While you at it add a dictionary to your list, and ponder why spelling 'school' incorrectly as 'skool' doesn't make you cool.
(Neither does wearing a baseball cap backwards or sporting one of those stupid little fratboy mini-beards, but we'll save that lecture for another day.)
And in a year of explosive Gnutella-network growth you *still* think the system isn't capable of scaling? If so, there's definitely a moron in the conversation and it isn't the other guy.
Them's the breaks. Deal with it. Or not, if you want to fight it that hard.
But if you do, I seriously doubt your motivation has anything whatsoever to do with saving a buck or two on your tax bill. Such an exceptional opposition to the public-code scheme reeks of extremely personal self-interest.
Why should a public infrastructure discriminate between a company or an individual?
The question is, why shouldn't we? Corporations are fictional people, not real ones, and these fictional people are in no way, shape, or form to be confused with real honest-to-god individuals. We can do whatever the hell we want with them; they have no inalienable rights, nor should they.
The public infrastructure should discriminate between private individuals and fictional corporate individuals because any other approach is sheer psychotic lunacy. To pretend the corporation is a real person with some kind of 'vote' is the mark of a madman who hasn't been taking his medication.
If you can't wrap your mind around this concept I seriously hope you never, ever hold political office.
How about taking the fucking strawmen and shoving them where the sun don't shine? If you're going to argue the point stop acting like a Microsoftie and reach beyond the chapter on "Diversion" you read in high school debate class.
While you're at it look up "innocent until proven guilty" and see how it's supposed to apply to American law.
Also try re-reading the Fifth Amendment, particularly where it mentions protection against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as what a warrant is and what's required to obtain it.
The BSA and it's cronies aren't exempt. Well, actually they are since the law in this country has bent over to become corporate whores, but technically your argument - aside from being pathetic intellectually - doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
The spin seems pretty accurate to me. It used to be in this country that you were innocent until proven guilty; but we all know now that where a single dollar of corporate money is concerned such naive notions are a crock of shit.
There is no legal authority for conducting such an audit without a warrant from the court. A EULA provides no basis for signing away your protection against unreasonable search and seizure. And a judge isn't supposed to issue a warrant without clear probably cause. In other words you should be able to tell the BSA to "suck Bill's dick" and never be bothered by them again unless they can provide the required evidence for an actual warrant.
That's the theory, at any rate. But we all know that money can buy the law, the law can seize your computers and hold them for years without cause (a la Steve Jackson Games; look it up if you're too young to remember), and during the interim you'll go out of business. The BSA will never be punished and the police don't give a shit and aren't accountable; they do what money tells them to do knowing that while individual peons may fall the department assholes are safe as can be.
So the BSA makes threats knowing they can get away with it because they're quite capable of causing real pain to anyone they please without ever being punished for their actions.
Welcome to America, Inc.
Max
the singularity has nothing to do with AI
on
True Names
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· Score: 1
I don't know why so many people get this confused. The singularity refers to a point along an asymptotic technological advance curve where the rate of accumulation of knowledge exceeds the speed at which knowledge can actually be accumulated. In other words, it's at the point where information theory deforms and breaks down, somewhat (sort of, mildly) like how physical laws break down when you pass the event horizon of a black hole.
The singularity has nothing to do with AI. It has never had anything to do with AI. AI doesn't enter into the equation at all, other than in the fevered minds of some so-called futurists (read "X-Files-believing fruitcakes").
As for "Across Realtime", Vinge never once mentioned AI in "Marooned", where he talked about his take on the Singularity. He said, simply, that Something Happened; humanity disappeared and went someplace else. But that all of us left behind couldn't even begin to imagine what they'd become, much less where they'd gone. No AI written about or hinted at anywhere in the story.
So what does actually happen when the Singularity is reached? Probably nothing at all. In fact, the singularity is just a popular term for a concept in information theory where the theory isn't capable of predicting events beyond a certain point. That's all it is. No pseudo-scientific clap-trap required.
Laws won't work. Not now, not ever. There's no way in hell you're going to get all 300+ countries in the world to agree - and enforce - anti-spam laws. Many of these countries don't give a rat's ass if you've got a hardon about spam and will tell you to go fuck yourselves if you try to impose foreign law upon them. As is their right.
Your politicians will never use extreme measures to try to get anti-spam laws. No one will ever go to war over spam, or enforce an embargo of any kind. Spam just isn't that important.
Authentication of email, for those who haven't thought it through, allows dictatorial governments to more easily track dissidents. Especially in harsh regimes that tend to put a bullet in a dissident's head. Yeah, real bright solution, authentication is. Of course, those of us in the First World, excepting the U.S. which continues to rocket towards hell in a handbasket, generally don't have to worry about being shot by pissed off government types, so fuck the rest of the world, eh?
Deal with it, like we always have. Complain. Block spammers. Subscribe to blacklists. Find something more important to get your panties in a wad about.
Laws are needed to combat it? Sure, right; and who is going to enforce the same law for all 300+ countries in the world? In case you haven't noticed there are always a good chunk of nations willing to ignore their larger First-World neighbors in order to make a buck, like the good capitalists they are.
Laws will never work. Anyone with half a brain can see this - unless you honestly believe that you can actually get anti-spam laws passed in every single country in the world. *Effective* anti-spam laws. If so, I laugh in your general direction.
Ah, yes, moderated as flamebait by yet another 'save the children!' loser. Moderation in place of effective argument - perhaps because the moderator is incapable of actually supporting an opposing view?
To recap, this time with a score of 2 (karma is sometimes useful after all):
"save the children! save the children!"
Let's try saving them from the zealots who'd shield them from every tiny little bit of real life that might upset not them, oh no, it's pretty hard to phase a kid - but their thin-skinned anti-First Amendment parents. And other evil-doers that fall into that rank category of Constitution-haters, wife-beaters, spank-monkeys, and general all-around losers.
Whatever happened to "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business and I'll keep my nose the fuck out of yours?". Or even "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business or I'll blow your annoying little ass to kingdome-come"?
Ooooh, wait, I forgot, the nosy neighbors are trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment along with the 1st...no doubt to reduce the risks associating with butting into things that they have to right to butt in to.
I pitty you, but your lucky you dont live in absolute poverty with all your rights dictated by a small few, and where the punnishment for stealing a loaf of bread is your right hand.
Neither do you, moron. A dictatorship by the majority is still a dictatorship; I challenge you to prove otherwise. If you can't then prove that such a dictatorship is invariably better than one implemented by a minority or individual.
It's a rigged test, of course, but it'd be amusing to see you make a fool out of yourself - for 'the common good', of course.
Let's try saving them from the zealots who'd shield them from every tiny little bit of real life that might upset not them, oh no, it's pretty hard to phase a kid - but their thin-skinned anti-First Amendment parents. And other evil-doers that fall into that rank category of Constitution-haters, wife-beaters, spank-monkeys, and general all-around losers.
Whatever happened to "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business and I'll keep my nose the fuck out of yours?". Or even "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business or I'll blow your annoying little ass to kingdome-come"?
Ooooh, wait, I forgot, the nosy neighbors are trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment along with the 1st...no doubt to reduce the risks associating with butting into things that they have to right to butt in to.
Apparently you've never worked for government. Regardless of who's technically in charge, all governments - ALL GOVERNMENTS - seek first and foremost to maximize their own power. Hence the phrase "whenever the legislature is in session, no one is safe."
As for criminals, who gives a shit about whether they make reparations? Shoot their sorry asses and be done with it. Even if capital punishment doesn't work as a deterrant overall, it's an incredible effective deterrant for that particular criminal. If you think otherwise please provide a single example of a criminal who was subjected to capital punishment and went on to commit more crimes. There is *zero* recidivism when capital punishment is used.
And what you're speaking of doesn't sound any better than your average dictatorship. Only in this case the dictatorship is by the majority, with all their common petty hates and jealousies and prejudices. Dictatorships, whether they are perpetrated by one individual or a group of individuals, are in all ways evil; there isn't anything more redeeming about your scenario than being ruled by some tin-pot Third World 'general'. Just because your system has a larger group forcing its will on others doesn't make it more ethical.
At least with the single dictator I know I have a fair chance of assassinating the bastard and getting a better replacement. If the dictators are my neighbors I have to wipe out most of the fucking town to get them to leave me and mine alone.
Screw this majoritarian crap. If this is the way America is heading I'll be the first to cheerlead for a return to monarchy. You can keep your perverted version of the 'common good'; I don't want any part of it.
A national i.d. card is only of value if it manages to benefit me in some fashion. So far as I can see, it doesn't. In fact, it only seems to benefit those who might use collected information against me, or who might alter my records simply to make my life difficult.
Why should I approve of a national i.d. card? Just because a few control-freak fuckwits here on Slashdot get off on the idea of forcing something people don't care for down their throats? Or because there are always a few college pricks ready to jump on the bandwagon and yammer on about how "it's too late, you don't have any rights, get over it"? (Stupid twits need a good bitch-slapping, knock some manners into their tiny little brains.)
No one here as presenting a single point of compelling evidence that justifies the creation of a national i.d. card. It won't stop terrorists; it won't reduce crime in any significant fashion; it won't do much of anything other than give my government (and large corporations) better tools to track me and my habits, and possibly use these things against me if they disapprove of my activities. (Note: if you're actually stupid enough to think that the government won't do this given the opportunity, I hope to god you never breed.)
What good is a national i.d. card to me? It isn't. Therefore it should be opposed as a matter of course.
Unless you're one of the aforementioned fuckwits or lobotomized college dicks, that is.
I think it's rather obvious that Microsoft has at least a few employees who do nothing but waste their time pushing a pro-Microsoft slant on popular web forums, masquerading as 'average joes'. Y'know, someone to back up the BillyG Phallic Worship Society.
Want to know who they are? Check out the apologists for Microsoft re this news item. Because only an apologist would actually waste time defending Microsoft for rigging the poll, and only a paid apologist would do such a half-assed job of it.
I swear, you guys crack me up. Don't give your day job for undercover p.i. work, okay?
But anyone with a single ounce of common sense could easily foresee that voting for YOUR OWN PRODUCT - thousands of times - is the tactic of a sleazeball. A rather stupid sleazeball, too.
And defending that behavior is the act of a professional apologist.
But hey, what else does one expect from the trolls at Microsoft?
www.gnu.org doesn't define the word "free" for the entire human race. In fact, it's safe to say that hardly anyone at all pays attention to what the GNU folks have to say on any topic, much less how they reinterpret a word that Webster adequately defined quite some time ago.
You can get the SuSe distribution online, for free. That's free so far as any reasonable human being is concerned. The inclusion of non-free software means jack. Only a fanatic or RMS-lover would claim otherwise.
Any degree will do. It doesn't matter what field the degree is actually in, although a science degree (something that involves math and the ability to write a semi-coherent sentence) generally carries more weight than a non-science degree. Assuming, of course, that the person who's doing the decision-making isn't a B.A. with a chip on his/her shoulders about all the smarter B.S.'s and their ability to add larger than double-digit sums without the aid of a calculator.
Most schools don't really teach the tools needed to actually work in the field you have a degree in. If you think you can graduate from school with a bachelor's in computer science and be good to go right off the bat, wait awhile until I stop laughing my ass off. Fact is, you're almost as useless as the Psych major who also applied for the job, but at least with the Psych major we might actually hire someone who can relate to people in a basically human fashion.
Y'see, just about all of these bachelors degrees, no matter what the field, are completely irrelevant. They don't train you for a job; in fact, 90% of what you learn - at least - will be utterly useless in the real world. What the degree does say is that you're enough of a peon to put up with four years of unpleasant bullshit, so much so that you're gullible enough to actually PAY for the privilege, just to get the chance to work for us. And that's what we want: peons who'll put up with shit and keep on trucking. We love the Borg drones and wish you were just like them.
No mavericks for us, thank you very much. Mavericks tell us to 'fuck off' when they don't like how we treat them and that just ain't acceptable.
As for how one gains the actual skills required to do the job:
- hire on with a company that knows you're a fool just out of college, and therefore just about skilled enough to defrag Windows boxes. They'll teach you what you really need to know, after torturing you for a couple of years first (low guy on the totem pole, etc.)
- apprentice to a known wizard. Sometimes a wizard (i.e., a good programmer) will take on an apprentice and teach them what they know. Especially if the apprentice can really suck cock, er, will give the job his all. This is hard to do unless you're good friends with a wizard because wizards are often antisocial types with little desire to teach anyone anything. In 18 years I've taken on three apprentices and told everyone else to rot in hell. That's three more apprentice than any of the other wizards I count as friends.
- if you have raw talent, do what 95% of the programming community does. Jump in, sink or swim. Teach yourself. It's much easier nowadays because you can get on the net, ask a question, and get two dozen different but right solutions to your problem, so there's no excuse for not trying it this way. If you can't learn via reading and asking questions then you're fucked - you have no talent, get an MCSE and go work for Microsoft or someone else too stupid to realize that you'r a loser when it comes to computers. But really, if you can't teach yourself then stop wasting your time and choose a career that you're actually decent at.
The upshot is that you won't learn any useful skills in college when it comes to actual real-world experience. And we know that - we plan for that. What college tells us is that if you're dumb enough to put up with crap for four years and pay for it, that you'll bend over and let us ream you up the ass if the paycheck is coming your way. That's what we want first and foremost. It'd be nice to do that you can do math and write a complete sentence, so a science degree is good, but you can get it in any science and we don't care what it is. A CS major is no more qualified to program than a Microbiology major is. Trust me on this.
So pick a science that you like. During the summer intern with a place that'll actually let you near a working machine. *That's* where you'll get real skills. In addition read everything you can, put together your own home network, hack the Linux kernel (even if you don't use Linux it'll teach you a hell of alot about programming), etc.; get experience any way you can. During the interview we'll ask you questions that you won't be able to bullshit without practical experience.
If you can, befriend a wizard and have him help you with the arcane arts. Having your own personal wizard at your beck and call is the biggest advantage you can get. Especially - especially - if the wizard will vouch for you as a reference. You have no idea how important this is; it carries far more weight than any degree. After all, anyone can get a degree but very few folks can get a wizard to say something nice.
Why the hell would you want to evacuate England, for god's sake? I mean, think about it: would you rather the rock take out the uptight, sexually repressed Brits or the much more fun-loving Dutch, or Swedes?
I vote Brits. Hell, divert the asteroid there if possible. No more blood pie. It'd be worth the sacrifice.
Anywhere that George W. is would be fine by me. Not that Cheney's any better, but by god I'm tired of staring at that slack 'nobody's-home' face on TV.
America - the first country to democratically elect a submoron to the presidency....
I mean, let's face it: the continent is heavy on desert with a little croc-infested marsh thrown in, a real sand-lover's delight. What little ecology there is is inhabited by a bunch of loser marsupials which would've been wiped out a long time ago by *real* mammals if Autralia weren't isolated. Hell, look how well the stupid marsupials stand up to *rabbits*, for chrissakes.
And the people - oh yeah, the people. Let's talk about an entire nation which has given us just two real 'treasures': Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter. Real masters of the intellect, those Australians. I mean, does anything scream LOSER more than having your two biggest screen personalities go by a name with the word 'Crocodile' in it? Christ, if ever we needed proof that the genes of convicts are a bad basis for generating a population, Australia is it.
I say go ahead and introduce the African animals. Without fences. We'll get rid of all those stupid-looking kangaroos and maybe a few stupid Australians along with them. With this plan the end result can only be a better world.
Slashdot Mirror
I read this as "John Ritter" and now I've got that damned song stuck in my head, the one that goes "Come and knock on my door...."
Max
While you at it add a dictionary to your list, and ponder why spelling 'school' incorrectly as 'skool' doesn't make you cool.
(Neither does wearing a baseball cap backwards or sporting one of those stupid little fratboy mini-beards, but we'll save that lecture for another day.)
Max
And in a year of explosive Gnutella-network growth you *still* think the system isn't capable of scaling? If so, there's definitely a moron in the conversation and it isn't the other guy.
Max
Them's the breaks. Deal with it. Or not, if you want to fight it that hard.
But if you do, I seriously doubt your motivation has anything whatsoever to do with saving a buck or two on your tax bill. Such an exceptional opposition to the public-code scheme reeks of extremely personal self-interest.
Not with my tax dollars, you don't.
Max
Why should a public infrastructure discriminate between a company or an individual?
The question is, why shouldn't we? Corporations are fictional people, not real ones, and these fictional people are in no way, shape, or form to be confused with real honest-to-god individuals. We can do whatever the hell we want with them; they have no inalienable rights, nor should they.
The public infrastructure should discriminate between private individuals and fictional corporate individuals because any other approach is sheer psychotic lunacy. To pretend the corporation is a real person with some kind of 'vote' is the mark of a madman who hasn't been taking his medication.
If you can't wrap your mind around this concept I seriously hope you never, ever hold political office.
Max
How about taking the fucking strawmen and shoving them where the sun don't shine? If you're going to argue the point stop acting like a Microsoftie and reach beyond the chapter on "Diversion" you read in high school debate class.
While you're at it look up "innocent until proven guilty" and see how it's supposed to apply to American law.
Also try re-reading the Fifth Amendment, particularly where it mentions protection against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as what a warrant is and what's required to obtain it.
The BSA and it's cronies aren't exempt. Well, actually they are since the law in this country has bent over to become corporate whores, but technically your argument - aside from being pathetic intellectually - doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Max
The spin seems pretty accurate to me. It used to be in this country that you were innocent until proven guilty; but we all know now that where a single dollar of corporate money is concerned such naive notions are a crock of shit.
There is no legal authority for conducting such an audit without a warrant from the court. A EULA provides no basis for signing away your protection against unreasonable search and seizure. And a judge isn't supposed to issue a warrant without clear probably cause. In other words you should be able to tell the BSA to "suck Bill's dick" and never be bothered by them again unless they can provide the required evidence for an actual warrant.
That's the theory, at any rate. But we all know that money can buy the law, the law can seize your computers and hold them for years without cause (a la Steve Jackson Games; look it up if you're too young to remember), and during the interim you'll go out of business. The BSA will never be punished and the police don't give a shit and aren't accountable; they do what money tells them to do knowing that while individual peons may fall the department assholes are safe as can be.
So the BSA makes threats knowing they can get away with it because they're quite capable of causing real pain to anyone they please without ever being punished for their actions.
Welcome to America, Inc.
Max
I don't know why so many people get this confused. The singularity refers to a point along an asymptotic technological advance curve where the rate of accumulation of knowledge exceeds the speed at which knowledge can actually be accumulated. In other words, it's at the point where information theory deforms and breaks down, somewhat (sort of, mildly) like how physical laws break down when you pass the event horizon of a black hole.
The singularity has nothing to do with AI. It has never had anything to do with AI. AI doesn't enter into the equation at all, other than in the fevered minds of some so-called futurists (read "X-Files-believing fruitcakes").
As for "Across Realtime", Vinge never once mentioned AI in "Marooned", where he talked about his take on the Singularity. He said, simply, that Something Happened; humanity disappeared and went someplace else. But that all of us left behind couldn't even begin to imagine what they'd become, much less where they'd gone. No AI written about or hinted at anywhere in the story.
So what does actually happen when the Singularity is reached? Probably nothing at all. In fact, the singularity is just a popular term for a concept in information theory where the theory isn't capable of predicting events beyond a certain point. That's all it is. No pseudo-scientific clap-trap required.
Max
Just keep heaping it on...
Laws won't work. Not now, not ever. There's no way in hell you're going to get all 300+ countries in the world to agree - and enforce - anti-spam laws. Many of these countries don't give a rat's ass if you've got a hardon about spam and will tell you to go fuck yourselves if you try to impose foreign law upon them. As is their right.
Your politicians will never use extreme measures to try to get anti-spam laws. No one will ever go to war over spam, or enforce an embargo of any kind. Spam just isn't that important.
Authentication of email, for those who haven't thought it through, allows dictatorial governments to more easily track dissidents. Especially in harsh regimes that tend to put a bullet in a dissident's head. Yeah, real bright solution, authentication is. Of course, those of us in the First World, excepting the U.S. which continues to rocket towards hell in a handbasket, generally don't have to worry about being shot by pissed off government types, so fuck the rest of the world, eh?
Deal with it, like we always have. Complain. Block spammers. Subscribe to blacklists. Find something more important to get your panties in a wad about.
Max
Laws are needed to combat it? Sure, right; and who is going to enforce the same law for all 300+ countries in the world? In case you haven't noticed there are always a good chunk of nations willing to ignore their larger First-World neighbors in order to make a buck, like the good capitalists they are.
Laws will never work. Anyone with half a brain can see this - unless you honestly believe that you can actually get anti-spam laws passed in every single country in the world. *Effective* anti-spam laws. If so, I laugh in your general direction.
Max
Ah, yes, moderated as flamebait by yet another 'save the children!' loser. Moderation in place of effective argument - perhaps because the moderator is incapable of actually supporting an opposing view?
To recap, this time with a score of 2 (karma is sometimes useful after all):
"save the children! save the children!"
Let's try saving them from the zealots who'd shield them from every tiny little bit of real life that might upset not them, oh no, it's pretty hard to phase a kid - but their thin-skinned anti-First Amendment parents. And other evil-doers that fall into that rank category of Constitution-haters, wife-beaters, spank-monkeys, and general all-around losers.
Whatever happened to "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business and I'll keep my nose the fuck out of yours?". Or even "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business or I'll blow your annoying little ass to kingdome-come"?
Ooooh, wait, I forgot, the nosy neighbors are trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment along with the 1st...no doubt to reduce the risks associating with butting into things that they have to right to butt in to.
For the sake of the children, of course!
Max
I pitty you, but your lucky you dont live in absolute poverty with all your rights dictated by a small few, and where the punnishment for stealing a loaf of bread is your right hand.
Neither do you, moron. A dictatorship by the majority is still a dictatorship; I challenge you to prove otherwise. If you can't then prove that such a dictatorship is invariably better than one implemented by a minority or individual.
It's a rigged test, of course, but it'd be amusing to see you make a fool out of yourself - for 'the common good', of course.
Max
"save the children! save the children!"
Let's try saving them from the zealots who'd shield them from every tiny little bit of real life that might upset not them, oh no, it's pretty hard to phase a kid - but their thin-skinned anti-First Amendment parents. And other evil-doers that fall into that rank category of Constitution-haters, wife-beaters, spank-monkeys, and general all-around losers.
Whatever happened to "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business and I'll keep my nose the fuck out of yours?". Or even "you keep your nose the fuck out of my business or I'll blow your annoying little ass to kingdome-come"?
Ooooh, wait, I forgot, the nosy neighbors are trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment along with the 1st...no doubt to reduce the risks associating with butting into things that they have to right to butt in to.
For the sake of the children, of course!
Max
Apparently you've never worked for government. Regardless of who's technically in charge, all governments - ALL GOVERNMENTS - seek first and foremost to maximize their own power. Hence the phrase "whenever the legislature is in session, no one is safe."
As for criminals, who gives a shit about whether they make reparations? Shoot their sorry asses and be done with it. Even if capital punishment doesn't work as a deterrant overall, it's an incredible effective deterrant for that particular criminal. If you think otherwise please provide a single example of a criminal who was subjected to capital punishment and went on to commit more crimes. There is *zero* recidivism when capital punishment is used.
And what you're speaking of doesn't sound any better than your average dictatorship. Only in this case the dictatorship is by the majority, with all their common petty hates and jealousies and prejudices. Dictatorships, whether they are perpetrated by one individual or a group of individuals, are in all ways evil; there isn't anything more redeeming about your scenario than being ruled by some tin-pot Third World 'general'. Just because your system has a larger group forcing its will on others doesn't make it more ethical.
At least with the single dictator I know I have a fair chance of assassinating the bastard and getting a better replacement. If the dictators are my neighbors I have to wipe out most of the fucking town to get them to leave me and mine alone.
Screw this majoritarian crap. If this is the way America is heading I'll be the first to cheerlead for a return to monarchy. You can keep your perverted version of the 'common good'; I don't want any part of it.
Max
A national i.d. card is only of value if it manages to benefit me in some fashion. So far as I can see, it doesn't. In fact, it only seems to benefit those who might use collected information against me, or who might alter my records simply to make my life difficult.
Why should I approve of a national i.d. card? Just because a few control-freak fuckwits here on Slashdot get off on the idea of forcing something people don't care for down their throats? Or because there are always a few college pricks ready to jump on the bandwagon and yammer on about how "it's too late, you don't have any rights, get over it"? (Stupid twits need a good bitch-slapping, knock some manners into their tiny little brains.)
No one here as presenting a single point of compelling evidence that justifies the creation of a national i.d. card. It won't stop terrorists; it won't reduce crime in any significant fashion; it won't do much of anything other than give my government (and large corporations) better tools to track me and my habits, and possibly use these things against me if they disapprove of my activities. (Note: if you're actually stupid enough to think that the government won't do this given the opportunity, I hope to god you never breed.)
What good is a national i.d. card to me? It isn't. Therefore it should be opposed as a matter of course.
Unless you're one of the aforementioned fuckwits or lobotomized college dicks, that is.
Max
I think it's rather obvious that Microsoft has at least a few employees who do nothing but waste their time pushing a pro-Microsoft slant on popular web forums, masquerading as 'average joes'. Y'know, someone to back up the BillyG Phallic Worship Society.
Want to know who they are? Check out the apologists for Microsoft re this news item. Because only an apologist would actually waste time defending Microsoft for rigging the poll, and only a paid apologist would do such a half-assed job of it.
I swear, you guys crack me up. Don't give your day job for undercover p.i. work, okay?
Max
Yeah...all six of 'em.
Max
But anyone with a single ounce of common sense could easily foresee that voting for YOUR OWN PRODUCT - thousands of times - is the tactic of a sleazeball. A rather stupid sleazeball, too.
And defending that behavior is the act of a professional apologist.
But hey, what else does one expect from the trolls at Microsoft?
Max
www.gnu.org doesn't define the word "free" for the entire human race. In fact, it's safe to say that hardly anyone at all pays attention to what the GNU folks have to say on any topic, much less how they reinterpret a word that Webster adequately defined quite some time ago.
You can get the SuSe distribution online, for free. That's free so far as any reasonable human being is concerned. The inclusion of non-free software means jack. Only a fanatic or RMS-lover would claim otherwise.
Max
Any degree will do. It doesn't matter what field the degree is actually in, although a science degree (something that involves math and the ability to write a semi-coherent sentence) generally carries more weight than a non-science degree. Assuming, of course, that the person who's doing the decision-making isn't a B.A. with a chip on his/her shoulders about all the smarter B.S.'s and their ability to add larger than double-digit sums without the aid of a calculator.
Most schools don't really teach the tools needed to actually work in the field you have a degree in. If you think you can graduate from school with a bachelor's in computer science and be good to go right off the bat, wait awhile until I stop laughing my ass off. Fact is, you're almost as useless as the Psych major who also applied for the job, but at least with the Psych major we might actually hire someone who can relate to people in a basically human fashion.
Y'see, just about all of these bachelors degrees, no matter what the field, are completely irrelevant. They don't train you for a job; in fact, 90% of what you learn - at least - will be utterly useless in the real world. What the degree does say is that you're enough of a peon to put up with four years of unpleasant bullshit, so much so that you're gullible enough to actually PAY for the privilege, just to get the chance to work for us. And that's what we want: peons who'll put up with shit and keep on trucking. We love the Borg drones and wish you were just like them.
No mavericks for us, thank you very much. Mavericks tell us to 'fuck off' when they don't like how we treat them and that just ain't acceptable.
As for how one gains the actual skills required to do the job:
- hire on with a company that knows you're a fool just out of college, and therefore just about skilled enough to defrag Windows boxes. They'll teach you what you really need to know, after torturing you for a couple of years first (low guy on the totem pole, etc.)
- apprentice to a known wizard. Sometimes a wizard (i.e., a good programmer) will take on an apprentice and teach them what they know. Especially if the apprentice can really suck cock, er, will give the job his all. This is hard to do unless you're good friends with a wizard because wizards are often antisocial types with little desire to teach anyone anything. In 18 years I've taken on three apprentices and told everyone else to rot in hell. That's three more apprentice than any of the other wizards I count as friends.
- if you have raw talent, do what 95% of the programming community does. Jump in, sink or swim. Teach yourself. It's much easier nowadays because you can get on the net, ask a question, and get two dozen different but right solutions to your problem, so there's no excuse for not trying it this way. If you can't learn via reading and asking questions then you're fucked - you have no talent, get an MCSE and go work for Microsoft or someone else too stupid to realize that you'r a loser when it comes to computers. But really, if you can't teach yourself then stop wasting your time and choose a career that you're actually decent at.
The upshot is that you won't learn any useful skills in college when it comes to actual real-world experience. And we know that - we plan for that. What college tells us is that if you're dumb enough to put up with crap for four years and pay for it, that you'll bend over and let us ream you up the ass if the paycheck is coming your way. That's what we want first and foremost. It'd be nice to do that you can do math and write a complete sentence, so a science degree is good, but you can get it in any science and we don't care what it is. A CS major is no more qualified to program than a Microbiology major is. Trust me on this.
So pick a science that you like. During the summer intern with a place that'll actually let you near a working machine. *That's* where you'll get real skills. In addition read everything you can, put together your own home network, hack the Linux kernel (even if you don't use Linux it'll teach you a hell of alot about programming), etc.; get experience any way you can. During the interview we'll ask you questions that you won't be able to bullshit without practical experience.
If you can, befriend a wizard and have him help you with the arcane arts. Having your own personal wizard at your beck and call is the biggest advantage you can get. Especially - especially - if the wizard will vouch for you as a reference. You have no idea how important this is; it carries far more weight than any degree. After all, anyone can get a degree but very few folks can get a wizard to say something nice.
Max
Why the hell would you want to evacuate England, for god's sake? I mean, think about it: would you rather the rock take out the uptight, sexually repressed Brits or the much more fun-loving Dutch, or Swedes?
I vote Brits. Hell, divert the asteroid there if possible. No more blood pie. It'd be worth the sacrifice.
Max
Anywhere that George W. is would be fine by me. Not that Cheney's any better, but by god I'm tired of staring at that slack 'nobody's-home' face on TV.
America - the first country to democratically elect a submoron to the presidency....
Max
Most people actually like Microsoft? Bullshit. Support your assertion with empirical evidence or admit you're just blowing hot air out of your ass.
Max
Sometimes a post is so over the top that it can't possibly be serious. Unless you're an Australian, of course.
Max
I mean, let's face it: the continent is heavy on desert with a little croc-infested marsh thrown in, a real sand-lover's delight. What little ecology there is is inhabited by a bunch of loser marsupials which would've been wiped out a long time ago by *real* mammals if Autralia weren't isolated. Hell, look how well the stupid marsupials stand up to *rabbits*, for chrissakes.
And the people - oh yeah, the people. Let's talk about an entire nation which has given us just two real 'treasures': Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter. Real masters of the intellect, those Australians. I mean, does anything scream LOSER more than having your two biggest screen personalities go by a name with the word 'Crocodile' in it? Christ, if ever we needed proof that the genes of convicts are a bad basis for generating a population, Australia is it.
I say go ahead and introduce the African animals. Without fences. We'll get rid of all those stupid-looking kangaroos and maybe a few stupid Australians along with them. With this plan the end result can only be a better world.
Max