[Disclaimer: My father was his union's president for 1 1/2 years and is still active. Both of my parents come from blue-collar labor families. I'm biased. *grin*]
Good idea if done right, horrible idea if not.
The principle behind unions was, and is, a good one. The execution sometimes sucks. And unfortunately, the fact that the execution sucks quite frequently in recent years gives people who really ought to know better an excuse to go screaming "Unions BAD!"
My father's a professor at a community college. He's been there for 22 years. He has ALWAYS worked his ass off for them.
Contract negotiations go beyond simple issues of "how much are we getting paid?" or "how can we make sure we don't get fired unless we do something illegal or are completely inept at our jobs?" While Dad was union president, aside from the issue of contracts that take so long to negotiate that they make the NYS budget look timely, there were several other things that needed consideration. The two specific big issues I remember were the question of domestic-partner benefits, and the issue of how to properly compensate a professor for a class that has regular and distance-learning attendees.
Especially that second issue is something that management is utterly clueless about there. Which brings me to why I think some sort of union or professional association is a damn good idea: People IN the profession know the most about how it's supposed to work. People who aren't doing the work get really silly ideas on the subject. (Like the idea that an essentially doubled class isn't going to create ANY extra work at all and should not be compensated.)
This is sort of similar to the industry-standards argument. And I know that getting programmers to agree on things and to organize is going to be like herding cats. But programmers need to remember that they're still building the cyber-infrastructure, just as surely as the people who built highways in the 1930s were building an infrastructure. Once things are in place, demand for that sort of work is likely to go down, and jobs won't be "there for the taking" anymore. They'll still be THERE, just like we still need construction workers, but the current situation's not going to last.
Once the computing boom is over (which will happen -- it may be 5 months or 50 years form now, but it WILL happen), the industry is going to be screwed if it doesn't have some guidelines in place.
And simply put, there is NO WAY that it will be able to catch them all. Colloquial phrases are always changing. Remember "Don't have a cow, man"?
And no-equivalent-phrase is always a pain to deal with. I studied advanced French and came across the occasional "not-really-translate-able" phrase. Those are not fun.
Online friends of mine are blind and use text-readers. They have enough problems with mispronunciation and tripping over *emphasized* words on a system that doesn't allow for HTML formatting.
And Babelfish online has made some interesting mistakes. Can't remember the URL, but lokisdottir over on Geocities posted some translations of her writing to another language and back again to show how badly Babelfish can mess up.
There are a few separate issues when dealing with welfare-as-social-problem.
1. As a whole, American society does a lot to discourage intelligence. This goes up exponentially in under-class neighborhoods.
2. Money for welfare, and the minimum wage, take a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores little problems like cost-of-living.
3. Welfare as it is currently set up discourages families from staying together, and people from finding work. Not surprising, since it was originally set up as sort of a "pension plan" for widows with young children, until they could find another husband to provide for them.
Speaking from personal experience of having recently been unemployed for a month, being out of work is demoralizing. It is depressing. Helplessness sets in pretty damn fast for some people. And I know I have a good skill set and good references, and a father who will bail me out of severe financial problems. For someone who has none of these things, being out of work can be outright terrifying, and welfare or illegal activities their only way to survive.
Vicious cycle, anyone? Again from personal experience, I used to spend a lot of time with a group of friends my cousin refers to as "The Lost Boys" (I was Wendy, basically). They were around my age (I'm 21; they range from 19-22), had all dropped out or flunked out of college, had part-time jobs at pizza parlors or Wal-Mart (or no jobs at all), and still lived with their parents.
I haven't lived with my parents since I was 16 (though they were still helping me financially until slightly after I got out of college, and will still bail me in a crisis). I got my degree when I was 19. I had/have a full time non-WalMart job (at the time it was in the security vault of a bank, now it's at the local utility company as a technical writer).
Being around the Lost Boys was kind of frightening for me, even though one is my ex and one (slightly more responsible and level-headed than the rest) is my boyfriend. None of them are stupid. But only one of them (my boyfriend) gives a damn of ever making anything of himself. (Well, except for the one who predicts a Shadowrun-like scenario in the aftermath of Y2K and thinks he's going to be this powerful wizard, but that's another story!)
And these are all guys with successful, intelligent parents. One has a very "together" younger sister. They have examples. The folks my age in the underclass tend not to have very good examples.
One of the reasons my boyfriend and I don't hang out with them much anymore is the anti-success peer pressure. They seemed to find it amusing that I didn't want to sit in Denny's until 2:30 AM on a weekday because I had to be at work at 8 the next morning. "Corporate drone!" they say. Yeah, but I have rent to pay, unlike some people. Better to be a corporate drone with my OWN roof over my OWN head than a bum sponging off Mommy and Daddy or Big Brother. But a scary amount of people don't see it that way.:/
Yeah, they can be a pain. But it all comes down to money, in the end. Fortunately, some things that save the company money also save you hassles.
Overtime pay is time and a half. If you ARE regularly working 80-hour weeks, it's probably likely to be more cost-effective to hire another person and let both of you work 40 hours. Either that or you're underpaid to begin with.;)
Besides the expense of paying for overtime, there's also the issue of increased time on the job = increased fatigue = increased likelihood of injuries. True, this was developed for hard-labor jobs, but does anyone here REALLY want carpal tunnel syndrome?:)
Injuries mean workers' comp claims, health insurance costs going up, loss of time from employees -- and eventually, a company that nobody wants to work for.
It is kind of sad that good business practice actually has to be regulated....
You aren't the sort of person I'm complaining about here. Just so you know:)
The folks that get to me on this issue are the ones who think that it's just fine and dandy to overspecialize in the IT flavor of the month, or in some really narrow and obscure "classic" field, or concentrate entirely on math and science that the general public doesn't understand WITHOUT the knowledge of how to make it understandable. Yet specializing in science fiction is "fluff," and specializing in mass media studies is "sitting around watching Leave it to Beaver all day."
THOSE are the people I'm taking issue with. And I know a hell of a lot of 'em, both from the math/science/CS side and from the literary side.
That said, there are two ways to have a useful science fiction degree. One is to have it as a possible concentration within English. The appropriate analogy here is a technical theater degree. Yes, you may really want to be a light/sound designer, but you still have to take the survey of technical theater course, you still have to take Shakespeare and classes in contemporary plays, and you may even have to take an acting class or two.
The other possibility is to have this degree be an interdisciplinary study. The appropriate analogy here is environmental studies (and indeed, there may be some cross-over). An environmental studies program may include courses based in biology, chemistry, geography, psychology, sociology, and even English, as well as an interdisciplinary "specialty" course or two. However, you still need the appropriate background before beginning the courses in the various disciplines (no taking Advanced Ecology without a foundation in basic biology, and probably chemistry and calculus as well).
The advantages this could offer? Motivation to take the background courses in order to get to the specifics. Someone who is going to work hard to get a degree they WANT to get, not one that they think will hand them big bucks on a platter. Honestly, which would you rather have working for you?
(That, BTW, is the difference I see between specializing in science fiction and specializing in video games.)
Too bad you weren't there in the late '60s/early '70s. From what I've heard, they were doing some nifty design-your-own-degree programs.
Then again, I don't know what it's like there NOW, but considering that they are at least the only American university ever to have awarded a degree in Magic, they may well have gotten scared of doing "independent study" degrees.
So maybe Macbeth-as-Friday-the-13th was a slight overstatement. (BTW, I like Shakespeare, but have an intense dislike for that particular play, after once seeing a production of it that LOOKED like a cheap horror flick).
Perhaps a better comparison would be to Pulp Fiction, or to a Steven King novel.
Shakespeare may have been recognized as "talented," but at most the recognition while he was alive would be similar to that given to King or to Quentin Tarantino.
Theater was popular entertainment. And yes, a hell of a lot of people wanted the theaters closed. In fact, there's this lovely succession:
1. Plays are evil. (Puritans) 2. Fiction is evil. (Ditto) 3. Acting is an "immoral" occupation (You can still see this today if you look hard enough.) 4. Recent fiction is Bad; you should only read The Classics. 5. Science ficiton will rot your brain. (VERY prevalent attitude at the time that for instance, Ray Bradbury was doing his best-known work; as this thread shows, it still persists.) 6. Role-playing games are Satanic. 7. Goths, gamers, geeks, and other high-school misfits are all going to kill you.
All of the above comes from the same basic idea: "If it ain't in the Bible, it ain't true." Admittedly, those peddling the above aren't as likely to say so in so many words anymore... but it certainly is out there.
What's somebody with a scifi degree going to do, exactly? Edit a scifi zine?
What, exactly, is someone with any other sort of English degree going to do? Someone with a specialized degree in science fiction is probably going to do fairly similar things, and in certain cases are going to be even better suited to it.
1. Teach. There's the obvious one. A sci-fi specialized HS English teacher probably has the jump on one that is specialized in a given stereotypically-uninteresting-to-teens area.
2. Technical writer (which is what I do). Again, someone specialized in sci-fi, who has done it properly, is likely to have the edge over someone specialized in Victorian poetry or whatever, simply because the sci-fi specialized person is likely to be (or at least to be perceived as) more comfortable with technological terms than someone with a more "traditional" English specialization.
3. Write! As a career, even. Not viable for most people, but the possibility exists.
4. With an appropriate minor or double major, a myriad of possibilities open up. A major in science fiction, if done correctly, should be a great lesson in "thinking outside the box." The lessons it teaches would be a great asset to (off the top of my head) computer science (obviously), environmental science, psychology, law, engineering, and possibly even medicine.
OK, so having the article use "Will Robots Take Over The World?" as a sample essay topic was bad form. Then again, I was a communication major, and I had my fair share of inquiries as to whether it was really true that we spent most of our classes watching Leave It to Beaver re-runs and Ricki Lake.
It was nowhere near that simple. Some classes did study Ricki Lake, or the ads that get displayed on the Super Bowl. However, I also learned how to write for print and broadcast media and how to operate sound and video editing equipment. I also took courses on communication ethics (this was one place where discussing Ricki Lake made some amount of sense, unfortunately), the psychology behind advertising and public relations, and I wrote a 25-page research paper tracking media coverage of specific environmental issues during five different years (over a 40-year span) that had major environmental news stories.
Returning to the topic of a science fiction degree, there's much more to study than "Will Robots Take Over the World?" Off the top of my head, at work, I can think of:
1. Common ground between science fiction and actual science, especially studying older science fiction and comparing the "predictions" to current reality.
2. Artificial intelligence and the myriad ethical issues it brings up, starting with Asimov's Laws of Robotics and going on to projects like Ghostwheel, and how we should react and "help" (or not) if our creations suddenly gain self-awareness.
3. The end of work. Again, more ethics: Is it ethical to create an intelligent race of slaves? What does this say about the value (or lack thereof) of human creativity? In this era of Wal-Marts on every corner, this is pretty relevant, I should think.
4. Science as religion or as replacement for religion. Perhaps along with this the correlations (or lack thereof) between "technology" and "magic."
There's probably a lot more, but I have to get back to work. But seriously, folks, this is not as silly as it sounds.
There isn't even agreement within the/. community and others like it about the precise differences between a "hacker" and a "cracker."
On other/. discussions I've seen several options:
Option #1:
Hackers and crackers are nothing alike, and how dare you confuse the two!?
Option #2:
Hackers and crackers are two separate groups. Some hackers are crackers; some crackers are hackers. However, belonging to one category does not imply membership in the other. (This is my personal take on the subject.)
Option #3:
Crackers are a "specialized" form of hacker, but not all hackers are also crackers.
Option #3a:
Crackers are "immature" or "underdeveloped" hackers that either need to grow and mature or need to be ignored by the more "mature" hackers.
Unfortunately, with all this confusion, we end up with Option #4: Just call 'em all hackers because it's less confusing.
I was an English minor in college. I would have been a major, but I ran out of time/money and came up a few courses short.
I'm intending to go to grad school for English, and my areas of interest are poetry (studying and writing), Icelandic sagas, and -- you got it -- science fiction. The school I'm looking at has a course on science fiction, and one on fantasy. They also have a sci-fi/fantasy writers' workshop.
Science fiction has been censored, ignored, and dismissed as "not-serious" by academics for far too long. There's trash, to be sure, but there are "classics," and there is a vast middle ground between the classics and the trash. And let's face it, much of what we now call "classic" was not perceived as such at the time. Shakespeare's Macbeth was the Friday the 13th of its day, more or less.
While I was in school, I wrote as many papers on sci-fi and fantasy authors as I could get away with. The one I'm happiest with compared the book and movie versions of The Wizard of Oz, and showed how the story was distorted from a children's fantasy story into a story about the dangers of fantasy and the "need" to be content with the "real world." [I think it's a horrible corruption of L. Frank Baum's work, but I digress.]
Run, don't walk, and get thee a copy for Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing. I can't remember the title right this second (at work and don't have the book in front of me), but the book includes an excellent essay on the suppression of speculative fiction in schools.
Sure, a degree in science fiction may not be the most useful thing in the world, but is it really any less an indicator of intelligence than a degree in, say, medieval studies? I think not.
And for those of you who will insist that degrees must be Immediately Useful and Practical, and that Reading Books Is A Waste Of Time? Shut up and go away. I mean that in the nicest way possible.;)
My father is a particularly scary example of said hero complex. And it has taken a toll on EVERYthing -- his other friendships, his marriage, and more recently his physical health. He's convinced that the place will fall apart without him, or something. Not cool.
I had that complex for a little while -- taking half an hour out of a one-hour lunch to "get things done," working overtime literally EVERY time the boss was looking for someone to do it, skipping breaks, and never calling in sick -- I went to work with a 102-degree fever and no voice rather than stay home because "people count on this department."
The thanks I got for the above? A review that admitted I was an excellent worker, but criticized my perceived arrogance. Thanks for nothing.
I gave myself the Christmas present of quitting the damn thing, and briefly went to the other extreme (slacking too much at work). The temp assignments ended, and I ended up floating around being unemployed for about a month.
Now I've got a new job, one I really like, and I'm working pretty hard at it (Slashdot is reserved for lunch-breaks and the couple of minutes I might get to work early now, at least until I get better net-access at home.... *grin*)
However, I've learned my lesson, and I have no intention of repeating my father's mistakes.
After all, what do you get out of working yourself too hard?
More money? Not usually, if you're on salary. Besides, when do you have the time to enjoy it?
The boss is happier? Again, not too likely, speaking from VERY bitter experience.
Control over "your" job? Um, more than likely, the stuff's going to be obsolete in the future, and your name won't be immortalized by it.
Besides, if you're sleep-depriving yourself constantly to do more work, work is controlling YOU... not the other way around.
And while I, personally, wouldn't really want to carry around a gun, I've often wished that my SCA dagger was street-legal (damn laws against double-edged knives in this state... *sigh*).
Admittedly, I think that carrying around ANYthing without using your brains and staying alert to the world around you is a Bad Idea(tm). 'course, I used to drive my friends absolutely bonkers because I refused to wait for the escort cars at college. But the way I see that is this: I can stand around outside for 15 minutes and wait for the car to take me home, or I can walk home in the same 15 minutes. If I'm standing around waiting, the potential predator KNOWS I'm scared to walk home alone, and will use that against me. If I walk like I know where I'm going, it's that much less likely to be a problem. Admittedly, there is no perfect way to stay safe. But if something like the Techno-Bra gets more women to think they can go about their daily business without being afraid of the world around them (without thinking they don't have to be alert to potential problems), this is a good thing.:)
However, I can think of all kinds of ways the Techno-Bra could get abused. Like Daddy Dearest making his little girl wear this on dates, so if she gets um, "excited," it will call him... and not telling her how to turn it off. *grin* That could be, um, awkward.;)
Memories of an old professor of mine who said that my writing was "like a string of Christmas lights" -- too many little bright spots, any ONE of which could have been a paper topic, and not developed enough. I finally "broke the code" on the last paper I wrote for him, and got an A- despite turning it in late.:)
"Hazards of the Net" is a very broad topic. At that point, I wouldn't even be sure what you meant -- physical hazards? net-addiction? FBI arrests of teenage hackers? security system breaches? something else entirely?
Beyond that, something else good to look at might be the old/. discussion on programmer burnout. Pretty important social-issue-wise, I think.
And as for my own thoughts/personal experiences on Net-as-social-circle (warning, this could get LONG):
I made many LOCAL friends on the 'net my first two semesters at SUNY Geneseo. One of my floormates and his old friends had put together a MUD, and soon I was "living on" it, and so were a lot of other people at my school. It also gave me a way to keep in touch with a friend from my previous school who was in Michigan.
I later branched out, started hanging out on BBSes, and I have literally talked to someone on every continent including Antarctica (OK, so that was my uncle, who was doing Navy research there). I have at least six net-friends in Australia who swear that the first thing they'll do if they win the lottery is send me a plane ticket. I've been sent TimTams, and I have sent Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups. I was one of two American sysops on an Australian BBS (and the other also went to my school).
I've found Web pages that have made me smile and say, "So I'm not the only one who thinks this! Maybe I'm not crazy after all...." I've dated people I met online (am still friends with most of 'em). I now run an Amber game that is about 1/4 old RL friends of mine, 1/4 old net-friends of mine, and 1/2 people from a mailing list or their friends who said it sounded fun and wanted to play. I've gotten to meet a couple of the new friends at Pennsic, and have become especially close to one of them.
Now all this is lovely, but the Net has had a down-side. I was online when I should have been in class or doing work. My grades suffered, etc. However, in my particular case, all the Net was doing was giving me extra delivered-to-the-door opportunities to "hang out" with my friends and read interesting information, two things I did too much of WITHOUT the Net. (I also had problems doing library research because I would invariably get distracted by something else.)
In my experience, there seem to be three kinds of (for lack of a better term) "net addicts":
1. The ones who (for instance) had a tight circle of friends in high school or through something like CTY that then scatters everywhere, and who use the Net to try to hold on to those friends, sometimes at the expense of making friends or finding things to do in their real, physical location.
2. Info-junkies. (I admit, I fall into this category.) Generally, people who have a fairly obscure or specialized interest or set of interests. They'll search the net for every scrap of info on their chosen categories, spend tons of time on Usenet debating the finer points of their interets, etc. They generally get "hooked" because there aren't enough local people who share their obsession, or else all the "locals" are online as well. (This has been me with various topics: Amber, the band Rush, and Norse pagan/Viking history, to name three recent ones.) The net.goths might be a good example of this as well.
3. (IMHO, the most dangerous.) The folks who are genuinely using the Net as a way to avoid dealing with people face-to-face. Can be an outgrowth of either of the above. I've also seen this with some of the les/bi/gay teenagers I've talked to online, especially if they come from conservative households and are scared to come out. The Net becomes the only place that knows their "secret," and basically becomes a security blanket. Alternatively, I've seen this with people who just don't like themselves and are putting forth a new "persona" online.
Now with all three types, there can be problems as far as avoidance of reality. But the first two are easy to at least cut down on -- find compatible local people (over the net if you must!) and make an effort to spend time with them.
The last one is the one that scares me. A.J. Chodan (my real name) isn't THAT different of a person from fable2112. Or at the very least, there is nothing within fable2112 that *isn't* also part of A.J. I'm long-winded and opinionated IRL, too. (And that said, I'll shut up now!):)
At least they made the EFFORT to let their customers know what is going on. And, as I saw someone else post, it sounds like a temporary, emergency measure, not like generalized policy.
This is better than the American ISPs with pre-installed censorware garbage. Especially Cybersitter.:P
(Someone refresh my memory here? I know there were a few out there that did this and either didn't publicize it at all or else didn't publicize exactly WHAT Cybersitter was blocking. And that's a story in and of itself....)
Having a WIDER audience with the power to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT read and discuss the Hellmouth series or this article is damn important if it gets them to do something about the problems described in the article. Otherwise, you're preaching more or less to the converted.
I know that a lot of people would like to shut their eyes and pretend the Outside World from their particular interests doesn't exist. Hell, I'm as guilty of that as the next person. But that's not going to happen. We (whatever "we" is comprised of) DO need to interact with the "outside world" once in a while.
It is (I think)legal to make a single copy to a cassette so that you can play it in your car in addition to your home stereo. It is also legal to lend/give away/whatever your copy of the CD to someone else. Hell, it's even legal to sell the darn thing back at a used CD shop.
In addition, it is CERTAINLY legal to play the CD while someone else is in the house. Not so legal if you're "commercially broadcasting" with no license, but that's different.
What I don't like about this law is that it would be like saying you can't sell your CDs along with your stereo if you decided to do that for some reason. (Maybe you got a minidisc player, love minidiscs, and want all your music in that format? Meanwhile, your kid sister is getting her first ever stereo...)
And if you want to be really inane about all this, I'm a temp. The software I use is registered to the person I'm filling in for while she's on disability. Looks like I'm breaking the law or something.:P
The point isn't that Jon Katz, author, is getting linked all over the Web. The point is that the articles he wrote are getting linked all over the Web. Some of these articles are on some pretty important topics. The Hellmouth series was one (and was how I found/. in the first place); this issue is another.
And the default moderation for/. is oldest posts first, and everything from 0 on up. Which means that someone following a link to the site might end up seeing a bunch of "Why Katz Sucks" appended to the bottom of the Katz's writing. Or worse yet, just plain "Katz sucks" (though admittedly that's more likely to get the negative 1 rating).
I don't think Katz is tooting his own horn here. I'm a writer myself and recently got accused of doing the same thing. I think the point he is trying to make is the exact opposite: this stuff is important to him, it's getting talked about outside the usual/. audience, and a bunch of "Shut up!" posts from within the/. community itself is going to ruin the chance we've got by getting the attention of the wider audience in the first place. Clear now?:)
The "Hellmouth" experience IS NOT "teasing" in any normal sense of the word. This is one of the big problems we seem to be having with being taken seriously. To some extent, I can accept that "teasing" is always going to go on. I cannot and WILL NOT accept that intimidation, physical abuse, rape/attempted rape, extortion (of lunch money or otherwise), etc. should be a valid part of high school "socialization," or that a school administration should look the other way as this goes on.
As for dangerous, go read this -- I think that the experiences of the author and his fiancee go beyond simple "teasing."
Oh, and BTW, Matthew Shephard was white. So is Damien Echols, who is on death row for a crime he obviously didn't commit, because he was seen as a freak and local law enforcement thought he was a "Satanist."
Race isn't the only thing that'll get you killed in this country, I'm afraid.
3) If any of this abuse occured off school grounds there is a pretty good chance that it would reported to the police if not prosecuted.
And therein lies the problem. If it had been anywhere but school, and my best friend from junior high had been thrown up against a wall and told "I'm going to f**k you before I leave town if it kills us both," that would have been prosecutable as assault and a threat of rape. What was she told? "He's just a flirt; if you can't handle that, it's your own fault."
If it had been anywhere but school, the floormate who was calling my answering machine and leaving messages like, "You should be dead, you f**king dyke!" would have been prosecuted. As it was, the resident director didn't believe me when I told her who it was (wouldn't even LISTEN TO the tape), and "public safety" told me there was nothing they could do.
Of course, in another school a few years later, it didn't stop a professor from prosecuting a student who e-mailed a death threat to him.
Typical. Adults deserve protection from kids; kids should suck up and deal.
Perhaps comparing the "Hellmouth" series and the protests against "geek-profiling" to the gay-rights movement isn't as far-fetched as Jean Dark seems to think it sounds.
For one thing, "faggot" and "sissy" and "dyke" are common names to call kids who don't fit in, regardless of their actual sexual orientation.
For another thing, authors like Jane Dark insisting that the "geeks" don't have problems is quite eerily akin to the studies funded by various homophobic groups who insist that homosexuals make more money than the poor "normal" folks, and that "they can change if they want to."
It's easy to argue whether intelligence is hereditary or environmental (or some combination of both), much like homosexuality. However, telling a smarter-than-average kid to "just stop being smart (read: showing off)" or telling a "geek" to "just try to fit in" is akin to telling a lesbian, gay man, or bisexual to "just stop being attracted to the same sex" or "just don't talk about your sick and immoral lifestyle."
A further question: When the problems of white, male, suburban kids who "don't fit the mold" are ignored by progressives, is it any wonder that some of them turn to the Far Right, when the Far Right is much more eager to welcome them? It's something to think about, in the opinion of this Left Wing bisexual female geek.
Slashdot Mirror
[Disclaimer: My father was his union's president for 1 1/2 years and is still active. Both of my parents come from blue-collar labor families. I'm biased. *grin*]
Good idea if done right, horrible idea if not.
The principle behind unions was, and is, a good one. The execution sometimes sucks. And unfortunately, the fact that the execution sucks quite frequently in recent years gives people who really ought to know better an excuse to go screaming "Unions BAD!"
My father's a professor at a community college. He's been there for 22 years. He has ALWAYS worked his ass off for them.
Contract negotiations go beyond simple issues of "how much are we getting paid?" or "how can we make sure we don't get fired unless we do something illegal or are completely inept at our jobs?" While Dad was union president, aside from the issue of contracts that take so long to negotiate that they make the NYS budget look timely, there were several other things that needed consideration. The two specific big issues I remember were the question of domestic-partner benefits, and the issue of how to properly compensate a professor for a class that has regular and distance-learning attendees.
Especially that second issue is something that management is utterly clueless about there. Which brings me to why I think some sort of union or professional association is a damn good idea: People IN the profession know the most about how it's supposed to work. People who aren't doing the work get really silly ideas on the subject. (Like the idea that an essentially doubled class isn't going to create ANY extra work at all and should not be compensated.)
This is sort of similar to the industry-standards argument. And I know that getting programmers to agree on things and to organize is going to be like herding cats. But programmers need to remember that they're still building the cyber-infrastructure, just as surely as the people who built highways in the 1930s were building an infrastructure. Once things are in place, demand for that sort of work is likely to go down, and jobs won't be "there for the taking" anymore. They'll still be THERE, just like we still need construction workers, but the current situation's not going to last.
Once the computing boom is over (which will happen -- it may be 5 months or 50 years form now, but it WILL happen), the industry is going to be screwed if it doesn't have some guidelines in place.
That's what I want to know.
And simply put, there is NO WAY that it will be able to catch them all. Colloquial phrases are always changing. Remember "Don't have a cow, man"?
And no-equivalent-phrase is always a pain to deal with. I studied advanced French and came across the occasional "not-really-translate-able" phrase. Those are not fun.
Online friends of mine are blind and use text-readers. They have enough problems with mispronunciation and tripping over *emphasized* words on a system that doesn't allow for HTML formatting.
And Babelfish online has made some interesting mistakes. Can't remember the URL, but lokisdottir over on Geocities posted some translations of her writing to another language and back again to show how badly Babelfish can mess up.
Instant translation? Not anytime soon. *shrug*
There are a few separate issues when dealing with welfare-as-social-problem.
1. As a whole, American society does a lot to discourage intelligence. This goes up exponentially in under-class neighborhoods.
2. Money for welfare, and the minimum wage, take a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores little problems like cost-of-living.
3. Welfare as it is currently set up discourages families from staying together, and people from finding work. Not surprising, since it was originally set up as sort of a "pension plan" for widows with young children, until they could find another husband to provide for them.
Speaking from personal experience of having recently been unemployed for a month, being out of work is demoralizing. It is depressing. Helplessness sets in pretty damn fast for some people. And I know I have a good skill set and good references, and a father who will bail me out of severe financial problems. For someone who has none of these things, being out of work can be outright terrifying, and welfare or illegal activities their only way to survive.
Vicious cycle, anyone? Again from personal experience, I used to spend a lot of time with a group of friends my cousin refers to as "The Lost Boys" (I was Wendy, basically). They were around my age (I'm 21; they range from 19-22), had all dropped out or flunked out of college, had part-time jobs at pizza parlors or Wal-Mart (or no jobs at all), and still lived with their parents.
I haven't lived with my parents since I was 16 (though they were still helping me financially until slightly after I got out of college, and will still bail me in a crisis). I got my degree when I was 19. I had/have a full time non-WalMart job (at the time it was in the security vault of a bank, now it's at the local utility company as a technical writer).
Being around the Lost Boys was kind of frightening for me, even though one is my ex and one (slightly more responsible and level-headed than the rest) is my boyfriend. None of them are stupid. But only one of them (my boyfriend) gives a damn of ever making anything of himself. (Well, except for the one who predicts a Shadowrun-like scenario in the aftermath of Y2K and thinks he's going to be this powerful wizard, but that's another story!)
And these are all guys with successful, intelligent parents. One has a very "together" younger sister. They have examples. The folks my age in the underclass tend not to have very good examples.
One of the reasons my boyfriend and I don't hang out with them much anymore is the anti-success peer pressure. They seemed to find it amusing that I didn't want to sit in Denny's until 2:30 AM on a weekday because I had to be at work at 8 the next morning. "Corporate drone!" they say. Yeah, but I have rent to pay, unlike some people. Better to be a corporate drone with my OWN roof over my OWN head than a bum sponging off Mommy and Daddy or Big Brother. But a scary amount of people don't see it that way.
Yeah, they can be a pain. But it all comes down to money, in the end. Fortunately, some things that save the company money also save you hassles.
Overtime pay is time and a half. If you ARE regularly working 80-hour weeks, it's probably likely to be more cost-effective to hire another person and let both of you work 40 hours. Either that or you're underpaid to begin with.
Besides the expense of paying for overtime, there's also the issue of increased time on the job = increased fatigue = increased likelihood of injuries. True, this was developed for hard-labor jobs, but does anyone here REALLY want carpal tunnel syndrome?
Injuries mean workers' comp claims, health insurance costs going up, loss of time from employees -- and eventually, a company that nobody wants to work for.
It is kind of sad that good business practice actually has to be regulated
You aren't the sort of person I'm complaining about here. Just so you know
The folks that get to me on this issue are the ones who think that it's just fine and dandy to overspecialize in the IT flavor of the month, or in some really narrow and obscure "classic" field, or concentrate entirely on math and science that the general public doesn't understand WITHOUT the knowledge of how to make it understandable. Yet specializing in science fiction is "fluff," and specializing in mass media studies is "sitting around watching Leave it to Beaver all day."
THOSE are the people I'm taking issue with. And I know a hell of a lot of 'em, both from the math/science/CS side and from the literary side.
That said, there are two ways to have a useful science fiction degree. One is to have it as a possible concentration within English. The appropriate analogy here is a technical theater degree. Yes, you may really want to be a light/sound designer, but you still have to take the survey of technical theater course, you still have to take Shakespeare and classes in contemporary plays, and you may even have to take an acting class or two.
The other possibility is to have this degree be an interdisciplinary study. The appropriate analogy here is environmental studies (and indeed, there may be some cross-over). An environmental studies program may include courses based in biology, chemistry, geography, psychology, sociology, and even English, as well as an interdisciplinary "specialty" course or two. However, you still need the appropriate background before beginning the courses in the various disciplines (no taking Advanced Ecology without a foundation in basic biology, and probably chemistry and calculus as well).
The advantages this could offer? Motivation to take the background courses in order to get to the specifics. Someone who is going to work hard to get a degree they WANT to get, not one that they think will hand them big bucks on a platter. Honestly, which would you rather have working for you?
(That, BTW, is the difference I see between specializing in science fiction and specializing in video games.)
Too bad you weren't there in the late '60s/early '70s. From what I've heard, they were doing some nifty design-your-own-degree programs.
Then again, I don't know what it's like there NOW, but considering that they are at least the only American university ever to have awarded a degree in Magic, they may well have gotten scared of doing "independent study" degrees.
;)
So maybe Macbeth-as-Friday-the-13th was a slight overstatement. (BTW, I like Shakespeare, but have an intense dislike for that particular play, after once seeing a production of it that LOOKED like a cheap horror flick).
Perhaps a better comparison would be to Pulp Fiction, or to a Steven King novel.
Shakespeare may have been recognized as "talented," but at most the recognition while he was alive would be similar to that given to King or to Quentin Tarantino.
Theater was popular entertainment. And yes, a hell of a lot of people wanted the theaters closed. In fact, there's this lovely succession:
1. Plays are evil. (Puritans)
2. Fiction is evil. (Ditto)
3. Acting is an "immoral" occupation (You can still see this today if you look hard enough.)
4. Recent fiction is Bad; you should only read The Classics.
5. Science ficiton will rot your brain. (VERY prevalent attitude at the time that for instance, Ray Bradbury was doing his best-known work; as this thread shows, it still persists.)
6. Role-playing games are Satanic.
7. Goths, gamers, geeks, and other high-school misfits are all going to kill you.
All of the above comes from the same basic idea: "If it ain't in the Bible, it ain't true." Admittedly, those peddling the above aren't as likely to say so in so many words anymore
What's somebody with a scifi degree going to do, exactly? Edit a scifi zine?
What, exactly, is someone with any other sort of English degree going to do? Someone with a specialized degree in science fiction is probably going to do fairly similar things, and in certain cases are going to be even better suited to it.
1. Teach. There's the obvious one. A sci-fi specialized HS English teacher probably has the jump on one that is specialized in a given stereotypically-uninteresting-to-teens area.
2. Technical writer (which is what I do). Again, someone specialized in sci-fi, who has done it properly, is likely to have the edge over someone specialized in Victorian poetry or whatever, simply because the sci-fi specialized person is likely to be (or at least to be perceived as) more comfortable with technological terms than someone with a more "traditional" English specialization.
3. Write! As a career, even. Not viable for most people, but the possibility exists.
4. With an appropriate minor or double major, a myriad of possibilities open up. A major in science fiction, if done correctly, should be a great lesson in "thinking outside the box." The lessons it teaches would be a great asset to (off the top of my head) computer science (obviously), environmental science, psychology, law, engineering, and possibly even medicine.
:)
OK, so having the article use "Will Robots Take Over The World?" as a sample essay topic was bad form. Then again, I was a communication major, and I had my fair share of inquiries as to whether it was really true that we spent most of our classes watching Leave It to Beaver re-runs and Ricki Lake.
It was nowhere near that simple. Some classes did study Ricki Lake, or the ads that get displayed on the Super Bowl. However, I also learned how to write for print and broadcast media and how to operate sound and video editing equipment. I also took courses on communication ethics (this was one place where discussing Ricki Lake made some amount of sense, unfortunately), the psychology behind advertising and public relations, and I wrote a 25-page research paper tracking media coverage of specific environmental issues during five different years (over a 40-year span) that had major environmental news stories.
Returning to the topic of a science fiction degree, there's much more to study than "Will Robots Take Over the World?" Off the top of my head, at work, I can think of:
1. Common ground between science fiction and actual science, especially studying older science fiction and comparing the "predictions" to current reality.
2. Artificial intelligence and the myriad ethical issues it brings up, starting with Asimov's Laws of Robotics and going on to projects like Ghostwheel, and how we should react and "help" (or not) if our creations suddenly gain self-awareness.
3. The end of work. Again, more ethics: Is it ethical to create an intelligent race of slaves? What does this say about the value (or lack thereof) of human creativity? In this era of Wal-Marts on every corner, this is pretty relevant, I should think.
4. Science as religion or as replacement for religion. Perhaps along with this the correlations (or lack thereof) between "technology" and "magic."
There's probably a lot more, but I have to get back to work. But seriously, folks, this is not as silly as it sounds.
There isn't even agreement within the
On other
Option #1:
Hackers and crackers are nothing alike, and how dare you confuse the two!?
Option #2:
Hackers and crackers are two separate groups. Some hackers are crackers; some crackers are hackers. However, belonging to one category does not imply membership in the other. (This is my personal take on the subject.)
Option #3:
Crackers are a "specialized" form of hacker, but not all hackers are also crackers.
Option #3a:
Crackers are "immature" or "underdeveloped" hackers that either need to grow and mature or need to be ignored by the more "mature" hackers.
Unfortunately, with all this confusion, we end up with Option #4: Just call 'em all hackers because it's less confusing.
I was an English minor in college. I would have been a major, but I ran out of time/money and came up a few courses short.
I'm intending to go to grad school for English, and my areas of interest are poetry (studying and writing), Icelandic sagas, and -- you got it -- science fiction. The school I'm looking at has a course on science fiction, and one on fantasy. They also have a sci-fi/fantasy writers' workshop.
Science fiction has been censored, ignored, and dismissed as "not-serious" by academics for far too long. There's trash, to be sure, but there are "classics," and there is a vast middle ground between the classics and the trash. And let's face it, much of what we now call "classic" was not perceived as such at the time. Shakespeare's Macbeth was the Friday the 13th of its day, more or less.
While I was in school, I wrote as many papers on sci-fi and fantasy authors as I could get away with. The one I'm happiest with compared the book and movie versions of The Wizard of Oz, and showed how the story was distorted from a children's fantasy story into a story about the dangers of fantasy and the "need" to be content with the "real world." [I think it's a horrible corruption of L. Frank Baum's work, but I digress.]
Run, don't walk, and get thee a copy for Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing. I can't remember the title right this second (at work and don't have the book in front of me), but the book includes an excellent essay on the suppression of speculative fiction in schools.
Sure, a degree in science fiction may not be the most useful thing in the world, but is it really any less an indicator of intelligence than a degree in, say, medieval studies? I think not.
And for those of you who will insist that degrees must be Immediately Useful and Practical, and that Reading Books Is A Waste Of Time? Shut up and go away. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Yes, indeed, and well said!
.... *grin*)
... not the other way around.
My father is a particularly scary example of said hero complex. And it has taken a toll on EVERYthing -- his other friendships, his marriage, and more recently his physical health. He's convinced that the place will fall apart without him, or something. Not cool.
I had that complex for a little while -- taking half an hour out of a one-hour lunch to "get things done," working overtime literally EVERY time the boss was looking for someone to do it, skipping breaks, and never calling in sick -- I went to work with a 102-degree fever and no voice rather than stay home because "people count on this department."
The thanks I got for the above? A review that admitted I was an excellent worker, but criticized my perceived arrogance. Thanks for nothing.
I gave myself the Christmas present of quitting the damn thing, and briefly went to the other extreme (slacking too much at work). The temp assignments ended, and I ended up floating around being unemployed for about a month.
Now I've got a new job, one I really like, and I'm working pretty hard at it (Slashdot is reserved for lunch-breaks and the couple of minutes I might get to work early now, at least until I get better net-access at home
However, I've learned my lesson, and I have no intention of repeating my father's mistakes.
After all, what do you get out of working yourself too hard?
More money? Not usually, if you're on salary.
Besides, when do you have the time to enjoy it?
The boss is happier? Again, not too likely, speaking from VERY bitter experience.
Control over "your" job? Um, more than likely, the stuff's going to be obsolete in the future, and your name won't be immortalized by it.
Besides, if you're sleep-depriving yourself constantly to do more work, work is controlling YOU
You just have to know what you are doing.
And while I, personally, wouldn't really want to carry around a gun, I've often wished that my SCA dagger was street-legal (damn laws against double-edged knives in this state
Admittedly, I think that carrying around ANYthing without using your brains and staying alert to the world around you is a Bad Idea(tm). 'course, I used to drive my friends absolutely bonkers because I refused to wait for the escort cars at college. But the way I see that is this: I can stand around outside for 15 minutes and wait for the car to take me home, or I can walk home in the same 15 minutes. If I'm standing around waiting, the potential predator KNOWS I'm scared to walk home alone, and will use that against me. If I walk like I know where I'm going, it's that much less likely to be a problem. Admittedly, there is no perfect way to stay safe. But if something like the Techno-Bra gets more women to think they can go about their daily business without being afraid of the world around them (without thinking they don't have to be alert to potential problems), this is a good thing.
However, I can think of all kinds of ways the Techno-Bra could get abused. Like Daddy Dearest making his little girl wear this on dates, so if she gets um, "excited," it will call him
Memories of an old professor of mine who said that my writing was "like a string of Christmas lights" -- too many little bright spots, any ONE of which could have been a paper topic, and not developed enough. I finally "broke the code" on the last paper I wrote for him, and got an A- despite turning it in late.
"Hazards of the Net" is a very broad topic. At that point, I wouldn't even be sure what you meant -- physical hazards? net-addiction? FBI arrests of teenage hackers? security system breaches? something else entirely?
Focus on something particular.
First off, I'll "third" the recommendation.
Beyond that, something else good to look at might be the old
And as for my own thoughts/personal experiences on Net-as-social-circle (warning, this could get LONG):
I made many LOCAL friends on the 'net my first two semesters at SUNY Geneseo. One of my floormates and his old friends had put together a MUD, and soon I was "living on" it, and so were a lot of other people at my school. It also gave me a way to keep in touch with a friend from my previous school who was in Michigan.
I later branched out, started hanging out on BBSes, and I have literally talked to someone on every continent including Antarctica (OK, so that was my uncle, who was doing Navy research there). I have at least six net-friends in Australia who swear that the first thing they'll do if they win the lottery is send me a plane ticket. I've been sent TimTams, and I have sent Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups. I was one of two American sysops on an Australian BBS (and the other also went to my school).
I've found Web pages that have made me smile and say, "So I'm not the only one who thinks this! Maybe I'm not crazy after all
Now all this is lovely, but the Net has had a down-side. I was online when I should have been in class or doing work. My grades suffered, etc. However, in my particular case, all the Net was doing was giving me extra delivered-to-the-door opportunities to "hang out" with my friends and read interesting information, two things I did too much of WITHOUT the Net. (I also had problems doing library research because I would invariably get distracted by something else.)
In my experience, there seem to be three kinds of (for lack of a better term) "net addicts":
1. The ones who (for instance) had a tight circle of friends in high school or through something like CTY that then scatters everywhere, and who use the Net to try to hold on to those friends, sometimes at the expense of making friends or finding things to do in their real, physical location.
2. Info-junkies. (I admit, I fall into this category.) Generally, people who have a fairly obscure or specialized interest or set of interests. They'll search the net for every scrap of info on their chosen categories, spend tons of time on Usenet debating the finer points of their interets, etc. They generally get "hooked" because there aren't enough local people who share their obsession, or else all the "locals" are online as well. (This has been me with various topics: Amber, the band Rush, and Norse pagan/Viking history, to name three recent ones.) The net.goths might be a good example of this as well.
3. (IMHO, the most dangerous.) The folks who are genuinely using the Net as a way to avoid dealing with people face-to-face. Can be an outgrowth of either of the above. I've also seen this with some of the les/bi/gay teenagers I've talked to online, especially if they come from conservative households and are scared to come out. The Net becomes the only place that knows their "secret," and basically becomes a security blanket. Alternatively, I've seen this with people who just don't like themselves and are putting forth a new "persona" online.
Now with all three types, there can be problems as far as avoidance of reality. But the first two are easy to at least cut down on -- find compatible local people (over the net if you must!) and make an effort to spend time with them.
The last one is the one that scares me. A.J. Chodan (my real name) isn't THAT different of a person from fable2112. Or at the very least, there is nothing within fable2112 that *isn't* also part of A.J. I'm long-winded and opinionated IRL, too. (And that said, I'll shut up now!)
At least they made the EFFORT to let their customers know what is going on. And, as I saw someone else post, it sounds like a temporary, emergency measure, not like generalized policy.
This is better than the American ISPs with pre-installed censorware garbage. Especially Cybersitter.
(Someone refresh my memory here? I know there were a few out there that did this and either didn't publicize it at all or else didn't publicize exactly WHAT Cybersitter was blocking. And that's a story in and of itself
Having a WIDER audience with the power to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT read and discuss the Hellmouth series or this article is damn important if it gets them to do something about the problems described in the article. Otherwise, you're preaching more or less to the converted.
I know that a lot of people would like to shut their eyes and pretend the Outside World from their particular interests doesn't exist. Hell, I'm as guilty of that as the next person. But that's not going to happen. We (whatever "we" is comprised of) DO need to interact with the "outside world" once in a while.
Perhaps the best analogy is a music CD.
It is (I think)legal to make a single copy to a cassette so that you can play it in your car in addition to your home stereo. It is also legal to lend/give away/whatever your copy of the CD to someone else. Hell, it's even legal to sell the darn thing back at a used CD shop.
In addition, it is CERTAINLY legal to play the CD while someone else is in the house. Not so legal if you're "commercially broadcasting" with no license, but that's different.
What I don't like about this law is that it would be like saying you can't sell your CDs along with your stereo if you decided to do that for some reason. (Maybe you got a minidisc player, love minidiscs, and want all your music in that format? Meanwhile, your kid sister is getting her first ever stereo
And if you want to be really inane about all this, I'm a temp. The software I use is registered to the person I'm filling in for while she's on disability. Looks like I'm breaking the law or something.
The point isn't that Jon Katz, author, is getting linked all over the Web. The point is that the articles he wrote are getting linked all over the Web. Some of these articles are on some pretty important topics. The Hellmouth series was one (and was how I found
And the default moderation for
Which means that someone following a link to the site might end up seeing a bunch of "Why Katz Sucks" appended to the bottom of the Katz's writing. Or worse yet, just plain "Katz sucks" (though admittedly that's more likely to get the negative 1 rating).
I don't think Katz is tooting his own horn here. I'm a writer myself and recently got accused of doing the same thing. I think the point he is trying to make is the exact opposite: this stuff is important to him, it's getting talked about outside the usual
The "Hellmouth" experience IS NOT "teasing" in any normal sense of the word. This is one of the big problems we seem to be having with being taken seriously. To some extent, I can accept that "teasing" is always going to go on. I cannot and WILL NOT accept that intimidation, physical abuse, rape/attempted rape, extortion (of lunch money or otherwise), etc. should be a valid part of high school "socialization," or that a school administration should look the other way as this goes on.
As for dangerous, go read this -- I think that the experiences of the author and his fiancee go beyond simple "teasing."
Oh, and BTW, Matthew Shephard was white. So is Damien Echols, who is on death row for a crime he obviously didn't commit, because he was seen as a freak and local law enforcement thought he was a "Satanist."
Race isn't the only thing that'll get you killed in this country, I'm afraid.
Boys with problems tend to commit criminal actions ranging from vandalism to murder.
Girls with problems just quietly off themselves, or else commit "slow" suicide such as anorexia.
At least, that's the stereotype. But as such, people are much more concerned with the boys' problems.
3) If any of this abuse occured off school grounds there is a pretty good chance that it would reported to the police if not prosecuted.
And therein lies the problem. If it had been anywhere but school, and my best friend from junior high had been thrown up against a wall and told "I'm going to f**k you before I leave town if it kills us both," that would have been prosecutable as assault and a threat of rape. What was she told? "He's just a flirt; if you can't handle that, it's your own fault."
If it had been anywhere but school, the floormate who was calling my answering machine and leaving messages like, "You should be dead, you f**king dyke!" would have been prosecuted. As it was, the resident director didn't believe me when I told her who it was (wouldn't even LISTEN TO the tape), and "public safety" told me there was nothing they could do.
Of course, in another school a few years later, it didn't stop a professor from prosecuting a student who e-mailed a death threat to him.
Typical. Adults deserve protection from kids; kids should suck up and deal.
That, my friend, does indeed say it all.
This is precisely why I will never again live in the suburbs, why my kids (when I have 'em) will more than likely be homeschooled, etc.
Funny how that song was written almost 20 years ago, though
There's this nifty article called "The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls" on the Girls Who Wear Glasses site.
Not a meeting place, per se, but it's a start.
*grin*
Perhaps comparing the "Hellmouth" series and the protests against "geek-profiling" to the gay-rights movement isn't as far-fetched as Jean Dark seems to think it sounds.
For one thing, "faggot" and "sissy" and "dyke" are common names to call kids who don't fit in, regardless of their actual sexual orientation.
For another thing, authors like Jane Dark insisting that the "geeks" don't have problems is quite eerily akin to the studies funded by various homophobic groups who insist that homosexuals make more money than the poor "normal" folks, and that "they can change if they want to."
It's easy to argue whether intelligence is hereditary or environmental (or some combination of both), much like homosexuality. However, telling a smarter-than-average kid to "just stop being smart (read: showing off)" or telling a "geek" to "just try to fit in" is akin to telling a lesbian, gay man, or bisexual to "just stop being attracted to the same sex" or "just don't talk about your sick and immoral lifestyle."
A further question: When the problems of white, male, suburban kids who "don't fit the mold" are ignored by progressives, is it any wonder that some of them turn to the Far Right, when the Far Right is much more eager to welcome them? It's something to think about, in the opinion of this Left Wing bisexual female geek.