I think the root of the problem is that slashdot doesn't have any real competition. There are other sites like it but those sites don't have the same appeal. Clone and improve slashdot and I'm willing to bet people will jump to the new site the same way they jumped from older search engines to Google.
Then Slashdot would have to improve itself in order to compete. Sounds good to me.
After all, we're always yammering on here about the evils of monopoly and the wonders of competition. Slashdot doesn't get a free pass just because a few geeks can't deal with the idea of 'choice' in their neck of the woods.
Start a site that competes with slashdot? Perhaps one where the editors can master the basics of grammar and are willing to use a spell-checker? One that posts news articles in a timely fashion, rather than days, weeks, months, or sometimes even *years* later? And one where karma-bombers and folks with vendettas aren't rewarded for their childish behavior?
Call it something like "No Signal". Oooh, I like that! Copyright! Copyright!
Moreover, if you don't like your profession, you're unlikely to be any good at it.
Cites? Statistics? Empirical evidence?
Besides, any job requiring more than two brain cells will involve considerable social and communication skills, which you are unikely to get from plodders, however "competent".
The possession or lack of social skills has nothing to do with competence.
And you will do so *because* you have the motivation.
And it's no different whether your motivation is because you like or job, or you like making money at your job. Both will drive a person to excellence, and neither is superior to the other.
Well, he seems to know which ones since he has a specific number. I challenge him to list the 283 patents that Linux supposedly violates.
I also challenge him to reveal his bank transaction journal to see if any large sums have been deposited into his account sometime in the last year, perhaps from his 'consulting' work with Microsoft....
Max
Re:Quit trying to follow the money, and be happy
on
What The Bubble Got Right
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There's nothing wrong with choosing a profession based on the idea that you want to get rich off of it. That's part and parcel of the American way, whether you happen to like it or not.
As far as job performance goes, the motivation for doing a good job is irrelevant. Whether you're out to make money and nothing else, or work at the job because you happen to like it, excellent performance is what any sane company looks for. Those who can't perform are fired, period.
When *I* was hiring I took people who could do the job and do it well. Their motivations were beside the point. Quite frankly, because I didn't give a good goddamn how much you 'loved' your job if the guy who came in before you was significantly better at it than you were. That's what hobbies are for.
Especially people who haven't grown up yet, e.g., 'rebellious' goth teens and college students who jump at the opportunity to slam Britney Spears while promoting some half-assed garage band that sounds like shit. Most self-proclaimed critics and pundits also belong to this group; they're nothing more than an adult version of the teen rebel, trying to sell the fact that their negative criticisms and fad-slamming are somehow indicative of a superior intellect.
What's especially pathetic is that a good many of these idiots were not only the first to abandon the bandwagon but the first to jump on it as well. And they'll do the same thing over and over again, and people will *still* believe they have something worthwhile to say.
Reading comprehension might be of some use to you. Try taking a gander at the post again to see if you can comprehend *why* businesses need no spam protection if Joe Consumer is white-listed.
And apart from businesses, most people don't want email from strangers any more than they want phone calls from them.
But that's not how it looks to anyone with half a brain. Han firing first is simple common sense and self-preservation; waiting for the other guy to take a shot at slagging you before you return fire is just plain stupid.
Han was supposed to be a smart, cynical smuggler primarily motivated by self-interest (which is in fact a good thing, despite what some 'holier-than-thou' types vomit when poked with a stick). Not some fuckwit with a penchant for playing suicide games.
Whitelisting is an acceptable solution to the problem of spam. Most of the people who use email are *not* businesses and they only get mail from friends and family; a whitelist will leave their inboxes spam-free. If they want to get email from someone they've met on a forum or elsewhere they can easily add that person to their whitelist.
As for companies it doesn't matter whether they get spammed or not. They aren't part of the target base that make spammers money. If everyone is using white-listing except for businesses, the spammers will go bankrupt; mass white-listing for individual consumers will solve the problem for businesses as well, if indirectly.
I really don't see what the problem is here. The vast majority of email users aren't interested in getting mail from people they don't know. Those that are interested can forego whitelisting, and since this will probably be a small fraction of the population spammers will *still* go out of business since their costs will exceed their returns.
Seems to me that people are making a mountain out of a molehole, and one that already has a solution. Hell, the solution is already part of most email services!
She (stupidly) placed the cup between her legs to get the lid off
"Stupidly" is right. And regardless of any other condition, the fact that she did this makes HER responsible for anything that followed. Blaming it on McDonald's after the fact is ludicrous.
THe problem then is that justice is decided by who has the best reflexes, not who is right.
It would be decided by who's the better shot, not who has the faster reflexes. Most people can't hit a stationary target beyond thirty feet with a handgun (and that includes those of you who play Counterstrike). Under less-than-perfect conditions (e.g., the target is firing back or moving) accuracy decreases markedly, even among the trained.
Make every effort to contribute to society in a positive way.
No thanks. I don't want to live in a society where a bunch of self-righteous assholes can force me to contribute to the 'greater good' (whatever they happen to define that as), or punish me if I refuse. That sort of tripe is a justification for slavery.
I'd replace your 4. above with this:
4. Mind your owned goddamned business. Unless your neighbor is harming a person or a person's property then do everyone a favor by fucking off.
Most people won't, though. Like with Yahoo's 100 MB and gmail's 1 GB, the vast majority of users will never come close to maxing out their accounts. The driving force behind the use of webmail isn't storage space but - wait for the drumroll! - the ability to send and receive email on any computer with an internet connection.
There will always be a few geeks who use the storage space as a transfer point for large files, or to back up all of their music so they can download it onto any computer they log into, or for the compulsives because they just can't bear to delete old email and are too lazy to download and archive it on their hard drives. And for others it's a kind of dick-measuring contest, where the size of their email storage account is used to make up for certain personal deficiencies.
But for most users webmail is just for email, and most attachments won't exceed more than a few megabytes when a family member sends along some pictures of a vacation or birthday part. Overselling makes sense when you consider that the number of 'power users' is only going to amount to a tiny fraction of your customer base. And when you take into account that the power users who abuse the system by registering a hundred accounts and then filling them up with pron/movies/whatever will get booted when an internal security program matches the i.p. address of the loser to these accounts.
I very much doubt you'd need more than 10% of the storage space you're advertising. In gmail's case you could probably get by with less than 5% of the advertised storage space, especially if you make a point of kicking off the losers who abuse the system.
The bottom line is you don't understand India or any other nation, and you never will.
If that's what you think then it's clear that YOU will never understand the United States, or any other nation. But that's okay: as an American I don't give a shit whether you understand my country or not. Your 'understanding' doesn't mean jack to me.
Don't think you can solve our problems, at least until you've fixed your own.
I don't want to solve your problems. I could give a rat's ass about your problems. They're YOUR problems. The only thing I want to do where India is concerned is raise massive trade tariffs against goods made in, or service provided from, India. Other than that I don't give a damn whether you colonize the moon or fall into the ocean.
2. The partition of India, Kashmir, Tibet, etc. are the sort of humiliating events that a proud culture simply cannot stand.
What the hell? India as we know it now wasn't anything like a single unified state when the British arrived. It was, in fact, a conglomeration of states, many ruled by nothing more than a local warlord who made good.
India wasn't 'partitioned'; there was no nation known as 'India' prior to the arrival of the British.
It's their money, they can do whatever they want with it. Who are you to say otherwise?
In any event India is a Third World shithole with a society completely centered on an appalling caste system not much better than outright slavery for the vast majority of the population. One more hospital isn't going to change this fact, nor do anything to alter a society whose very foundation is based on overwhelming oppression of the masses.
Max
Re:Is this really something the public can accept?
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 1
then how can we convince this same uneducated public to adopt nuclear batteries?
By showing the public that the fanatics in the green movement are no more credible than the loons in PETA? The public as a whole already thinks that PETA is composed of a bunch of crazy wild-eyed pot-smoking hippies bent on 'freeing' the steaks from their fridge; with our friend 'market spin' it shouldn't be too hard to equate critics of the batteries with the rest of the crazies.
Apart from that there is hope. About a year ago I read on article on environmentalist views held by a cross-section of the U.S. population, in terms of percentages. It turns out that the vast majority of hard-core environmentalists are concentrated in the over-40 age group (boomers); those under forty tended to be more environmentally aware than their parents were, but far less likely to hold strong or extremist beliefs. For example, the under-40 crowd were likely to answer in favor of hydroelectric power over preservation of fish species, to prefer incentives to recycle rather than punishments for failing to do so, and saw nuclear power as a possible solution to an energy crisis rather than as a threat because of the hazards of operation.
What that means is that most of our environmental extremists are concentrated in a single generation. Nearly all of these people will be retired within twenty years, and of course their numbers are dwindling as they get culled by disease, accidents, and old age. Even if the rest of us prove unable to defeat the fanatics when it comes to nuclear power (or derivative developments, like this battery), time alone will do the job for us. In twenty years, thirty years tops, most of the unthinking opposition to all things technology will be dead and gone, leaving us to do as we please.
If you think you're some sort of modern version of the Renaissance Man, think again. No human being alive today can master more than a fraction of the knowledge available; the days of being a jack of all trades are long past.
What they found is that at the end of the day, their costs didn't go down using Linux instead of Windows..... they went up!
That is, until Microsoft offered them a hefty chunk of change under the table to switch back to MS and make a big deal about it in an 'impartial' news article. After that, costs dropped to zero! Hey, that's what our accountant is putting on our tax returns, at any rate.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, I actually have some use for my Windows partition other than playing games!
Max
NO.
YES.
Maybe that is the root of the problem.
I think the root of the problem is that slashdot doesn't have any real competition. There are other sites like it but those sites don't have the same appeal. Clone and improve slashdot and I'm willing to bet people will jump to the new site the same way they jumped from older search engines to Google.
Then Slashdot would have to improve itself in order to compete. Sounds good to me.
After all, we're always yammering on here about the evils of monopoly and the wonders of competition. Slashdot doesn't get a free pass just because a few geeks can't deal with the idea of 'choice' in their neck of the woods.
Max
If so.... what can be done to change this?
Start a site that competes with slashdot? Perhaps one where the editors can master the basics of grammar and are willing to use a spell-checker? One that posts news articles in a timely fashion, rather than days, weeks, months, or sometimes even *years* later? And one where karma-bombers and folks with vendettas aren't rewarded for their childish behavior?
Call it something like "No Signal". Oooh, I like that! Copyright! Copyright!
Max
This coming with someone whose balls are so small he has to post as an anonymous coward.
Max
Moreover, if you don't like your profession, you're unlikely to be any good at it.
Cites? Statistics? Empirical evidence?
Besides, any job requiring more than two brain cells will involve considerable social and communication skills, which you are unikely to get from plodders, however "competent".
The possession or lack of social skills has nothing to do with competence.
And you will do so *because* you have the motivation.
And it's no different whether your motivation is because you like or job, or you like making money at your job. Both will drive a person to excellence, and neither is superior to the other.
Max
Well, he seems to know which ones since he has a specific number. I challenge him to list the 283 patents that Linux supposedly violates.
I also challenge him to reveal his bank transaction journal to see if any large sums have been deposited into his account sometime in the last year, perhaps from his 'consulting' work with Microsoft....
Max
There's nothing wrong with choosing a profession based on the idea that you want to get rich off of it. That's part and parcel of the American way, whether you happen to like it or not.
As far as job performance goes, the motivation for doing a good job is irrelevant. Whether you're out to make money and nothing else, or work at the job because you happen to like it, excellent performance is what any sane company looks for. Those who can't perform are fired, period.
When *I* was hiring I took people who could do the job and do it well. Their motivations were beside the point. Quite frankly, because I didn't give a good goddamn how much you 'loved' your job if the guy who came in before you was significantly better at it than you were. That's what hobbies are for.
Max
People love to jump off fads and disavow them.
Especially people who haven't grown up yet, e.g., 'rebellious' goth teens and college students who jump at the opportunity to slam Britney Spears while promoting some half-assed garage band that sounds like shit. Most self-proclaimed critics and pundits also belong to this group; they're nothing more than an adult version of the teen rebel, trying to sell the fact that their negative criticisms and fad-slamming are somehow indicative of a superior intellect.
What's especially pathetic is that a good many of these idiots were not only the first to abandon the bandwagon but the first to jump on it as well. And they'll do the same thing over and over again, and people will *still* believe they have something worthwhile to say.
Max
Reading comprehension might be of some use to you. Try taking a gander at the post again to see if you can comprehend *why* businesses need no spam protection if Joe Consumer is white-listed.
And apart from businesses, most people don't want email from strangers any more than they want phone calls from them.
Max
But that's not how it looks to anyone with half a brain. Han firing first is simple common sense and self-preservation; waiting for the other guy to take a shot at slagging you before you return fire is just plain stupid.
Han was supposed to be a smart, cynical smuggler primarily motivated by self-interest (which is in fact a good thing, despite what some 'holier-than-thou' types vomit when poked with a stick). Not some fuckwit with a penchant for playing suicide games.
Max
Either you've got the spark or you don't.
And if American management is our measure of leadership, we probably don't even have a hundred points of light, much less a thousand.
Max
Whitelisting is an acceptable solution to the problem of spam. Most of the people who use email are *not* businesses and they only get mail from friends and family; a whitelist will leave their inboxes spam-free. If they want to get email from someone they've met on a forum or elsewhere they can easily add that person to their whitelist.
As for companies it doesn't matter whether they get spammed or not. They aren't part of the target base that make spammers money. If everyone is using white-listing except for businesses, the spammers will go bankrupt; mass white-listing for individual consumers will solve the problem for businesses as well, if indirectly.
I really don't see what the problem is here. The vast majority of email users aren't interested in getting mail from people they don't know. Those that are interested can forego whitelisting, and since this will probably be a small fraction of the population spammers will *still* go out of business since their costs will exceed their returns.
Seems to me that people are making a mountain out of a molehole, and one that already has a solution. Hell, the solution is already part of most email services!
Max
She (stupidly) placed the cup between her legs to get the lid off
"Stupidly" is right. And regardless of any other condition, the fact that she did this makes HER responsible for anything that followed. Blaming it on McDonald's after the fact is ludicrous.
She was an idiot, plain and simple.
Max
THe problem then is that justice is decided by who has the best reflexes, not who is right.
It would be decided by who's the better shot, not who has the faster reflexes. Most people can't hit a stationary target beyond thirty feet with a handgun (and that includes those of you who play Counterstrike). Under less-than-perfect conditions (e.g., the target is firing back or moving) accuracy decreases markedly, even among the trained.
Max
Make every effort to contribute to society in a positive way.
No thanks. I don't want to live in a society where a bunch of self-righteous assholes can force me to contribute to the 'greater good' (whatever they happen to define that as), or punish me if I refuse. That sort of tripe is a justification for slavery.
I'd replace your 4. above with this:
4. Mind your owned goddamned business. Unless your neighbor is harming a person or a person's property then do everyone a favor by fucking off.
Max
Therefore, things will never change.
Perhaps not, without violence.
Max
Most people won't, though. Like with Yahoo's 100 MB and gmail's 1 GB, the vast majority of users will never come close to maxing out their accounts. The driving force behind the use of webmail isn't storage space but - wait for the drumroll! - the ability to send and receive email on any computer with an internet connection.
There will always be a few geeks who use the storage space as a transfer point for large files, or to back up all of their music so they can download it onto any computer they log into, or for the compulsives because they just can't bear to delete old email and are too lazy to download and archive it on their hard drives. And for others it's a kind of dick-measuring contest, where the size of their email storage account is used to make up for certain personal deficiencies.
But for most users webmail is just for email, and most attachments won't exceed more than a few megabytes when a family member sends along some pictures of a vacation or birthday part. Overselling makes sense when you consider that the number of 'power users' is only going to amount to a tiny fraction of your customer base. And when you take into account that the power users who abuse the system by registering a hundred accounts and then filling them up with pron/movies/whatever will get booted when an internal security program matches the i.p. address of the loser to these accounts.
I very much doubt you'd need more than 10% of the storage space you're advertising. In gmail's case you could probably get by with less than 5% of the advertised storage space, especially if you make a point of kicking off the losers who abuse the system.
Max
Fifty years from now, if we're *really* lucky, there'll be hundreds of human beings on Mars producing garbage left and right. I certainly hope so.
Max
The bottom line is you don't understand India or any other nation, and you never will.
If that's what you think then it's clear that YOU will never understand the United States, or any other nation. But that's okay: as an American I don't give a shit whether you understand my country or not. Your 'understanding' doesn't mean jack to me.
Don't think you can solve our problems, at least until you've fixed your own.
I don't want to solve your problems. I could give a rat's ass about your problems. They're YOUR problems. The only thing I want to do where India is concerned is raise massive trade tariffs against goods made in, or service provided from, India. Other than that I don't give a damn whether you colonize the moon or fall into the ocean.
Max
What would happen to the US if we had scientific-minded leaders?
All the pork would go to the NSF instead of the Transportation Department.
Max
2. The partition of India, Kashmir, Tibet, etc. are the sort of humiliating events that a proud culture simply cannot stand.
What the hell? India as we know it now wasn't anything like a single unified state when the British arrived. It was, in fact, a conglomeration of states, many ruled by nothing more than a local warlord who made good.
India wasn't 'partitioned'; there was no nation known as 'India' prior to the arrival of the British.
Max
It's their money, they can do whatever they want with it. Who are you to say otherwise?
In any event India is a Third World shithole with a society completely centered on an appalling caste system not much better than outright slavery for the vast majority of the population. One more hospital isn't going to change this fact, nor do anything to alter a society whose very foundation is based on overwhelming oppression of the masses.
Max
then how can we convince this same uneducated public to adopt nuclear batteries?
By showing the public that the fanatics in the green movement are no more credible than the loons in PETA? The public as a whole already thinks that PETA is composed of a bunch of crazy wild-eyed pot-smoking hippies bent on 'freeing' the steaks from their fridge; with our friend 'market spin' it shouldn't be too hard to equate critics of the batteries with the rest of the crazies.
Apart from that there is hope. About a year ago I read on article on environmentalist views held by a cross-section of the U.S. population, in terms of percentages. It turns out that the vast majority of hard-core environmentalists are concentrated in the over-40 age group (boomers); those under forty tended to be more environmentally aware than their parents were, but far less likely to hold strong or extremist beliefs. For example, the under-40 crowd were likely to answer in favor of hydroelectric power over preservation of fish species, to prefer incentives to recycle rather than punishments for failing to do so, and saw nuclear power as a possible solution to an energy crisis rather than as a threat because of the hazards of operation.
What that means is that most of our environmental extremists are concentrated in a single generation. Nearly all of these people will be retired within twenty years, and of course their numbers are dwindling as they get culled by disease, accidents, and old age. Even if the rest of us prove unable to defeat the fanatics when it comes to nuclear power (or derivative developments, like this battery), time alone will do the job for us. In twenty years, thirty years tops, most of the unthinking opposition to all things technology will be dead and gone, leaving us to do as we please.
Max
If you think you're some sort of modern version of the Renaissance Man, think again. No human being alive today can master more than a fraction of the knowledge available; the days of being a jack of all trades are long past.
And that includes you.
Max
What they found is that at the end of the day, their costs didn't go down using Linux instead of Windows..... they went up!
That is, until Microsoft offered them a hefty chunk of change under the table to switch back to MS and make a big deal about it in an 'impartial' news article. After that, costs dropped to zero! Hey, that's what our accountant is putting on our tax returns, at any rate.
Max