Why do you think doctors write so messy in the first place? Its so you can't catch the spelling mistakes.
Ask your local pharmacist how many times they've had to either:
quiz the patient to figure out what the prescription (probably) is
call the doctor's office to ask
take a quick straw poll with the other pharmacists ("can you read this?")
edit the prescription (yes, Virginia, it DOES happen when its always the same doctor, and he's had a history of scribbles and goofs and gets all pissy ad defensive and a PITA when he's called to confirm that he really wrote the wrong thing. It happens. People are human, under intense pressure, and rushed. The pharmacist is a backstop to catch bad calls/interactions/abuses/etc).
One doesn't have a right to punch others, or to steal from them--or to hire thugs to steal from them so one can buy Prozac.
... who said anything about having a right to do any of those things?
You're confusing the right to basic health care services with "pharmacare" plans - state-run prescripton drug plans.
Now if you were trying to argue that nobody has the right to tax you to pay for someone else's health care plan, I'd make the argument of enlightened self-interest;
single-payer plans are cheaper to run, so overall health costs go down - that includes YOUR health costs
costs in other parts of the system go down, as people aren't forced onto the street, onto welfare roles, etc., because of bankruptcy by medical bills. Remember, 75.5% of all the people who went bankrupt because of medical bills had insurance, and half of all bankruptcies involve medical costs.
by spreading the "risk pool" to cover everyone, the state-run system has a better funding base than it currently does, where it has to cover those who use state plans as a plan of last resort
state-run plans are better able to look at the true cost/benefit trade-off of long-term prevention programs, and better positioned to implement them to the general populace. HMOs have no incentive to help improve the health of the general population, because that would mean spending their money to help competitors, who would not have similar expenses, and thus enjoy a higher profit margin
no more situations like GM, where they traded off wage concessions for future health-care benefits, and are probably going to default on those, so the taxpayer ends up on the hook anyway. Net result is a $100 Billion subsidy to GM over the last 3 decades.
Someone was kind enough to forward a copy of the video to me, and its almost 100% certain its a fake. A VERY GOOD (or VERY BAD) fake, but a fake. There wre at least two kittens used. The kitten in the opening sequence is already dead, the head doesn't match up to the body in the sequence where they animate the front paws using a mask and shots from a second cat, there are two "mis-steps" where the kitten supposedly meows in pain even though the heel missed all body parts, and if you take the time to look you'll notice something missing in one shot - it took me 6 viewings to catch it - see if you can find it, they could have stepped 10 feet to the side and had much better lighting (but that would have made the use of props and a mask during editing harder to hide), artifacts that aren't from the video compression process, one section where a vertical stripe of pixels is just plain missing (bad frame-by-frame cut-n-paste?) etc. Still, even crushing a dead kitten underfoot is disgusting enough.
I'm sure that there are a bunch of slashdotters who can do better. And no, this is not a challenge. That's for Farkers:-)
Its like those "Evil Twin" videos that had a cat decapitated by a sun roof... just sicker.
Now, having said that, it is still VERY disturbing. I woke up this morning and it still bothered me.
Could it happen? Sure - people are sick. Look at what passes for entertainment nowadays. But part of the joy that people get out of doing fake stuff is the knowledge that they've pulled one over. For them, its more of a "high" than if they had done it for real.
Hey, look on the bright side - we're overdue for another asteroid strike, and maybe some other, more worthy, creature will take our place. Maybe descendants of cats (though I would prefer dogs or bears:-)
All through this thread everyone is saying "Blu-Ray" sounds cool? Cool? It sounds like slang for the latest venerial disease, or something a cartoon character would use to kill an enemy on Saturday morning.
Easy prediction here - HD-DVD wins:
cheaper
familiar name
perception that "Sony TV stuff is always overpriced"
Blu-Ray. As a brand name for a new flavour of Jello or Kool-aid for kids, maybe. Electronics? They might as well have calle d it Blub-Ray.
Now, I don't really think Americans are happy with how things are, but if they're not willing to get involved to change things, then they deserve what they get.
This is true. But what would a successful impeachment bring? Dick Cheney as president. Not a pretty picture, either.
The saddest part of all this is that if anyone had written even half of what the White House does as a plot line a decade ago, it would have been rejected as way too far beyond belief to even be considered as satire or parody, never mind "serious" fiction. Picture this plotline:
A debt of 8.3 trillion dollars? After the budget was balanced at 5 trillion of debt? Inconceivable, after 2 back-to-back federal budget surpluses (1998 and 1999) and all the work to get to it, and record low interest rates? Not likely at all...
Another Vietnam-style debacle, this time in Iraq? And rumblings about possible "actions" against Iran, and then Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
Americans sitting there and taking it while the government illegally wiretaps its people? After what happened to the last president that wiretapped just a few of his opponents?
The whole "My Pet Goat" thing? Come on, do you think people are going to buy a president who acts like a burned-out cokehead?
A massive hurricane devastates a major city, killing over 1,600 people (and another 705 still unaccounted for - maybe the crocs got them or their bodies were washed out to sea), people begging for help on TV, and only 4 days after the president declares a state of emergency (27th of august, 2 days before landfall) does the president go "Gee, maybe I should cut my vacation short..."
"Intelligent Design" as a political plank?
You'd have had to call it "Dumb and Dumber Go To Washington."
I think it's the fault of O.J. Simpson and the Clintons. O.J's slow-mo "chase" conditioned people to accept even the most "theatre of the absurd" as reality, and Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" - because sex somehow or other doesn't include a blow job if you're in Washington - really lowered people's expectations for what to expect in terms of honesty and integrity from a president.
I never used the BASIC compiler for the PC but I think it was supposed to be pretty cool. Again it worked as promised. Of course, it was cloned from an IBM product, but then what's new?
If you're thinking of gw-basic, that's an interpreter, not a compiler. Borland had a basic compiler - Turbo Basic. Made a stand-alone exe, which was pretty cool at the time.
Keeping people from looking at alternatives in one field helps keep them from looking at alternatives in other fields, like their biggest cash cow - the office suite.
Now that the browser isn't sufficient to keep people locked in (and now that browser-based apps are a threat to their underlying platofrm monopoly), they wish it would die, so they can lock people in with their latest strategy - dot.net. That's why, originally, there wasn't going to be an IE7.
You just compared America with China in terms of censorship?
Sir, you are clearly blinded by hatred.
Hatred? Of who? I've dealt with both Americans and Mainland Chinese, and I've gotten along great with both. Can you say the same?
I'm not looking at it in absolute terms, but in overall trends. China has moved to a more market-demand-oriented economy and has started to allow foreign investment and joint partnerships. From a westerner's point of view, these are "good things." Contrast this with the increasing calls in the US for protectionism, and more, not less, domestic spying.
Yes, China is having problems grappling with the Internet. Last I looked, it was the same story with every other country on the planet, including the USofA. Canada bans hate speech on the net. Germany bans nazi memorabilia. France bans the sale of knock-offs. The **AAs want to ban file sharing world-wide, and Microsoft wants to p0wn your file formats for eternity and restrict your right to produce benchmarks critical of their product as part of their licenses.
Besides, ff they're so evil, why are Americans supporting China? Last year's trade deficit with China was $700 for every man, woman and child in the USofA. This years figures (January/February) aren't going to be any better. Remember, if WalMart were a country, it would be the 8th-largest in the world in terms of trade, and a LOT of that is with China.
... but at least you could still eat a bowl of chili at Wendy's and thumb a ride afterwards:-)
Q.How was the chili today?
A. I'd give it one thumb up - the same it gave me.
I lived next to a rep from mainland China for a year. Quiet guy, friendly enough. He was here to sell industrial gloves, etc. I've dealt with other people there, and the one thing that has struck me the most is their earnestnest. Something we seem to have less and less of here.
Here's the thing - all governments have their dirty little secrets. Like, when are we going to be allowed to see ALL the evidence as to who killed John Kennedy?
Every elected president has had the power to release everything. Not one has. Why not?
Its been more than 40 years... why not put the conspiracy theorists to pasture by opening up all the evidence? Or is the truth as bad as, or worse than, the theories?
Information is neutral - it doesn't "want to be free". Its what we do with it that counts. China openly censors the Internet. The US covertly (okay, their cover was blown recently) spies on your net usage. Both are threats to freedom, just in different ways. As to which is worse - to openly suppress dissident voices, or covertly manipulate the opposition by blackmail into publicly supporting your side, is irrelevent to the victim.
Programs such as TIA (Total Information Awareness) are more insidious, because they come with the implied "you suldn't be worried if you have nothig to hide" cloak of "reasonableness" that almost makes sense, and doesn't set off the bullshit detectors of a lot of people.
While snopes says they haven't determined the validity, you can be assured the pictures are faked.
Open up a copy in GIMP and take a close look. Everything up to picture 8 is posed in such a way as to make it look like something's happening (a la the bonzai kittens) but there's no harm whatsoever.
Picture 8 is an obvious fake.
Pictures 9 and 10 (which are the same picture), and picture 11, are inconsistent with picture 8, as well as the previous set of pictures. Picture 11 is such a bad cut/paste job that you don't even have to zoom in to see it for what it is.
This reminds me of the pps that one of my kids forwarded to me that allegedly showed an Iraqi kid having his arm run over by a truck as punishment for stealing a loaf of bread. Spend a few minutes looking closely at the pictures after reading how magicians saw women in half and you'll know what to look for. Another fake, but this time by someone trying to spread disinformation.
Maybe we could include it in a copy of "My Pet Goat 2: Goat Reloaded" or something.
Or, now that there are rumours of at least one of his old habits haunting him again, lay the newspaper along the white line down the middle of the street ("never met a white line he didn't like") or in the same brown paper bag as the bottle of Jack, to get his attention?
Seriously, I don't know how you're all going to survive the next 2-1/2 years.
Ha ha. Come on, if you're going to troll, at least put some thought into it. Be a bit original. You put the whole Troll Tuesday concept to shame.
One country is making progress, but not as fast as some would like. The other is turning back the clock. Pointing out that a story of the US making such a statement would be believable in NO way condones wrongs by either side.
Besides, I think BadAnalogyGuy has prior art on your posting style:-)
Now, if I had wanted to do some serious trolling, I would have pointed out that most western countries, with the notable exception of the US, consider state-provided basic health care a universal human right. Funny how China shares this value, but in the US, "no money, no candy-striper."
Medical problems are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in the US, when both direct http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/ hlthaff.w5.63/DC1 and indirect effects are factored in. And its not people who are without coverage - " 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness". - think of that - more than 3/4 of those who went bankrupt because of medical bills had insurance.
What a scam.
Talk about preying on the sick and the weak - look at your local politician, and how much they're beholden to the HMOs rather than to the voters.
So, does the person who has to go bankrupt because of medical bills get to enjoy any of the benefits of capitalism, like accumulation of private property and wealth? Nope - the trustee gets to hand over everything to the creditors, with a few basic exemptions, and even this isn't enough to keep many people off the streets or bunking at a relatives.
Some simple math - " 1.9-2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy". Multiply this by an average life expectancy of 72 years, and you've got 144 million people who will affected by a medical bankruptcy over the course of their lifetime.
That's half your population who would be better off under a "communist, socialist" system that other countries, such as that "notorious socialist communist pinko terr'rist havens" (such as Canada) have. Talk about a class structure with haves and have-nots!
Bankruptcy Rates in the Canada and the US - The huge disparity is because of the health care system.
The US bankruptcy rate (6.9 per thousand) for the year 2004 is more than twice as high as the Canadian bankruptcy rate (2.6 per thousand). The main reason for the huge disparity in bankruptcy rates in Canada and the US is because of the different health care systems in the two countries.
Canada has universal health care for all citizens paid for out of taxes. The US system is based on private enterprise mainly provided by insurance companies.
A Harvard Study reported that half of US bankruptcies were caused by medical Bills (MSNBC) & (ABC News). The study was published online in February of 2005 by Health Affairs. The Harvard study concluded that illness and medical bills caused half (50.4 percent) of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001. The study estimates that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans annually -- counting debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children.
Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work -- losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most. Families in bankruptcy suffered many privations -- 30 percent had a utility cut off and 61 percent went without needed medi
At the same time as the Web develops quickly, certain sites are transmitting unhealthy news... and uncivilized voice services, including pornographic content that can be harmful to society,
Sounds more like something Alberto Gonzales and the Bush White House would say.
The sad part is, while I'm writing this "tongue-in-cheek", if it were to be a headline in tomorrow's paper, nobody would be surprised.
... and if some idiot left it on the shopping channel or some other hour-long "info-mertial" pops up, you're fuxored. And you won't be able to change channels when its finished, because they'll be running... commercials!!!!!
The planners for a project must get the plans/decisions and thinking done about a project well in advance of the aviliability of the team. Otherwise the edgy team will be ready, and no-one will be sure whats in it.
Actually, in this case, no.
If you read the announcement, you'll see that, as it says:
"this release is entirely up the to development
team to envision and implement.,,,
So that should give us a nice big bump in infrastructure and bling."
- the devs are being given a free hand to stick whatever new toys they want in it.
Bling? Bling???
They should call it "Ubuntu - the Ghetto Gnu release"... for all of us who don't want to be hangin' in Gate's crib.
It was expected 15 years ago that people would show a bit of initiative and learn a few things, poke around any menus, keyboard templates, etc., to get better at what they did. Nowadays, if they don't already know the answer, a lot of them whine that "its too complicated."
Cracking a book for 15 minutes? You can't PAY them to. You have to pay someone else to spoon-feed it to them. Its like people get out of school and say "well, thats it for me."
Not all manuals come with products. I've written a few commercial manuals for other companies, and they were never shipped with product - they were used to help explain the product to sales reps, to marketers, investors, and potential customers.
A copy would get shipped with the product as well, but that use was ultimately incidental.
But I know what you mean, "Read the F*cking Manual" does come off as arrogant and condescending. But, on the other hand, there were a few problems:
He was asking the wrong forum. (obviously, from the response he got:-)
He didn't try mousing through the menus on his linux box, or he would have come across an app that would let him manage his daemons by going clicky-clicky instead of editing his rc.d scripts or typeing apache2ctl start or httpd start (depending on distro).
These are all obvious steps that I would expect someone who claims to have had years of IT experience and who wants to manage servers to take before imposing on someone else.
Now if a complete n00b had said it, I would have just given them the shell command, and a link for further reading, figuring they're just starting out. But "years of IT experience" and not showing enough initiative to even bother to look? The person in question shouldn't be allowed near a server. They've already shown they lack the most basic problem-solving skills, as well as no professional pride whatsoever, which would have motivated them to at least try to learn a bit more about what they're working with.
I'd rather work with people who admit they don't have a clue, but are curious and motivated to learn. At least with them, there's hope for progress. But that "years of IT experience" person really ought to learn how to RTFM, or google, or at least first explore the programs already staring him in the face under the "system" and "utilities" menus if they aren't ready to make the move from "mousey-mousey"...
Its part of the general dumbing down of the industry. For example, 15 years ago, secretaries were more efficient with a copy of wordperfect 5.1 for DOS on an old 286 with 2 megs of ram than they are today with, literally, 100 times more computing power. 10,000 percent increase in resources in cpu (20 mhz to 2 ghz), 25,000 percent increase in ram, (2 meg to 512 meg), 625,000 percent increase in disk storage (40 meg to 250 gig), and they take longer to produce a letter than they did on that old clunker. And ask them to find it a week later? Ha!
I think it would be much more interesting to try to feed a signal back into their system. Like one of my friends did when he was renting a condo in a large complex - every few Saturdays, he'd pop a porn into his vcr and feed it into the cable system on channel 3 - which all the kids were watching, because it was the local Saturday morning cartoons channel.
How does one channel surf while watching a time shifted program?
Just hit the TV remote to switch video sources. Mine lets me quickly cycle between the main antenna (yes, I use an antenna - some tech just never dies:-), aux1 (dvd) and aux2 (vcr/pc-out/whatever) by hitting the same button.
I've noticed that with some of my friends dvd players (they should have bought the off-brand one I recommended instead of the name brand. Half price, region free, plays every format under the sun, etc.).
My solution to that is to turn it on, and go make popcorn.
I'll watch a commercial if its funny, if its interesting, if its something I'm looking for. Why force me to watch something I'm NOT interested in right now - I'm not your target market at this time, and all you're doing is creating bad vibes so that when I AM in the market, you've already p*ssed me off.
It's the same with banner ads on the net. Show me something I'm interested in.
It doens't start off impolite, but when the same person comes back 20 times with the exact same question, its time to tell them to FOAD - and this applies equally to Windows users.
Agreed that the questions in the article didn't merit an RTFM respomnse. If someone had asked me which desktop I prefered, I'd answer "It depends", and say why - I wouldn't say "go back to Windows". Ditto for the database question. Ditto for the distro question.
However, for the "hwo do I start a daemon question" from someone who claims to have been in the I.T. industry for years, etc... I would say "Look, you're just getting into Linux administration... you really should pick up 'Linux in a Nutshell' and read it first. You may not understand it all when you read it, but after, when you ask a question, you'll have the context so that my answer will make sense. It shouldn't take more than an afternoon to skim over the basic commands. You'll save yourself a LOT of time."
so, yes, if someone is going to be administering servers and has to ask how to start a daemon, they are clearly out of their depth and need to crack a book, so that they can at least get enough of the basics to do some simple administration. In that case, RTFM isn't just a valid response - its the safest for everyone.
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Why do you think doctors write so messy in the first place? Its so you can't catch the spelling mistakes.
Ask your local pharmacist how many times they've had to either:
You're confusing the right to basic health care services with "pharmacare" plans - state-run prescripton drug plans.
Now if you were trying to argue that nobody has the right to tax you to pay for someone else's health care plan, I'd make the argument of enlightened self-interest;
Someone was kind enough to forward a copy of the video to me, and its almost 100% certain its a fake. A VERY GOOD (or VERY BAD) fake, but a fake. There wre at least two kittens used. The kitten in the opening sequence is already dead, the head doesn't match up to the body in the sequence where they animate the front paws using a mask and shots from a second cat, there are two "mis-steps" where the kitten supposedly meows in pain even though the heel missed all body parts, and if you take the time to look you'll notice something missing in one shot - it took me 6 viewings to catch it - see if you can find it, they could have stepped 10 feet to the side and had much better lighting (but that would have made the use of props and a mask during editing harder to hide), artifacts that aren't from the video compression process, one section where a vertical stripe of pixels is just plain missing (bad frame-by-frame cut-n-paste?) etc. Still, even crushing a dead kitten underfoot is disgusting enough.
I'm sure that there are a bunch of slashdotters who can do better. And no, this is not a challenge. That's for Farkers :-)
Its like those "Evil Twin" videos that had a cat decapitated by a sun roof ... just sicker.
Now, having said that, it is still VERY disturbing. I woke up this morning and it still bothered me.
Could it happen? Sure - people are sick. Look at what passes for entertainment nowadays. But part of the joy that people get out of doing fake stuff is the knowledge that they've pulled one over. For them, its more of a "high" than if they had done it for real.
Hey, look on the bright side - we're overdue for another asteroid strike, and maybe some other, more worthy, creature will take our place. Maybe descendants of cats (though I would prefer dogs or bears :-)
Easy prediction here - HD-DVD wins:
- cheaper
- familiar name
- perception that "Sony TV stuff is always overpriced"
Blu-Ray. As a brand name for a new flavour of Jello or Kool-aid for kids, maybe. Electronics? They might as well have calle d it Blub-Ray.VHS beat Beta because it was cheaper, even though it was the better product.
A Mac is better, but people still by clones because they're cheaper.
People vote with their wallets. WalMart understands this,
I know what you mean about the "good old days" :-)
Interesting point. I've never known anyone who actually used the QuickBasic compiler. iirc, Borland was cheaper, easier, and faster.
The saddest part of all this is that if anyone had written even half of what the White House does as a plot line a decade ago, it would have been rejected as way too far beyond belief to even be considered as satire or parody, never mind "serious" fiction. Picture this plotline:
You'd have had to call it "Dumb and Dumber Go To Washington."
I think it's the fault of O.J. Simpson and the Clintons. O.J's slow-mo "chase" conditioned people to accept even the most "theatre of the absurd" as reality, and Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" - because sex somehow or other doesn't include a blow job if you're in Washington - really lowered people's expectations for what to expect in terms of honesty and integrity from a president.
If you're thinking of gw-basic, that's an interpreter, not a compiler. Borland had a basic compiler - Turbo Basic. Made a stand-alone exe, which was pretty cool at the time.
The profit there was HUGE. It still is.
Billions? Easily.
Keeping people from looking at alternatives in one field helps keep them from looking at alternatives in other fields, like their biggest cash cow - the office suite.
Now that the browser isn't sufficient to keep people locked in (and now that browser-based apps are a threat to their underlying platofrm monopoly), they wish it would die, so they can lock people in with their latest strategy - dot.net. That's why, originally, there wasn't going to be an IE7.
Hatred? Of who? I've dealt with both Americans and Mainland Chinese, and I've gotten along great with both. Can you say the same?
I'm not looking at it in absolute terms, but in overall trends. China has moved to a more market-demand-oriented economy and has started to allow foreign investment and joint partnerships. From a westerner's point of view, these are "good things." Contrast this with the increasing calls in the US for protectionism, and more, not less, domestic spying.
Yes, China is having problems grappling with the Internet. Last I looked, it was the same story with every other country on the planet, including the USofA. Canada bans hate speech on the net. Germany bans nazi memorabilia. France bans the sale of knock-offs. The **AAs want to ban file sharing world-wide, and Microsoft wants to p0wn your file formats for eternity and restrict your right to produce benchmarks critical of their product as part of their licenses.
Besides, ff they're so evil, why are Americans supporting China? Last year's trade deficit with China was $700 for every man, woman and child in the USofA. This years figures (January/February) aren't going to be any better. Remember, if WalMart were a country, it would be the 8th-largest in the world in terms of trade, and a LOT of that is with China.
Q.How was the chili today?
A. I'd give it one thumb up - the same it gave me.
I lived next to a rep from mainland China for a year. Quiet guy, friendly enough. He was here to sell industrial gloves, etc. I've dealt with other people there, and the one thing that has struck me the most is their earnestnest. Something we seem to have less and less of here.
Here's the thing - all governments have their dirty little secrets. Like, when are we going to be allowed to see ALL the evidence as to who killed John Kennedy?
Every elected president has had the power to release everything. Not one has. Why not?
Its been more than 40 years ... why not put the conspiracy theorists to pasture by opening up all the evidence? Or is the truth as bad as, or worse than, the theories?
Information is neutral - it doesn't "want to be free". Its what we do with it that counts. China openly censors the Internet. The US covertly (okay, their cover was blown recently) spies on your net usage. Both are threats to freedom, just in different ways. As to which is worse - to openly suppress dissident voices, or covertly manipulate the opposition by blackmail into publicly supporting your side, is irrelevent to the victim.
Programs such as TIA (Total Information Awareness) are more insidious, because they come with the implied "you suldn't be worried if you have nothig to hide" cloak of "reasonableness" that almost makes sense, and doesn't set off the bullshit detectors of a lot of people.
Open up a copy in GIMP and take a close look. Everything up to picture 8 is posed in such a way as to make it look like something's happening (a la the bonzai kittens) but there's no harm whatsoever.
Picture 8 is an obvious fake.
Pictures 9 and 10 (which are the same picture), and picture 11, are inconsistent with picture 8, as well as the previous set of pictures. Picture 11 is such a bad cut/paste job that you don't even have to zoom in to see it for what it is.
This reminds me of the pps that one of my kids forwarded to me that allegedly showed an Iraqi kid having his arm run over by a truck as punishment for stealing a loaf of bread. Spend a few minutes looking closely at the pictures after reading how magicians saw women in half and you'll know what to look for. Another fake, but this time by someone trying to spread disinformation.
Maybe we could include it in a copy of "My Pet Goat 2: Goat Reloaded" or something.
Or, now that there are rumours of at least one of his old habits haunting him again, lay the newspaper along the white line down the middle of the street ("never met a white line he didn't like") or in the same brown paper bag as the bottle of Jack, to get his attention?
Seriously, I don't know how you're all going to survive the next 2-1/2 years.
One country is making progress, but not as fast as some would like. The other is turning back the clock. Pointing out that a story of the US making such a statement would be believable in NO way condones wrongs by either side.
Besides, I think BadAnalogyGuy has prior art on your posting style :-)
Now, if I had wanted to do some serious trolling, I would have pointed out that most western countries, with the notable exception of the US, consider state-provided basic health care a universal human right. Funny how China shares this value, but in the US, "no money, no candy-striper."
Medical problems are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in the US, when both direct http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/ hlthaff.w5.63/DC1 and indirect effects are factored in. And its not people who are without coverage - " 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness". - think of that - more than 3/4 of those who went bankrupt because of medical bills had insurance.
What a scam.
Talk about preying on the sick and the weak - look at your local politician, and how much they're beholden to the HMOs rather than to the voters.
So, does the person who has to go bankrupt because of medical bills get to enjoy any of the benefits of capitalism, like accumulation of private property and wealth? Nope - the trustee gets to hand over everything to the creditors, with a few basic exemptions, and even this isn't enough to keep many people off the streets or bunking at a relatives.
Some simple math - " 1.9-2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy". Multiply this by an average life expectancy of 72 years, and you've got 144 million people who will affected by a medical bankruptcy over the course of their lifetime.
That's half your population who would be better off under a "communist, socialist" system that other countries, such as that "notorious socialist communist pinko terr'rist havens" (such as Canada) have. Talk about a class structure with haves and have-nots!
Food for thought: http://www.bankruptcycanada.com/blog/canadian-and- us-bankruptcy-rates/
Sounds more like something Alberto Gonzales and the Bush White House would say.
The sad part is, while I'm writing this "tongue-in-cheek", if it were to be a headline in tomorrow's paper, nobody would be surprised.
... and if some idiot left it on the shopping channel or some other hour-long "info-mertial" pops up, you're fuxored. And you won't be able to change channels when its finished, because they'll be running ... commercials!!!!!
If you read the announcement, you'll see that, as it says:
- the devs are being given a free hand to stick whatever new toys they want in it.Bling? Bling???
They should call it "Ubuntu - the Ghetto Gnu release" ... for all of us who don't want to be hangin' in Gate's crib.
It was expected 15 years ago that people would show a bit of initiative and learn a few things, poke around any menus, keyboard templates, etc., to get better at what they did. Nowadays, if they don't already know the answer, a lot of them whine that "its too complicated."
Cracking a book for 15 minutes? You can't PAY them to. You have to pay someone else to spoon-feed it to them. Its like people get out of school and say "well, thats it for me."
Not all manuals come with products. I've written a few commercial manuals for other companies, and they were never shipped with product - they were used to help explain the product to sales reps, to marketers, investors, and potential customers.
A copy would get shipped with the product as well, but that use was ultimately incidental.
But I know what you mean, "Read the F*cking Manual" does come off as arrogant and condescending. But, on the other hand, there were a few problems:
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He was asking the wrong forum. (obviously, from the response he got
:-)
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He didn't try to "just f*cking google it" - there are 4,700,000 responses, and the #1 hit for "start linux daemon" gives this: http://www.linux.com/guides/solrhe/Securing-Optim
i zing-Linux-RH-Edition-v1.3/chap3sec21.shtml, which says exactly how to do it. Why should anyone bother helping someone who can't take 10 seconds to help themselves?
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He didn't try mousing through the menus on his linux box, or he would have come across an app that would let him manage his daemons by going clicky-clicky instead of editing his rc.d scripts or typeing apache2ctl start or httpd start (depending on distro).
These are all obvious steps that I would expect someone who claims to have had years of IT experience and who wants to manage servers to take before imposing on someone else.Now if a complete n00b had said it, I would have just given them the shell command, and a link for further reading, figuring they're just starting out. But "years of IT experience" and not showing enough initiative to even bother to look? The person in question shouldn't be allowed near a server. They've already shown they lack the most basic problem-solving skills, as well as no professional pride whatsoever, which would have motivated them to at least try to learn a bit more about what they're working with.
I'd rather work with people who admit they don't have a clue, but are curious and motivated to learn. At least with them, there's hope for progress. But that "years of IT experience" person really ought to learn how to RTFM, or google, or at least first explore the programs already staring him in the face under the "system" and "utilities" menus if they aren't ready to make the move from "mousey-mousey" ...
Its part of the general dumbing down of the industry. For example, 15 years ago, secretaries were more efficient with a copy of wordperfect 5.1 for DOS on an old 286 with 2 megs of ram than they are today with, literally, 100 times more computing power. 10,000 percent increase in resources in cpu (20 mhz to 2 ghz), 25,000 percent increase in ram, (2 meg to 512 meg), 625,000 percent increase in disk storage (40 meg to 250 gig), and they take longer to produce a letter than they did on that old clunker. And ask them to find it a week later? Ha!
He didn't like the cable company ...
Just hit the TV remote to switch video sources. Mine lets me quickly cycle between the main antenna (yes, I use an antenna - some tech just never dies :-), aux1 (dvd) and aux2 (vcr/pc-out/whatever) by hitting the same button.
My solution to that is to turn it on, and go make popcorn.
I'll watch a commercial if its funny, if its interesting, if its something I'm looking for. Why force me to watch something I'm NOT interested in right now - I'm not your target market at this time, and all you're doing is creating bad vibes so that when I AM in the market, you've already p*ssed me off.
It's the same with banner ads on the net. Show me something I'm interested in.
It doens't start off impolite, but when the same person comes back 20 times with the exact same question, its time to tell them to FOAD - and this applies equally to Windows users.
Agreed that the questions in the article didn't merit an RTFM respomnse. If someone had asked me which desktop I prefered, I'd answer "It depends", and say why - I wouldn't say "go back to Windows". Ditto for the database question. Ditto for the distro question.
However, for the "hwo do I start a daemon question" from someone who claims to have been in the I.T. industry for years, etc ... I would say "Look, you're just getting into Linux administration ... you really should pick up 'Linux in a Nutshell' and read it first. You may not understand it all when you read it, but after, when you ask a question, you'll have the context so that my answer will make sense. It shouldn't take more than an afternoon to skim over the basic commands. You'll save yourself a LOT of time."
so, yes, if someone is going to be administering servers and has to ask how to start a daemon, they are clearly out of their depth and need to crack a book, so that they can at least get enough of the basics to do some simple administration. In that case, RTFM isn't just a valid response - its the safest for everyone.