to show how Modern and Progressive they were by flaunting their new female CEO at every opportunity.
We've been making the world "less shitty" for centuries with every advance; improved medicine, housing, communications, and education. If people of 100 years ago had peered into the future and seen our world, they'd be amazed at the lengths we've traveled.
And yet we're more miserable than ever.
It's as if all of the things we go to buy at Circuit City to fill our empty holes are only making them deeper.
There is a possibility, however: perhaps it's that, with each advance, our imagination travels more and we're dissapointed with what we have. The people of the 1950's thought we'd all be flying across the world in Mach 3 airliners, and the people in the sixties and seventies thought we'd have colonized other planets by now.
So...are we spoiled? Is that it? Or is it that we're looking to the wrong things for happiness? I could make the argument that in these days of Hollywood, everyone thinks they should be rich and famous, and not everyone can be a star.
Wow....massive environmental changes can be caused by...OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL changes!
This has been my biggest gripe with environmental groups. Almost none of them take into account the fact that the Earth has radically "re-organized" itself (for lack of a better word) several times BEFORE man ever came along, and we don't yet understand how or why. We've had several radical changes in global temperature, sea levels, atmosphere composition, etc, most before man ever walked the Earth.
I've got no problem harvesting stem cells from umbilical cord blood, or existing body parts for one's self....I can even accept harvesting them from embryos at fertility clinics that are going to be destroyed, though I still have some qualms with it. But I'm deeply disturbed by the idea that we should create embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. I know about 90 percent of you are going to rush in and attack this, but it smacks of creating human life for the sole purpose of destroying it so that other human life can benefit. It's a little too close to cloning ourselves for the purpose of of having an endless supply of organs and tissues. Yes, again, so many of you will go "but think of the crippled/diseased children that could benefit!". Yes, I'm a horrible evil man for not thinking of the children. I guess I'm also evil for thinking that it's a bad idea for the human race to cannibalize itself (no, blood donations and organ donations don't count...blood is renewable, for lack of a better word, and organs come from those that are deceased). I guess what it comes down to is your definition of human life, and what it's worth (especially innocent human life). In that regard, some divides shouldn't be crossed.
Sparc isn't dead...Sun just realized that they can't keep up with Intel and IBM in the chip wars by themselves. They've teamed up with a Japanese company (Fujitsu?) for future Sparc development. Sparc will be for high-end customers only. They're positioning Opteron for the cheap end.
Not to mock you, but as others here have pointed out, the flooding issue alone makes a raised floor in a basement a bad idea. Stick with a ceiling drop, or a cable run along ceilings and walls with some vinyl covers to make it look more attractive. If you're going to have some pc servers, I'd suggest a rackmount or an inexpensive industrial storage rack.
While this story seems to suprise you guys, it doesn't surprise me in the least, because I live in Alabama, and trial lawyers are incredibly powerful here. It's no mistake that Alabama has been called "Tort Hell". It's very easy to sue here. What's worse, it's very easy to cherry pick the venue that you think will likely get you a victory in court here. And we've had some whoppers here. The University of Alabama in particular seems to just turn out ambulance chasers like there's no tomorrow. And these guys have tremendous pull in the state legistlature, where an overwhelming number of officials have law degrees. This state has always had the reputation of one where all the money is made behind closed doors, usually with lots of lawyers present. We're trying to change that with tort reform, but it's hard when they're so entrenched here.
Not to defend the GTA games, because they ARE disgusting. Let's face it...the gameplay rewards sadistic behavior. The more cops you run over, the more points you get. The game may have given this guy ideas, but realistically, he was probably open to criminal behavior anyway. If he's an adult, it's his responsibility.
"The current ruling gang apparently doesn't even give it lip service any more."
They give it A LOT of lip service. It's still in all of the major speeches during national holidays.
"Thus, Communism died in the old USSR when Stalin took power and became in all but name a new tsar."
That's news to Nikita Kruschev, who was essentially replaced by commitee. No one even knew who the "one guy" in charge was for a couple of years after his removal. Eventually, it was discovered that the Central Commitee picked Leonid Breznhev as the General Secretary. The party regained control after the death of Stalin, and stayed in control until Gorbachev. The attempted coup was BY the major powers of the party. So please don't pretend that communism never existed after Stalin. For all of the evil of that system, the party did pick leadership in an orderly fashion after that.
"...the old Communist/Capitalist false dichotomy."
If you REALLY think there's no difference between capitalism and Soviet style communism, then no rational words are going to sway you.
"...not by describing them with foreign words that don't apply very well."
When they stop calling themselves communists, then maybe we will too. Again, the Chinese leadership still embraces the Marxist/Maoist imagery and speech, voluntarily. No one from the West forced it on them, so please stop acting like we are doing just that. THEY (the governement) identify themselves as communist.
BTW, there ARE still true believers in power in China, many in the military. They don't like the trappings of a market economy, but they do like the money it brings in to pay for planes, tanks, missles, ships, and now, the space program.
China, for all the hype about markets opening up their society, is still a totalitarian communist country. I'm not surprised that they've cracked down on the cafes; I'm surprised they exist at all.
Because I'm tired of how Rick Berman has absolutely destroyed the history, continuity, and philosophy of the series. Though I no longer agree with much of the philosopy of Gene Rodenberry (no money, for instance), his vision is important to what Star Trek IS; a utopian vision of the future. It doesn't make good government, but it makes great TV, or at least it did. For whatever reason, Berman has decided that this core philosophy is unimportant, and that the history of the storyline is as well. I'm quite tired of hearing "Oh well, First Contact changed the timeline anyway". That doesn't cut it. Time travel has been used as a crutch for weak ratings far too many times in the franchise. Got a problem? Go back in time to fix/prevent it. In Rodenberry's universe, there was no Captain Archer, no space Nazis, and no temporal cold war. All of these things change the very fabric of the Star Trek universe. The only truly interesting thing that could happen (and the only way to make things right) is for some giant cosmic event to wipe it all out, and we discover that Berman's stories never happened.
It's not going to happen. Better to let Enterprise die and mourn the franchise.
"...all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough."
That's absolute bullshit. We NEVER ignored North Korea. North Korea was second only to Iraq in terms of rogue nations we were concerned with. Not even Iran ranked that high until now. Have you ever actually LISTENED to Bush's speeches on national security? Hello Axis of Evil!
And this begs the question, what would you have the President do about NK? Hmmm? Diplomacy? We've been doing that intensley. Sanctions? They're starving already, and I doubt you would have supported that option anyway. Invasion? I KNOW you wouldn't have supported that. So other than just criticizing Bush, what would you have had him do? Throw money at North Korea? We've BEEN doing that for over a decade. Hell, Clinton GAVE them reactor technology if they'd promise pretty please not to use it for military applications. Unhhh huhhhh. THAT was bright, eh?
So do you actually have any solutions to the NK problem? Or are you just going to bash Bush for it?
" Yeah, good thing we raided big bad Iraq, while sweet lil' N. Korea was doing all of this."
Somehow I doubt that if we had proposed raiding sweet lil' N. Korea with military force, you'd have supported it. Somehow, I get the feeling you would have said "We're attacking an innocent sovereign nation for no good reason!"
Here's a radical idea; how about making sure that kids can handle pencil-and-paper science and mathematics before we throw computers at them?
And let's be honest...short of some vocation training (typing, basic word processor-spreadsheet usage), what will kids use computers for that they can't get with books and a live teacher?
It's not a two browser world, it's a three browser world. And not even THAT statement is correct. It should be more along the lines of "It's a 3 HTML Engine world". IE is the only browser that uses Microsoft's engine, but the othe two are Gecko (Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/Kmeleon) and KHTML (Konqueror/Safari). It's a pretty safe bet that most Apple users are now using Safari, at least those with hardware that can support it. As long as Apple is pushing it, the KDE folks can justifiably claim their browser engine is one of the big boys. And if you don't like those, there's always Opera.
"Dark Matter": code words for "we don't know WHAT the fuck is out there or why our math doesn't add up, so we'll make up something from a bad Star Trek episode to keep the grant money flowing...hope no one calls us on it".
Sorry, but the very idea that we can calculate the mass and size of the entire universe accurately from earth-based observations alone is sheer nonsense. And when I say earth based, I include various satellites and spacecraft as well (chandra, hubble, etc).
This doesn't mean that we should EVER stop looking, but we should realize the inherent limitations of our situation here. We have neither the mathematics, technology, or data needed to determine such things until we can travel longer distances from this rock, and, to put it simply, have a wider view, probably much wider than we can get within our own solar system. Until, it's all conjecture based on what limited data we can get.
"I continue to be surprised that AOL has anyone at all working on a browser that they refuse to use or promote."
I can't argue that AOL's strategy with Netscape has been maddeningly inconsistant; it would indeed be nice if they would use the Gecko engine as the standard in their own product.
"Who knows, but Netscape is a non-player, and so a non-issue in any way."
Netscape is now the standard browser throughout my workplace, and is the browser that I and colleagues recommend when businesses inquire about alternatives to Internet Explorer.
Here's where I prove how psychic I am by predicting your question; "Why don't you just tell them to use Firefox?".
There are a number of reasons, some that won't make sense to you in the strictest technical sense, but are are business realities nonetheless. For one, when a business finds out that Firefox comes from a "non-profit volunteer cooperative", they automatically freeze up, and say "no thanks". Like it or not, businesses are label whores; they like products from "real businesses". Tell them the gecko-engined Mozilla browser is released by a team of volunteers, and they flinch. Tell them the gecko-engined Netscape browser is released by AOL, and they trust it. Never mind it's practically the same browser. Doesn't matter. Commercially released software is safer and superior in the minds of the business public. They don't care what's underneath. They care who's putting it out there.
I consider Debian vastly superior to Red Hat in almost everything, and yet Red Hat, which is horrendously expensive and bloated, continues to be the business standard when it comes to Linux in the workplace. Because when you buy it, it's coming from a company with business-supplied support and warranties. You can tell them Debian is better, and then tell them it's free-as-in-beer. The next question is "who gives a warranty on it and provides support?". When you tell your boss "no one" and "public user forums", you're likely to be thrown from his office.
As much scorn as Netscape gets here in comparison to Mozilla and Firefox, if a business wants a "commercial alternative", where do you point them? Opera? In my expierience, Netscape 7.X works pretty well, which wasn't always the case with pre-1.0 Firefox versions.
I realize I could be a Firefox cheerleader, but I'd just be butting my head against the wall. The main goal is just to get users off of IE, and if Netscape is the easiest and most acceptable way to the boss to do it, so be it.
"It's pretty generally accepted already by all those without blind faith that the piece of fabric known as the Turin Shroud is not what Jesus was wrapped in."
Oh? That's news to the rest of the world, as NO dating, other than the original carbon dating in the 80's has ever been done on the shroud. So now we find out that testing may have been flawed. That's PLENTY of reason for further investigation, wouldn't you think?
Since, as I said, there's been no other testing, how can you possibly say for certain that's its a fake?
Slashdot Mirror
"Bulls**t. When she was hired at HP she had seemingly done a good job at Lucent and clearly deserved a shot at the position.
Turns out she was a fraud,"
It was the overheated, go-go 90's market. Everyone was making money, and frankly, Darl McBride could've taken Lucent to the top. This was the age of the Internet Bubble. It was hard to tell just who was a good manager, and who wasn't, because of strange, once in a lifetime unnatural market conditions, everyone was succeeding, no one was failing. So HP can be excused for not seeing that Carly was a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
But please, don't pretend that her being female didn't give her a leg up on the competition in getting the job. It most certainly did, as HP never missed an opportunity to show how Modern and Progressive they were by flaunting their new female CEO at every opportunity.
a href="http://www.danni.com/"
...at least it didn't say "Cox IN Torvalds"
We've been making the world "less shitty" for centuries with every advance; improved medicine, housing, communications, and education. If people of 100 years ago had peered into the future and seen our world, they'd be amazed at the lengths we've traveled.
And yet we're more miserable than ever.
It's as if all of the things we go to buy at Circuit City to fill our empty holes are only making them deeper.
There is a possibility, however: perhaps it's that, with each advance, our imagination travels more and we're dissapointed with what we have. The people of the 1950's thought we'd all be flying across the world in Mach 3 airliners, and the people in the sixties and seventies thought we'd have colonized other planets by now.
So...are we spoiled? Is that it? Or is it that we're looking to the wrong things for happiness? I could make the argument that in these days of Hollywood, everyone thinks they should be rich and famous, and not everyone can be a star.
Wow....massive environmental changes can be caused by...OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL changes!
This has been my biggest gripe with environmental groups. Almost none of them take into account the fact that the Earth has radically "re-organized" itself (for lack of a better word) several times BEFORE man ever came along, and we don't yet understand how or why. We've had several radical changes in global temperature, sea levels, atmosphere composition, etc, most before man ever walked the Earth.
" Well, we've named all the planets in THIS system after greek mythological characters."
Jupiter, Mars, Venus, etc, are all Roman names. Greek names would've been Zeus, Aries, Aphrodite...
I've got no problem harvesting stem cells from umbilical cord blood, or existing body parts for one's self....I can even accept harvesting them from embryos at fertility clinics that are going to be destroyed, though I still have some qualms with it. But I'm deeply disturbed by the idea that we should create embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. I know about 90 percent of you are going to rush in and attack this, but it smacks of creating human life for the sole purpose of destroying it so that other human life can benefit. It's a little too close to cloning ourselves for the purpose of of having an endless supply of organs and tissues. Yes, again, so many of you will go "but think of the crippled/diseased children that could benefit!". Yes, I'm a horrible evil man for not thinking of the children. I guess I'm also evil for thinking that it's a bad idea for the human race to cannibalize itself (no, blood donations and organ donations don't count...blood is renewable, for lack of a better word, and organs come from those that are deceased). I guess what it comes down to is your definition of human life, and what it's worth (especially innocent human life). In that regard, some divides shouldn't be crossed.
Sparc isn't dead...Sun just realized that they can't keep up with Intel and IBM in the chip wars by themselves. They've teamed up with a Japanese company (Fujitsu?) for future Sparc development. Sparc will be for high-end customers only. They're positioning Opteron for the cheap end.
Not to mock you, but as others here have pointed out, the flooding issue alone makes a raised floor in a basement a bad idea. Stick with a ceiling drop, or a cable run along ceilings and walls with some vinyl covers to make it look more attractive. If you're going to have some pc servers, I'd suggest a rackmount or an inexpensive industrial storage rack.
While this story seems to suprise you guys, it doesn't surprise me in the least, because I live in Alabama, and trial lawyers are incredibly powerful here. It's no mistake that Alabama has been called "Tort Hell". It's very easy to sue here. What's worse, it's very easy to cherry pick the venue that you think will likely get you a victory in court here. And we've had some whoppers here. The University of Alabama in particular seems to just turn out ambulance chasers like there's no tomorrow. And these guys have tremendous pull in the state legistlature, where an overwhelming number of officials have law degrees. This state has always had the reputation of one where all the money is made behind closed doors, usually with lots of lawyers present. We're trying to change that with tort reform, but it's hard when they're so entrenched here.
Not to defend the GTA games, because they ARE disgusting. Let's face it...the gameplay rewards sadistic behavior. The more cops you run over, the more points you get. The game may have given this guy ideas, but realistically, he was probably open to criminal behavior anyway. If he's an adult, it's his responsibility.
Funniest thing I've read all week...thanks for the post...
"Whoever modded this fucking bastard informative deserves a good sack. This guy is promoting opinions. There is no informative value in it."
His opinions are right. He SHOULD have gotten modded insightful instead....
" Indeed; Communism is thoroughly dead in China."
Some aspects of it are.
"The current ruling gang apparently doesn't even give it lip service any more."
They give it A LOT of lip service. It's still in all of the major speeches during national holidays.
"Thus, Communism died in the old USSR when Stalin took power and became in all but name a new tsar."
That's news to Nikita Kruschev, who was essentially replaced by commitee. No one even knew who the "one guy" in charge was for a couple of years after his removal. Eventually, it was discovered that the Central Commitee picked Leonid Breznhev as the General Secretary. The party regained control after the death of Stalin, and stayed in control until Gorbachev. The attempted coup was BY the major powers of the party. So please don't pretend that communism never existed after Stalin. For all of the evil of that system, the party did pick leadership in an orderly fashion after that.
"...the old Communist/Capitalist false dichotomy."
If you REALLY think there's no difference between capitalism and Soviet style communism, then no rational words are going to sway you.
"...not by describing them with foreign words that don't apply very well."
When they stop calling themselves communists, then maybe we will too. Again, the Chinese leadership still embraces the Marxist/Maoist imagery and speech, voluntarily. No one from the West forced it on them, so please stop acting like we are doing just that. THEY (the governement) identify themselves as communist.
BTW, there ARE still true believers in power in China, many in the military. They don't like the trappings of a market economy, but they do like the money it brings in to pay for planes, tanks, missles, ships, and now, the space program.
China, for all the hype about markets opening up their society, is still a totalitarian communist country. I'm not surprised that they've cracked down on the cafes; I'm surprised they exist at all.
Why on Earth would I want that?
Because I'm tired of how Rick Berman has absolutely destroyed the history, continuity, and philosophy of the series. Though I no longer agree with much of the philosopy of Gene Rodenberry (no money, for instance), his vision is important to what Star Trek IS; a utopian vision of the future. It doesn't make good government, but it makes great TV, or at least it did. For whatever reason, Berman has decided that this core philosophy is unimportant, and that the history of the storyline is as well. I'm quite tired of hearing "Oh well, First Contact changed the timeline anyway". That doesn't cut it. Time travel has been used as a crutch for weak ratings far too many times in the franchise. Got a problem? Go back in time to fix/prevent it. In Rodenberry's universe, there was no Captain Archer, no space Nazis, and no temporal cold war. All of these things change the very fabric of the Star Trek universe. The only truly interesting thing that could happen (and the only way to make things right) is for some giant cosmic event to wipe it all out, and we discover that Berman's stories never happened.
It's not going to happen. Better to let Enterprise die and mourn the franchise.
"...all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough."
That's absolute bullshit. We NEVER ignored North Korea. North Korea was second only to Iraq in terms of rogue nations we were concerned with. Not even Iran ranked that high until now. Have you ever actually LISTENED to Bush's speeches on national security? Hello Axis of Evil!
And this begs the question, what would you have the President do about NK? Hmmm? Diplomacy? We've been doing that intensley. Sanctions? They're starving already, and I doubt you would have supported that option anyway. Invasion? I KNOW you wouldn't have supported that. So other than just criticizing Bush, what would you have had him do? Throw money at North Korea? We've BEEN doing that for over a decade. Hell, Clinton GAVE them reactor technology if they'd promise pretty please not to use it for military applications. Unhhh huhhhh. THAT was bright, eh?
So do you actually have any solutions to the NK problem? Or are you just going to bash Bush for it?
" Yeah, good thing we raided big bad Iraq, while sweet lil' N. Korea was doing all of this."
Somehow I doubt that if we had proposed raiding sweet lil' N. Korea with military force, you'd have supported it. Somehow, I get the feeling you would have said "We're attacking an innocent sovereign nation for no good reason!"
...is that "Don't be Evil" thing still in their company creed?
Here's a radical idea; how about making sure that kids can handle pencil-and-paper science and mathematics before we throw computers at them?
And let's be honest...short of some vocation training (typing, basic word processor-spreadsheet usage), what will kids use computers for that they can't get with books and a live teacher?
It's not a two browser world, it's a three browser world. And not even THAT statement is correct. It should be more along the lines of "It's a 3 HTML Engine world". IE is the only browser that uses Microsoft's engine, but the othe two are Gecko (Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/Kmeleon) and KHTML (Konqueror/Safari). It's a pretty safe bet that most Apple users are now using Safari, at least those with hardware that can support it. As long as Apple is pushing it, the KDE folks can justifiably claim their browser engine is one of the big boys. And if you don't like those, there's always Opera.
Ain't choice wonderful?
" "property is theft" -- Joseph Proudhon
"Joseph Proudhon is a cocksucker" -- DesScorp
"Dark Matter": code words for "we don't know WHAT the fuck is out there or why our math doesn't add up, so we'll make up something from a bad Star Trek episode to keep the grant money flowing...hope no one calls us on it".
Sorry, but the very idea that we can calculate the mass and size of the entire universe accurately from earth-based observations alone is sheer nonsense. And when I say earth based, I include various satellites and spacecraft as well (chandra, hubble, etc).
This doesn't mean that we should EVER stop looking, but we should realize the inherent limitations of our situation here. We have neither the mathematics, technology, or data needed to determine such things until we can travel longer distances from this rock, and, to put it simply, have a wider view, probably much wider than we can get within our own solar system. Until, it's all conjecture based on what limited data we can get.
"Since no one uses Netscape anyway ..."
Not even remotely true.
"I continue to be surprised that AOL has anyone at all working on a browser that they refuse to use or promote."
I can't argue that AOL's strategy with Netscape has been maddeningly inconsistant; it would indeed be nice if they would use the Gecko engine as the standard in their own product.
"Who knows, but Netscape is a non-player, and so a non-issue in any way."
Netscape is now the standard browser throughout my workplace, and is the browser that I and colleagues recommend when businesses inquire about alternatives to Internet Explorer.
Here's where I prove how psychic I am by predicting your question; "Why don't you just tell them to use Firefox?".
There are a number of reasons, some that won't make sense to you in the strictest technical sense, but are are business realities nonetheless. For one, when a business finds out that Firefox comes from a "non-profit volunteer cooperative", they automatically freeze up, and say "no thanks". Like it or not, businesses are label whores; they like products from "real businesses". Tell them the gecko-engined Mozilla browser is released by a team of volunteers, and they flinch. Tell them the gecko-engined Netscape browser is released by AOL, and they trust it. Never mind it's practically the same browser. Doesn't matter. Commercially released software is safer and superior in the minds of the business public. They don't care what's underneath. They care who's putting it out there.
I consider Debian vastly superior to Red Hat in almost everything, and yet Red Hat, which is horrendously expensive and bloated, continues to be the business standard when it comes to Linux in the workplace. Because when you buy it, it's coming from a company with business-supplied support and warranties. You can tell them Debian is better, and then tell them it's free-as-in-beer. The next question is "who gives a warranty on it and provides support?". When you tell your boss "no one" and "public user forums", you're likely to be thrown from his office.
As much scorn as Netscape gets here in comparison to Mozilla and Firefox, if a business wants a "commercial alternative", where do you point them? Opera? In my expierience, Netscape 7.X works pretty well, which wasn't always the case with pre-1.0 Firefox versions.
I realize I could be a Firefox cheerleader, but I'd just be butting my head against the wall. The main goal is just to get users off of IE, and if Netscape is the easiest and most acceptable way to the boss to do it, so be it.
...that every post criticizing RMS thus far has been modded as Troll or Flamebait? Every Single One?
Some of them are trolls, but come on...is RMS a sacred cow now?
"It's pretty generally accepted already by all those without blind faith that the piece of fabric known as the Turin Shroud is not what Jesus was wrapped in."
Oh? That's news to the rest of the world, as NO dating, other than the original carbon dating in the 80's has ever been done on the shroud. So now we find out that testing may have been flawed. That's PLENTY of reason for further investigation, wouldn't you think?
Since, as I said, there's been no other testing, how can you possibly say for certain that's its a fake?