Of course, we'd all have to look at ourselves in the mirror every now and then, but by the number of highly successful (and very rich) evangelicals floating around that must be a solvable problem.
It is solvable. Vampires don't see their reflections:-)
Also, L. Ron Hubbard has prior art (Scientology) that you'd come close to infringing - the whole "make up sh*t in the name of religion and join everyone else fleecing the flock."
The US economy is dominated by the effects of government: Regulations, restrictions, land theft and removal of land from productive use, tax magnitude and the particular things that are taxed, corrupt movement of money to inferior enterprises (Solyndra, GM, Chrysler, various banks, brokers, and insurance companies), minimum wage laws, etc.. If these things are corrected, there will be an obvious and dramatic recovery within a month.
Based on that, even my "don't expect a recover before 2018 - 2020, if then" is looking overly optimistic.
There is no way that's going to happen without at least a few states first going through bankruptcy, using a loophole in Chapter 9 to declare the state government in toto as a "government institution", and removing the debt overhead (and forcing the creditors to eat the losses).
1. You asked for an explanation about the comic.con reference made by another poster. I provided one. That you don't "get it" isn't my fault (and has nothing to do with the question you now pose).
2. News flash: Your implicit assumption in your question is wrong. American white culture also shares the low opinion of nerds and geeks, so it's not a question of "black culture" vs "white culture", but "people who bathe on a regular basis" vs "geeks who don't".
Okay, it's a bit of a stretch, but it makes the point - two different mindsets, two different sets of priorities, and it has zero to do with "race' or skin color.
Venture capitalists don't care what you smell like, because all they can smell is MONEY and blood in the water from fresh bait just begging to be eaten. They're not benign - they will do the absolute best to make sure that they come out ahead even if you fail. If you already have a revenue stream before seeking funding, they want a rider on it until their investment is paid back. They want fees for their ongoing work assisting you, a huge chunk of equity, additional chunks of free equity when they bring other investors in, and the right to cash in their equity at any time, while you can't for a minimum of 1 year after they withdraw.
VCs prefer that you're totally nerdy and geeky and have NO clue about anything outside your bubble - it's easier to take candy from a babe in the woods.
So what? The "loser nerds in the comic book store" is one of the memes from "Big Bang Theory." (and I specifically cited both Sheldon Cooper and Big Bang Theory).
You wanted an explanation for the "*Con" reference - there it is. ComicCons, FantasyCons, SciFiCons, whatever - if it's nerdy or geeky, it's got a Con somewhere for nerds and geeks to use as an excuse to go out and get drunk and meet others (whereas most people don't need an excuse).
Maybe this is about how racist the women who are stepping forward are.
So it's now racist for someone to complain about being groped? How about if we set up a "pay date" for you in some prison cell... should people ignore your complaints and label you as racist if the guy who makes you their "beotch" isn't white?
And 100% of the women who have come forward to complain about him (Herman Cain) have been white...
And Democrat.
Why should that be surprising? Republicans LOVE screwing democrats, since they believe that democrats are willing to do all those "nasty dirty things that god-fearing republicans won't do" - like thinking that maybe they would have sex with a married republican like Herman Cain.
I blame it at least in part on John Kennedy and Bill Clinton (and Hillary for not walking out). Of course, Nixon and Reagan and Bush perfected it - they didn't just screw women - they screwed the whole country.
Part of the problem is that the barriers to entry into tech are now too low... so low that there's no skill needed to get into it. Just look at all the interviews of people who are laid off who say that they'll try to make some money "doing web design" as one example. There's been a real tidal wave over the last 5 years of "computers by desperation" (though the trend really got its start back before the turn of the century).
Couple that with the "me-too-product" feeding frenzy that any idea that gets any publicity inspires, as others hope to cash in on the next big thing, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Now throw in VC terms that make vulture funds look like little angels... "for our investment, we want 50%, plus we're taking out $X per month in management costs, plus we need to see an exit strategy in place for us." This is not some made-up instance, or something new - I had the misfortune of working for a startup in 1995 that had such a deal - the VCs got their initial seed capital back (and more) just in management fees and fees for getting second-round investors in and in a royalty from all revenues, etc...
The interests of the VC are not aligned with the interests of the founders, not short-term, and certainly not long-term. They will make sure they will not lose money, no matter what. After all, it's their business.
No. Because Cain believes that a person stands on their merits
... only if they're male. And 100% of the women who have come forward to complain about him have been white... is Cain a racist sexist, like OJ Simpson?
There's a huge barrier to social media, because it has almost zero value without people to socialize with
It has almost zero value even if the whole world is using the same one. Advertisers haven't figured that out yet, but eventually they will.
What makes social networks vulnerable is advances in the same technology that created them in the first place. Once software gets to the point that you no longer need a central "provider" to create and maintain your network of contacts, "social media" will die.
And that's not just a "Good Thing" - it's something that needs to happen, because "social media" is an oxymoron.
I agree the US is dragging behind in comms, but I disagree with letting municipalities be the carrier for the last mile. That creates a completely different sent of problems since you're just making the cost a hidden cost in the form of taxes.
I might have agreed if you said let municipalities lay the fiber, and allow carriers light the fiber (and pay a lease fee to the city), at least that way you're not creating a government run monopoly over the network, that way there can be some real competition carriers.
Why? What yo propose is the worst o both worlds - the public takes any loss and risks, and private enterprise takes the profits.
The net should be a public utility, the same as the pipes that bring your water to the house. Why do you think the carriers take municipalities to court to prevent public networks? It's because they make a nice fat profit by keeping the cities out of it, and preventing them from merging voice, data, and television into one public service, at a lower cost.
IPv6 means that every device has a unique address. No more NAT, you can address your home personal multi-terabyte storage from anywhere.
For home speed, it's increasing everywhere except... wait for it... the US of A. Why? Because the telcos have no real competition. Let municipalities get into the game for all comms (tv, voice, net), and gigabit to the home becomes reasonable, because you have 1 carrier, and 1 medium.
At that point, you don't need a data center - Sun's "the network becomes the computer" becomes not just viable, but the only economic way to look at it.
"The cloud" and data centers are just another passing fad. Once the technology permits, and the lawsuits FORCE businesses to be more careful with data, forget it.
cloud isn't a bubble, it's a fundamental and lasting change in both business IT infrastructure and in consumers use of their computing devices
It's a bubble. Too much money chasing too little long-term potential. And if you thing it's a lasting change, you're blind to the first lesson of history - that the only constant is change. Within 10 years, "the cloud" will be dead.
Nobody will need it when they'll have terabytes of their own storage sitting on their own devices, accessible from anywhere. The same will go for business, as the network infrastructure improves. 15 years ago, it was impractical for most companies to self-host. Now? Anyone can for next to no cost - and the only way that hosting companies could compete was by comoditizing, which is why hosting is so cheap nowadays, compared to 15 years ago. It's now a low-margin business.
And it's going to be the same for "the cloud" - which is not a new way of computing - it's just client-server with a new name.
IPv6 is going to help kill it as a profit center, since by then your own uniquely addressable personal server will be a $200 device with 10 TB of storage and a 1gb/sec connection to the net. Need extra security? Swap backing up on your sister's equally cheap personal server. Distributed shared location services will make dns obsolete within 20 years.
First, Take out the REAL inflation numbers, and GDP was negative.
Second, the only reason that this depression isn't having the same "misery index" as the first one is because of the greater safety net, and because we caught a lucky break with the weather. Without unemployment insurance and welfare, and the dust-bowl conditions of the 30s, it would already be just as bad as the first one.
The "real" unemployment rate - when you take into account those who are heaping on debt by staying in school because they can't find a job, those who have given up, etc. (the U6 measure), and we're into the same range as the Great Depression. The real rate of unemployment in California, for example, is now 20%. Another 5% and it will be equal to the peak in 1933... and it's heading there, as cities and states struggle with their own ongoing debt crisis.
It's official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.
Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.
Half of all homes now have a mortgage that makes them unsellable - if there is equity left, it's not sufficient to cover the additional costs of the sale (real estate commission fees, etc). Strategic default is a problem, but another problem is that, without jobs (or only part-time or low-paying jobs), even people whose mortgages are now "ok" are in trouble.
The fact is that any rise in GDP is not being seen by the workers, and hasn't been for more than a decade. Ask anyone who's had to take a major pay cut, or simply can't find a job because for every opening, there are 100 or 1,000 applicants.
We've got one of those. His English is incomprehensible, his personal hygiene is non-existent and his work ethic is nil: He pawns his work off on others whenever he can and points fingers at others for his mistakes.
Management hasn't done anything, despite complaints: The stench of...body odor and (when speaking to him) halitosis is nauseating.
Social media is a bubble, same as the previous tech bubble, same as the education bubble, same as the stock bubbles, same as the group buying sites bubble, same as the "cloud" bubble. If it fails, it loses money, and if it succeeds, it quickly becomes commoditized and goes from profitable to barely breaking even. It's not like past industries where there were significant barriers of entry.
When the economy "grows" slower than the population, you're still in a recession, because each person has less money, so individual spending power is shrinking. The problem with the GDP measurement is that it fails to take into account population growth.
If the population were to shrink by 50%, and GDP to decline by 10% and incomes almost double, that would definitely NOT be a recession, despite what some would claim.
We are not in a recession - we're *only* part-way through the 2nd Great Depression, and don't expect a recovery before 2018 - 2020, if then.
Like most people who tried to make an open source play for $$$, Shuttleworth had a few "exit strategies" in mind - selling out or having a partner take a big equity stake.
At first, it was hardware manufacturers like Dell. That didn't pan out, and in the interim another potential party - HP - came in with their own product, and then also bailed. Sun, who had made significant acquisitions (StarOffice, Mysql) got swallowed by Oracle, who have their own Unbreakable Linux (rebadged RedHat). Google? Not interested.
So he shifted his attention to Amazon... and now Amazon has gone their own way as well.
So, who's left to be a potential investor/buyer for a not-so-user-friendly OS variant with a history of releases breaking critical things so he can achieve his stated goal of 200 million users by 2014?
Nobody really... especially when Ubuntu has been losing users for a year now. So it's going to be one man's hobby-horse.
It depends. If you quit because of constructive dismissal or other malfeasance on the employers' part, you can sue, and you can recover either the value of the shares or the shares themselves.
Of course the switch to Mint has been going on for some time... Ubuntu has been b0rking things with every release. But I do have one nit-pick with the story - if you go to the weekly stats, it's not just Mint that is beating Ubuntu - Mint is #1, Fedora is #2, and OpenSuse is #3.
Fedora??? #2???!!!??? The natives are REALLY restless!
And of course, with OpenSuse coming out with 12.1 on Wednesday (and 12,000 bug-fixes), and Mint also offering a Debian-based "rolling release" (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for those who want something "not Ubuntu", I don't see the downward trend for Ubuntu reversing any time soon.
You get them (or their cash equivalent) in the ensuing threat to sue.
Please RTFA - 2 employees reached settlements, and one is still working there... and now probably has even better job security because any firing would be seen as retaliation and they KNOW he'll "lawyer up."
A genius enjoys making something that looks hard easy to understand - that takes insight, even a "stroke of genius". I think what you encountered wasn't genius, but BROs (Bipedal Rectal Orifices a.k.a. walking ass-holes
Yes, but not just to dumb it down so you can have the illusion of understanding while you actually understand less than 10% of what's really going on. Sometimes the problem is really complex and just because a genius is able to work with that complexity doesn't mean it goes away. But I guess it's a really cheap shot of anti-intellectualism to put all the fault on person trying to explain it and that any failure on your part to understand is due to him not being smart enough to explain it. I just wasn't aware it was a popular opinion here on slashdot.
No, it's reality. Most real geniuses enjoy teaching others, and not "dumbing it down" so that that people just learn a selection of factoids by rote.
Teaching, in that sense, is really all about communications - being able to both LISTEN to what the other party is having a problem with, and then being able to phrase the proper information in response. It's about providing useful context, working examples, "showing the steps" to help explain HOW what is now obvious first became obvious, and trying more than one way.
It's not anti-intellectualism to say that most people are poor communicators, any more than it's anti-intellectualism to deride teachers who think that "teaching to the test" is really teaching. Or parents who think that it's only the teachers job to teach, or only the teachers fault if their kids don't learn.
Sure, some problems are complex, and it might take a genius to understand it. But it might also take a *real* genius to be able to explain it in terms that a non-genius can follow, and build upon. After all, if you can't explain it, distill it, properly manage and master the complexity, are you sure your own understanding isn't flawed in some way?
(and why would you take my point that a lot of soi-disant "geniuses" are walking a**-holes as "anti-intellectualism" anyway - do you have something against reality? Or perhaps it hit too close to home?)
Except that they're reneging on the original deal. That's why they had to settle with two of the people who said "make me a better offer" (yes, I actually RTFA).
One is no longer working there, the other one still is... and Zynga was probably told "... and if you fire them now, be ready to have an a**-reaming in court."
If you quit, you can't collect unemployment. If you refuse, then they have to decide to fire you... and either way, you've still go the shares.
Also, this could be interpreted as constructive dismissal, in which case you can tear up that non-compete you signed, since they have broken the terms first.
Slashdot Mirror
It is solvable. Vampires don't see their reflections :-)
Also, L. Ron Hubbard has prior art (Scientology) that you'd come close to infringing - the whole "make up sh*t in the name of religion and join everyone else fleecing the flock."
Based on that, even my "don't expect a recover before 2018 - 2020, if then" is looking overly optimistic.
There is no way that's going to happen without at least a few states first going through bankruptcy, using a loophole in Chapter 9 to declare the state government in toto as a "government institution", and removing the debt overhead (and forcing the creditors to eat the losses).
1. You asked for an explanation about the comic.con reference made by another poster. I provided one. That you don't "get it" isn't my fault (and has nothing to do with the question you now pose).
2. News flash: Your implicit assumption in your question is wrong. American white culture also shares the low opinion of nerds and geeks, so it's not a question of "black culture" vs "white culture", but "people who bathe on a regular basis" vs "geeks who don't".
Okay, it's a bit of a stretch, but it makes the point - two different mindsets, two different sets of priorities, and it has zero to do with "race' or skin color.
Venture capitalists don't care what you smell like, because all they can smell is MONEY and blood in the water from fresh bait just begging to be eaten. They're not benign - they will do the absolute best to make sure that they come out ahead even if you fail. If you already have a revenue stream before seeking funding, they want a rider on it until their investment is paid back. They want fees for their ongoing work assisting you, a huge chunk of equity, additional chunks of free equity when they bring other investors in, and the right to cash in their equity at any time, while you can't for a minimum of 1 year after they withdraw.
VCs prefer that you're totally nerdy and geeky and have NO clue about anything outside your bubble - it's easier to take candy from a babe in the woods.
You wanted an explanation for the "*Con" reference - there it is. ComicCons, FantasyCons, SciFiCons, whatever - if it's nerdy or geeky, it's got a Con somewhere for nerds and geeks to use as an excuse to go out and get drunk and meet others (whereas most people don't need an excuse).
So it's now racist for someone to complain about being groped? How about if we set up a "pay date" for you in some prison cell ... should people ignore your complaints and label you as racist if the guy who makes you their "beotch" isn't white?
Why should that be surprising? Republicans LOVE screwing democrats, since they believe that democrats are willing to do all those "nasty dirty things that god-fearing republicans won't do" - like thinking that maybe they would have sex with a married republican like Herman Cain.
I blame it at least in part on John Kennedy and Bill Clinton (and Hillary for not walking out). Of course, Nixon and Reagan and Bush perfected it - they didn't just screw women - they screwed the whole country.
Part of the problem is that the barriers to entry into tech are now too low ... so low that there's no skill needed to get into it. Just look at all the interviews of people who are laid off who say that they'll try to make some money "doing web design" as one example. There's been a real tidal wave over the last 5 years of "computers by desperation" (though the trend really got its start back before the turn of the century).
Couple that with the "me-too-product" feeding frenzy that any idea that gets any publicity inspires, as others hope to cash in on the next big thing, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Now throw in VC terms that make vulture funds look like little angels ... "for our investment, we want 50%, plus we're taking out $X per month in management costs, plus we need to see an exit strategy in place for us." This is not some made-up instance, or something new - I had the misfortune of working for a startup in 1995 that had such a deal - the VCs got their initial seed capital back (and more) just in management fees and fees for getting second-round investors in and in a royalty from all revenues, etc ...
The interests of the VC are not aligned with the interests of the founders, not short-term, and certainly not long-term. They will make sure they will not lose money, no matter what. After all, it's their business.
Go watch Big Bang Theory. If you identify with Sheldon Cooper, you're incapable of understanding. Go back to hanging out at the comic book store.
It has almost zero value even if the whole world is using the same one. Advertisers haven't figured that out yet, but eventually they will.
What makes social networks vulnerable is advances in the same technology that created them in the first place. Once software gets to the point that you no longer need a central "provider" to create and maintain your network of contacts, "social media" will die.
And that's not just a "Good Thing" - it's something that needs to happen, because "social media" is an oxymoron.
Why? What yo propose is the worst o both worlds - the public takes any loss and risks, and private enterprise takes the profits.
The net should be a public utility, the same as the pipes that bring your water to the house. Why do you think the carriers take municipalities to court to prevent public networks? It's because they make a nice fat profit by keeping the cities out of it, and preventing them from merging voice, data, and television into one public service, at a lower cost.
I never said they were connected.
IPv6 means that every device has a unique address. No more NAT, you can address your home personal multi-terabyte storage from anywhere.
For home speed, it's increasing everywhere except ... wait for it ... the US of A. Why? Because the telcos have no real competition. Let municipalities get into the game for all comms (tv, voice, net), and gigabit to the home becomes reasonable, because you have 1 carrier, and 1 medium.
At that point, you don't need a data center - Sun's "the network becomes the computer" becomes not just viable, but the only economic way to look at it.
"The cloud" and data centers are just another passing fad. Once the technology permits, and the lawsuits FORCE businesses to be more careful with data, forget it.
It's a bubble. Too much money chasing too little long-term potential. And if you thing it's a lasting change, you're blind to the first lesson of history - that the only constant is change. Within 10 years, "the cloud" will be dead.
Nobody will need it when they'll have terabytes of their own storage sitting on their own devices, accessible from anywhere. The same will go for business, as the network infrastructure improves. 15 years ago, it was impractical for most companies to self-host. Now? Anyone can for next to no cost - and the only way that hosting companies could compete was by comoditizing, which is why hosting is so cheap nowadays, compared to 15 years ago. It's now a low-margin business.
And it's going to be the same for "the cloud" - which is not a new way of computing - it's just client-server with a new name.
IPv6 is going to help kill it as a profit center, since by then your own uniquely addressable personal server will be a $200 device with 10 TB of storage and a 1gb/sec connection to the net. Need extra security? Swap backing up on your sister's equally cheap personal server. Distributed shared location services will make dns obsolete within 20 years.
First, Take out the REAL inflation numbers, and GDP was negative.
Second, the only reason that this depression isn't having the same "misery index" as the first one is because of the greater safety net, and because we caught a lucky break with the weather. Without unemployment insurance and welfare, and the dust-bowl conditions of the 30s, it would already be just as bad as the first one.
The "real" unemployment rate - when you take into account those who are heaping on debt by staying in school because they can't find a job, those who have given up, etc. (the U6 measure), and we're into the same range as the Great Depression. The real rate of unemployment in California, for example, is now 20%. Another 5% and it will be equal to the peak in 1933 ... and it's heading there, as cities and states struggle with their own ongoing debt crisis.
There's almost 50 million people on food stamps. And housing is now already officially worse than the great depression (and it's going to get wors)
Half of all homes now have a mortgage that makes them unsellable - if there is equity left, it's not sufficient to cover the additional costs of the sale (real estate commission fees, etc). Strategic default is a problem, but another problem is that, without jobs (or only part-time or low-paying jobs), even people whose mortgages are now "ok" are in trouble.
The fact is that any rise in GDP is not being seen by the workers, and hasn't been for more than a decade. Ask anyone who's had to take a major pay cut, or simply can't find a job because for every opening, there are 100 or 1,000 applicants.
You work with RMS?
Social media is a bubble, same as the previous tech bubble, same as the education bubble, same as the stock bubbles, same as the group buying sites bubble, same as the "cloud" bubble. If it fails, it loses money, and if it succeeds, it quickly becomes commoditized and goes from profitable to barely breaking even. It's not like past industries where there were significant barriers of entry.
When the economy "grows" slower than the population, you're still in a recession, because each person has less money, so individual spending power is shrinking. The problem with the GDP measurement is that it fails to take into account population growth.
If the population were to shrink by 50%, and GDP to decline by 10% and incomes almost double, that would definitely NOT be a recession, despite what some would claim.
We are not in a recession - we're *only* part-way through the 2nd Great Depression, and don't expect a recovery before 2018 - 2020, if then.
I'm thinking that Ubuntu will be gone by 2015.
Like most people who tried to make an open source play for $$$, Shuttleworth had a few "exit strategies" in mind - selling out or having a partner take a big equity stake.
At first, it was hardware manufacturers like Dell. That didn't pan out, and in the interim another potential party - HP - came in with their own product, and then also bailed. Sun, who had made significant acquisitions (StarOffice, Mysql) got swallowed by Oracle, who have their own Unbreakable Linux (rebadged RedHat). Google? Not interested.
So he shifted his attention to Amazon ... and now Amazon has gone their own way as well.
So, who's left to be a potential investor/buyer for a not-so-user-friendly OS variant with a history of releases breaking critical things so he can achieve his stated goal of 200 million users by 2014?
Nobody really ... especially when Ubuntu has been losing users for a year now. So it's going to be one man's hobby-horse.
It depends. If you quit because of constructive dismissal or other malfeasance on the employers' part, you can sue, and you can recover either the value of the shares or the shares themselves.
Fedora??? #2???!!!??? The natives are REALLY restless!
And of course, with OpenSuse coming out with 12.1 on Wednesday (and 12,000 bug-fixes), and Mint also offering a Debian-based "rolling release" (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for those who want something "not Ubuntu", I don't see the downward trend for Ubuntu reversing any time soon.
Please RTFA - 2 employees reached settlements, and one is still working there ... and now probably has even better job security because any firing would be seen as retaliation and they KNOW he'll "lawyer up."
No, it's reality. Most real geniuses enjoy teaching others, and not "dumbing it down" so that that people just learn a selection of factoids by rote.
Teaching, in that sense, is really all about communications - being able to both LISTEN to what the other party is having a problem with, and then being able to phrase the proper information in response. It's about providing useful context, working examples, "showing the steps" to help explain HOW what is now obvious first became obvious, and trying more than one way.
It's not anti-intellectualism to say that most people are poor communicators, any more than it's anti-intellectualism to deride teachers who think that "teaching to the test" is really teaching. Or parents who think that it's only the teachers job to teach, or only the teachers fault if their kids don't learn.
Sure, some problems are complex, and it might take a genius to understand it. But it might also take a *real* genius to be able to explain it in terms that a non-genius can follow, and build upon. After all, if you can't explain it, distill it, properly manage and master the complexity, are you sure your own understanding isn't flawed in some way?
(and why would you take my point that a lot of soi-disant "geniuses" are walking a**-holes as "anti-intellectualism" anyway - do you have something against reality? Or perhaps it hit too close to home?)
One is no longer working there, the other one still is ... and Zynga was probably told "... and if you fire them now, be ready to have an a**-reaming in court."
You won't get any argument from me. That's the sort of recycling that helps recycle people :-)
If you quit, you can't collect unemployment. If you refuse, then they have to decide to fire you ... and either way, you've still go the shares.
Also, this could be interpreted as constructive dismissal, in which case you can tear up that non-compete you signed, since they have broken the terms first.