Re:Can you guys drop the Socialist moniker please?
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
Yeah, global taxes to support the world's poor (whether poor by choice, ignorance or circumstance is outside the scope of this thread) is a lynch-pin of capitalist dogma. Nationalized health-care is another core capitalist notion. Oh yeah, and forcing business into immediate changes that will kill off many but the top tier that can afford to make the mandatory changes (Kyoto anyone?) is another long-time basic capitalist building block.
Try again.
Now, if you meant, "Please don't generalize all of Europe socialist because it's mainly the leadership of some countries and certain governmental portions that are socialist or socialist leaning, not all of us," then I totally agree. There are as many folks in Europe that believe in personal responsibility, private property ownership, free enterprise and non-confiscatory tax rates as there are in America, possibly more. But to just flatly deny that folks like Jaques Chirac would love to see America paying every country on earth 20% of our GNP is a bit of a trip down the river Nile, isn't it?
Any defense can be overcome with enough time and ingenuity. Personally, how much I trust the software (and I trust none absolutely as a matter of principle...duh) has less to do with initial theory/dogma on stability/security as it does with the developer's willingness and ability to take public responsibility for bugs and publish fixes for them ASAP. Of course, if one particular app has constant problems I'll be disinclined to favor it (/cheer Firefox!) but intelligent, unbiased analysis is all too often buried in the marketing hype--with professionals and enthusiasts sharing in the blame.
Or is this an interesting exercise in hypocrisy? I mean, the second someone comes up with technology to track people,/. goes nuts with indignation and right issues. But when someone comes up with a way to avoid tracking people, they're still indignant?
I'm admittedly not the brightest individual, but I MUST be missing something here.
...that the "But they've posted that information already!" arguments leave out a crucial fact: the previously-posted information includes P.O. Box or government/business addresses and government/business telephone numbers. Nowhere on the referenced sites could I find home addresses and home phone numbers.
Seriously, would you want your kids to be playing in the front yard when folks like you saw in those videos showed up to curse, taunt, throw urine and generally create a nuisance? We, as adults, can laugh some of that stuff off as immaturity...it has quite a different effect on kids and neighbors.
For people like me that can speak fluent technical English, know their way around Windows, can get by in unix/linux and MacOS, have a good work ethic and take pride in doing a job RIGHT instead of at the "absolute lowest cost," outsourcing is AWESOME. The lowbie jobs get outsourced, leading to general customer dissatisfaction with overseas support personnel (who are probably not computer-inclined to begin with), leading to a plethora of support work for independent/hired tech guys like me, and at better pay to boot.
To rehash in short version, outsourcing means: --> Better pay for me for doing the same job --> More work for me doing the same job --> Better average customer satisfaction for me for doing the same job
I thought we had tons of debris flying around in orbit. Wouldn't said debris rip right through the necessarily thin skin of this thing? Is this "hab" too low to be affected? What am I missing?
Some of that is due to language translations. Some of the dialogs take a lot less time to speak in Japanese than it does in English, so it seems like anime has a lot of run-on sentences. Some spots in Neon Genesis Evangelion are like that but once you get used to it, they actually get a lot more data across to you than some of the crap that passes for animated art.
I didn't much like GitS, either, but less so due to the dialogs as to the general "lackluster" feel of it...just my opinion.:P
...that PERL, not Windows, is the root of all evil./ducks the flying pans.
Neal Boortz says it best...
on
Weapons in Space
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· Score: 1, Insightful
We've also learned in the past day or so that a Pentagon agency has set aside about $68 million to spend on something called the Near Field Infrared Experiment. This is an experiment in how to identify rockets launched from the earth and, if need be, destroy them from space.
Now it's that "destroy them from space" thing that is upsetting some on the left. The evil United States is going to (gasp!) "weaponize" space. We're actually going to place honest-to-goodness WEAPONS out there!
OK, my illogical, fact-challenged friends. Look at it this way. China is in space now. China isn't exactly what you would call a cuddly friend. Russia is in space also. So, that leaves three strong military powers with a presence in space. You can bet your bottom dollar that one of these countries is going to be the first to place weapons in orbit around the earth. Tell me... which country do you want that to be? Would you prefer China to be the first with a weapons system in space? How about Russia? Me? I'm voting for us... the good ole US of A. Like it or not, we're the good guys... and I want us to have the edge -- not somebody who might use that edge against us.
Sitcoms are populated by people with a dizzying array of strange and/or disturbing personality traits. Most regular folks are...well, regular folks. Once you get away from the barrage of inanity that is regular network (and to some extent now, cable) TV and start participating in and paying attention to the unfiltered goings on of the REAL world (NOT "REALITY" TV, FOR THE 'TARDS AMONG US), you gain a much more well-rounded perspective on nearly everything. No wonder it seems like internet users appear more knowledgeable and sociable.
When Dan Rather tells you George Bush is a homicidal maniac bent on purifying the world in holy nuclear fire so he can buy more oil for his deer-antler-adorned SUV fleet, what other TV channel will present the opposite viewpoint? [crickets...] That's what I thought. On the internet, however, a quick Google search will turn up any number of alternate viewpoints and probably evidence to support each of them.
Until someone puts out 24-hour Bird Death Tripwires on every stated cause of bird deaths and records the actual numbers, this is pure extrapolation. How many birds per day die from flying into the Empire State Building? Who's responsible for determining that that dead bird over there hit the turbine blade and not the turbine post/housing? Who collects these statistics and tries to pawn off assumptions based on weak and entirely questionable data as viable and important scientific research?
Oh, and may I ask what the statistics for bird birth rates (including sibling survival rates) for the areas in question are? You don't have that data?
How about a control group for the study? How many scientists troop through woods looking for birds that died from running into tree limbs and trunks? If someone ever did and discovered that vastly more birds die from non-human and non-human-influenced causes, would an environmentalist pay any attention?
Back when I was growing up (born in '70), cartoons were much more focused on slapstick, irony, plot, character, morals/ethics and what not. Nowadays, it's gone largely over to cheapo animation and garish colors to paint painfully obtuse pictures of someone's acid-trip techno-dreams. I think this is why a lot of folks turn to anime...some difficult-to-follow dialogues in some of it, but it was never about purely graphics pizazz (at least from my perspective).
Seems like a fair portion of the SF stuff has gone the same route, with the notable exception of writers such as Vernor Vinge. Character development and the human side of things has traditionally been much more prevalent in the Fantasy/SF genre than in pure "hard-core" SF. With the general trends toward dehumanization and loose morals these days, it really doesn't surprise me that good ol' chivalry and dragonslayers are regaining popularity.
...some songs just suck. *cough*Cher*cough* Some of my favorite tunes were created before the advent of the transistor, for goodness sake.:P Not to mention that I don't think an autotuner exists that could clean up death-metal vocals.
...one of the major reasons why a lot of work is outsourced to overseas locations. Many countries we do business with *cough*China*cough* are perfectly happy with killing people to keep them from saying something anti-government. It would be naive to assert that they would then be squeamish about overlooking a bit of shady business practice to undercut "correct/proper" businesses elsewhere and capture that market share.
Ya know, it really doesn't matter how clever you are if the other guy can do a more or less hands-free install and be up and running fast. So what if he isn't a linux uberg33k--if he gets his product to market quicker than you do, isn't your cleverness wasted? I'd rather have a tool that just works than a tool that required me to be clever to figure out how to optimize it.
Ya know, I see this statement all the time. If it were truly the case, you'd see these boxes all over the place as low-cost replacements for a whole host of hardware devices. The main reason you don't see that is because these cheap PCs are too slow. Average latencies in the op cycles of hardware routers are in the nanosecond range, whereas most op cycles for PCs for the same work are in the millisecond range. That doesn't bode well for scalability. Granted, for most people, the extra latency wouldn't be an issue since they don't serve millions of hits per hour (or per day, even). In companies that do, it makes a big difference.
Ah, the power of choice...
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Ya know, you don't actually have to work for people of such obvious short-sightedness. In fact, I would think that hiring practices such as this would tell you the average chances for success the company would have.
...how nobody complained about the fact that pre-cable TV had only three news channels to watch? (ABC/CBS/NBC) But now that companies like Clear Channel and News Corp. offer something other than mainstream left-leaning claptrap, it's now "OH NO! IT'LL BE THE END OF FREEDOM AS WE KNOW IT!" Considering how many intelligent people troll these boards, I'm surprised so many ditch said intelligence when it differs with their particular point of view. Consider that nobody says a damn thing when Ted Turner buys up another media service, but when the owner of Fox News wants to increase his holdings from 2.5% of the market to around 4% people go ballistic. Nope, no political agenda here, nosirree.
Oh, and another thing: do you people really think the Dixie Chicks thing was started by the radio station owners? The owners didn't come up with the idea--their listening audience did...and in large enough pissed off numbers to incite a response from many radio stations. If that isn't serving the consumer, I don't know what is. When was the last time you ever heard NPR present a positive segment on tax cuts? Or welfare reform? Or limited government?... That's what I thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, global taxes to support the world's poor (whether poor by choice, ignorance or circumstance is outside the scope of this thread) is a lynch-pin of capitalist dogma. Nationalized health-care is another core capitalist notion. Oh yeah, and forcing business into immediate changes that will kill off many but the top tier that can afford to make the mandatory changes (Kyoto anyone?) is another long-time basic capitalist building block.
Try again.
Now, if you meant, "Please don't generalize all of Europe socialist because it's mainly the leadership of some countries and certain governmental portions that are socialist or socialist leaning, not all of us," then I totally agree. There are as many folks in Europe that believe in personal responsibility, private property ownership, free enterprise and non-confiscatory tax rates as there are in America, possibly more. But to just flatly deny that folks like Jaques Chirac would love to see America paying every country on earth 20% of our GNP is a bit of a trip down the river Nile, isn't it?
Any defense can be overcome with enough time and ingenuity. Personally, how much I trust the software (and I trust none absolutely as a matter of principle...duh) has less to do with initial theory/dogma on stability/security as it does with the developer's willingness and ability to take public responsibility for bugs and publish fixes for them ASAP. Of course, if one particular app has constant problems I'll be disinclined to favor it (/cheer Firefox!) but intelligent, unbiased analysis is all too often buried in the marketing hype--with professionals and enthusiasts sharing in the blame.
Or is this an interesting exercise in hypocrisy? I mean, the second someone comes up with technology to track people, /. goes nuts with indignation and right issues. But when someone comes up with a way to avoid tracking people, they're still indignant?
I'm admittedly not the brightest individual, but I MUST be missing something here.
...that the "But they've posted that information already!" arguments leave out a crucial fact: the previously-posted information includes P.O. Box or government/business addresses and government/business telephone numbers. Nowhere on the referenced sites could I find home addresses and home phone numbers.
Seriously, would you want your kids to be playing in the front yard when folks like you saw in those videos showed up to curse, taunt, throw urine and generally create a nuisance? We, as adults, can laugh some of that stuff off as immaturity...it has quite a different effect on kids and neighbors.
For people like me that can speak fluent technical English, know their way around Windows, can get by in unix/linux and MacOS, have a good work ethic and take pride in doing a job RIGHT instead of at the "absolute lowest cost," outsourcing is AWESOME. The lowbie jobs get outsourced, leading to general customer dissatisfaction with overseas support personnel (who are probably not computer-inclined to begin with), leading to a plethora of support work for independent/hired tech guys like me, and at better pay to boot.
To rehash in short version, outsourcing means:
--> Better pay for me for doing the same job
--> More work for me doing the same job
--> Better average customer satisfaction for me for doing the same job
WIN-WIN!
I thought we had tons of debris flying around in orbit. Wouldn't said debris rip right through the necessarily thin skin of this thing? Is this "hab" too low to be affected? What am I missing?
There are no trolls on Slashdot!
Here's your cluepon. Trust, but verify.
Some of that is due to language translations. Some of the dialogs take a lot less time to speak in Japanese than it does in English, so it seems like anime has a lot of run-on sentences. Some spots in Neon Genesis Evangelion are like that but once you get used to it, they actually get a lot more data across to you than some of the crap that passes for animated art.
:P
I didn't much like GitS, either, but less so due to the dialogs as to the general "lackluster" feel of it...just my opinion.
Were you (or your parents/grandparents) scared shitless in 1946 that the US had nukes? Hmmm....
...that PERL, not Windows, is the root of all evil. /ducks the flying pans.
We've also learned in the past day or so that a Pentagon agency has set aside about $68 million to spend on something called the Near Field Infrared Experiment. This is an experiment in how to identify rockets launched from the earth and, if need be, destroy them from space.
... which country do you want that to be? Would you prefer China to be the first with a weapons system in space? How about Russia? Me? I'm voting for us ... the good ole US of A. Like it or not, we're the good guys ... and I want us to have the edge -- not somebody who might use that edge against us.
Now it's that "destroy them from space" thing that is upsetting some on the left. The evil United States is going to (gasp!) "weaponize" space. We're actually going to place honest-to-goodness WEAPONS out there!
OK, my illogical, fact-challenged friends. Look at it this way. China is in space now. China isn't exactly what you would call a cuddly friend. Russia is in space also. So, that leaves three strong military powers with a presence in space. You can bet your bottom dollar that one of these countries is going to be the first to place weapons in orbit around the earth. Tell me
From each according to his ability...to each according to his need.
Nice to see Europe is at least staying consistent.
Didn't hear about this in the original furor. Anyone got a synopsis of their position regarding this statement?
Sitcoms are populated by people with a dizzying array of strange and/or disturbing personality traits. Most regular folks are...well, regular folks. Once you get away from the barrage of inanity that is regular network (and to some extent now, cable) TV and start participating in and paying attention to the unfiltered goings on of the REAL world (NOT "REALITY" TV, FOR THE 'TARDS AMONG US), you gain a much more well-rounded perspective on nearly everything. No wonder it seems like internet users appear more knowledgeable and sociable.
When Dan Rather tells you George Bush is a homicidal maniac bent on purifying the world in holy nuclear fire so he can buy more oil for his deer-antler-adorned SUV fleet, what other TV channel will present the opposite viewpoint? [crickets...] That's what I thought. On the internet, however, a quick Google search will turn up any number of alternate viewpoints and probably evidence to support each of them.
Until someone puts out 24-hour Bird Death Tripwires on every stated cause of bird deaths and records the actual numbers, this is pure extrapolation. How many birds per day die from flying into the Empire State Building? Who's responsible for determining that that dead bird over there hit the turbine blade and not the turbine post/housing? Who collects these statistics and tries to pawn off assumptions based on weak and entirely questionable data as viable and important scientific research?
Oh, and may I ask what the statistics for bird birth rates (including sibling survival rates) for the areas in question are? You don't have that data?
How about a control group for the study? How many scientists troop through woods looking for birds that died from running into tree limbs and trunks? If someone ever did and discovered that vastly more birds die from non-human and non-human-influenced causes, would an environmentalist pay any attention?
Thus, Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb!
:P
Keep firing, assholes!!
Back when I was growing up (born in '70), cartoons were much more focused on slapstick, irony, plot, character, morals/ethics and what not. Nowadays, it's gone largely over to cheapo animation and garish colors to paint painfully obtuse pictures of someone's acid-trip techno-dreams. I think this is why a lot of folks turn to anime...some difficult-to-follow dialogues in some of it, but it was never about purely graphics pizazz (at least from my perspective).
Seems like a fair portion of the SF stuff has gone the same route, with the notable exception of writers such as Vernor Vinge. Character development and the human side of things has traditionally been much more prevalent in the Fantasy/SF genre than in pure "hard-core" SF. With the general trends toward dehumanization and loose morals these days, it really doesn't surprise me that good ol' chivalry and dragonslayers are regaining popularity.
Uh, you mean Obi Wan. Geez...this is Slashdot, for goodness sake--at least get your Star Wars facts right. ;)
...some songs just suck. *cough*Cher*cough* Some of my favorite tunes were created before the advent of the transistor, for goodness sake. :P Not to mention that I don't think an autotuner exists that could clean up death-metal vocals.
...one of the major reasons why a lot of work is outsourced to overseas locations. Many countries we do business with *cough*China*cough* are perfectly happy with killing people to keep them from saying something anti-government. It would be naive to assert that they would then be squeamish about overlooking a bit of shady business practice to undercut "correct/proper" businesses elsewhere and capture that market share.
Ya know, it really doesn't matter how clever you are if the other guy can do a more or less hands-free install and be up and running fast. So what if he isn't a linux uberg33k--if he gets his product to market quicker than you do, isn't your cleverness wasted? I'd rather have a tool that just works than a tool that required me to be clever to figure out how to optimize it.
Ya know, I see this statement all the time. If it were truly the case, you'd see these boxes all over the place as low-cost replacements for a whole host of hardware devices. The main reason you don't see that is because these cheap PCs are too slow. Average latencies in the op cycles of hardware routers are in the nanosecond range, whereas most op cycles for PCs for the same work are in the millisecond range. That doesn't bode well for scalability. Granted, for most people, the extra latency wouldn't be an issue since they don't serve millions of hits per hour (or per day, even). In companies that do, it makes a big difference.
Ya know, you don't actually have to work for people of such obvious short-sightedness. In fact, I would think that hiring practices such as this would tell you the average chances for success the company would have.
So, by and large CT/RSI is an affluent white excuse to complain about jobs we aren't "satisfied" with.
Not only is that comment blatantly racist, your entire argument is based upon the false premise that economics is a "zero-sum" system.
sophÂisÂtry
n. pl. sophÂisÂtries
The ability to post on slashdot does not a wise man make.
...how nobody complained about the fact that pre-cable TV had only three news channels to watch? (ABC/CBS/NBC) But now that companies like Clear Channel and News Corp. offer something other than mainstream left-leaning claptrap, it's now "OH NO! IT'LL BE THE END OF FREEDOM AS WE KNOW IT!" Considering how many intelligent people troll these boards, I'm surprised so many ditch said intelligence when it differs with their particular point of view. Consider that nobody says a damn thing when Ted Turner buys up another media service, but when the owner of Fox News wants to increase his holdings from 2.5% of the market to around 4% people go ballistic. Nope, no political agenda here, nosirree.
... That's what I thought.
Oh, and another thing: do you people really think the Dixie Chicks thing was started by the radio station owners? The owners didn't come up with the idea--their listening audience did...and in large enough pissed off numbers to incite a response from many radio stations. If that isn't serving the consumer, I don't know what is. When was the last time you ever heard NPR present a positive segment on tax cuts? Or welfare reform? Or limited government?
Go ahead and baa some more, sheeple.