Hmm... hack automount to look for some program or shell script named "AUTORUN", and execute it? Possible security hole, especially if it insists on running with root priveleges? How many Windows people care to look at the setup.STF files before they install software?
2. a dummy-fied RPM/DEB/any other kind of package installer/viewer/uninstaller that can be used cross-distribution and cross-version with similar functionality to the dreaded "add/remove programs" control panel
Hmm... hack a shell script ("setup") to do this with the right generic flags for installing, or removing software, as in "setup [-r|--remove] nethack-2.2.3-i386.rpm".
3. less jargon.:) (While "tarball" is a great term for geeks to use, it certainly isn't an intuitive word. For that matter, neither are many of the other things unixfolk take for granted. "grep" comes to mind real quick.)
This is a red herring, as people pick up jargon quickly when they don't think too much about it. Actually, "tarball" is a better analogy than "zip file"... If there is a positive culture about learning about Linux, people will pick up the jargon.
How intuitive are The Registry, Win.ini, normal.dot, shortcuts, PIF files, etc.? But plenty enough Windows users know how to manipulate these things... People will learn, just don't make it seem like a negative for them. While MS still tries to FUD on this issue, once people realize that text config files are just easier to deal with than the Registry, that most changes you make to a system configuration don't require rebooting the system, and as long as things like Enlightenment & Gnome customizations can be contained in something like Windows Themes, with a rational setup [hey, it does this now...], then it'll be OK. As more apps start being written in KDE or GTK, then this common set of functionality will help satisfy the "look and feel" wonks. OK, it's nice in Gnome that the mouse wheel works, but not in Netscape 4.51... that's what I mean...
But how many of these new people will think they're bypassing "complexity" in Linux by always running it as root?
We're getting there.
While things may be in a state now where linux+gnome/kde+icewm/enlightenemnt/* may be "mom friendly". It's certainly not friendly to someone who's going to be installing hundreds of programs cluelessly every day -- like your average computer using teenager.
Most of your computer-using teenagers, once shown the basic ropes (man x, x -h, x -?) will probably figure things out VERY quickly...or do you forget your days of sysadmining your parents' or school's PC for the all-knowing adults?
MS could pull a fast one and LGPL all the COM/DCOM and MFC stuff and include it with their own Linux. Could they LGPL the kernel ("embrace and extend")? Hmm...
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe MS wants to buy the stocks of lots of competing companies, so if they say something that pushes market caps way down, then they can make a move this way. or BG and Paul Allen can buy back more MS stock, or MS says, "we're buying back 100 million shares of common stock at $35/share [after the value has dropped to $30]."
or Bill and Steve [and their various funds, trusts, etc.] have lots of short options open right now and could use a big deflation...
It was in the LA Times as well.
Re:MS Net Computer and what it would do to servers
on
New Microsoft Strategy
·
· Score: 1
funny how we keep going on these cycles.
So your Linux box has VMWare on it, with VNC or Citrix winframe running in it. A call to a windows binary gets passed to the VMWare vm, which interacts with the client via ICA or VNC's protocol.
Wait...lessee...Netware as an application server. WP51 running on a netware box. Hmm...
XWindows...
WinFrame...
Hmm... how many times do we have to go around this bush?
MS wants to use XML stuff so that it can say that it uses "open standards"-based stuff in their products, so that it is just another thing to check off on yours, or your boss's checklist...
If they make the box on something like a Dreamcast or PlayStation2, and you can "do" things via whatever ROM-based programs you have, then it's still "useful" if your netconnection isn't up.
I think you miss the boat on MS & XML. The problem isn't that MS is using XML. It's that all MS is using XML for is to store ActiveX controls within MS XML documents. Great, but not if you're not using a MS XML document viewer (IE5 or Office2K), because you don't have an environment for the ActiveX control to run [amok] in.
You shouldn't make your living off of someone else's database without reimbursing them? OK, what if state gives away DMV records (and making them basically non-public in the process) to a company that then makes a shitload of dough by redoing that data and selling slices of it? Where, as a licensed driver, have I been reimbursed for my data?
For you business and stock wonks, have you used any form of EDGAR (database pushed by Dept. of Commerce, with all sorts of basic business info)? Should that data from the govment be locked down so it can only be accessed through some company? No?
Thank you.
Databases, although they may or may not be private things, shouldn't be copyrightable.
We then get to argue what constitutes a database...
I think I remember reading about this proposed legislation, and the desired intent is to allow companies that currently repackage publicly available (maybe not easily available) datasets and claim "copyright" on them.
All hail the mighty buck.
The sports score stuff has been directly aimed at such things as automatic score updates via pager, etc. If your job was to go to games and keep score with your laptop that then get zapped to Corporate, which then zaps the scores via pager, the leagues were pissed about this as it constituted some sort of "unlicensed" broadcast of "their" information. I don't know how this shook out. It wasn't as much a copyright issue as a (un)licensing issue.
actually, someone has already hung a network of photomultipliers off of Hawaii to do the same thing.
As far as the people who put big tanks of stuff with photomultipliers in them, they usually use dry-cleaning fluid in them, not H20. They have the PM tubes to detect the flashes, but actually count the amount of argon gas "cooked" off by the neutrino collisions for the aggregate rate.
Maybe they need to change it so that the loser of a case pays costs.
So Doubleclick gets lame patent. OK, it takes someone $40K to get into patent court to argue the invalidity of the patent. Someone wins. Doubleclick owes that person for his/their courtcosts.
Doubleclick wins? Same.
At least for software patents.
You or I can create software algorithms up the wazoo without breaking a sweat and having our hands tied behind our backs and the only thing it costs us mainly is time.
Not as easy for you or I to create a new drug (process), for example.
IBM won't release specs or driver on the modem, because they get it from someone else (Lucent Technologies?), who has no interest in opening the specs or driver code.
Find *any* technical info on LT's web site, for example, for LT Winmodems... About all I could find today was the list of AT+ commands that LT modems were expected to support. (http://www.lucent.com/micro/k56flex/driver.html)
I think that perhaps Big Business is missing the point of Linux.
No, we're forgetting the point of Big Business and how they view/want things. Big Business does not give a flying f**k what you or I think. They only care about what they want, and who will give it to them, not what those who have things to give want Big Business to think of them.
As the line in "Pretty Woman" goes, where Larry Miller is laying it on Richard Gere to make up for his big gaff:
If you want the DOS TSR that runs the LT WinModem that I got with my Aptiva a couple of years ago, send e-mail to clawson-at-home.com and I'll blop what I've figured out (not much...) about the LT WinModem & Win95, at least, to you. I have it in a zip file...
I haven't tested it in DOSEMU in Linux. But if someone were to reverse-engineer it, or if there was a good book(s) on how to RE DOS TSRs and hardware that someone could point me out so I could do it, but that would mean I get to buy the Linux Device Driver book and thus figure out how to write a Linux Device Driver as well... Hmm...
Hmm... there are lots of articles, testimonials, etc., of bipolar (aka "manic-depressive") who have written about their experiences, and especially for the creative ones, how their treatments have affected their creative output during their manic phases, and whether their treatment was worth it...
I guess I don't subscribe too much to the Puritan ethics anymore. I'm too much of a "if they're not hurting you or themselves or breaking something, leave them alone. If they want help, help them. Don't force it down their throat unless they are a danger."
Sure, this is way too simplified, and there are too many easy examples that stretch this model to the breaking point... But I guess I'm this way with lots of "broken" people. Gamblers? Let them gamble. Heroin shooters? Let 'em. And so on. We already have laws against things they might do in the course of them getting their fix. Is it tragic what can happen without "intervention"? Yes. Do I feel pity for John Daly [a golfer with some addiction problems]? Yep. If I were in the business of helping people like him, I'd try to help him as best as I can, if he came to me for help. BUT HE HAS TO DO THAT. We can't force him to do it. He has to reach rock bottom [in his own mind] before anything will change.
What about schizophrenics who stop taking their meds? yeah, this is a tricky one, too. But what about people with high blood pressure who don't take their BP meds every day, and blow an artery one day when they don't?
There was an ad running on the radio here in SD a few months ago for some mortgage vampire company that was actually kind of humorous...
"All our available customer service representatives are with other callers. Your call IS important to us, and will be answered in the order recieved. The current average wait time is..." "Four Days." "Eleven Minutes".
Hmm... Jesus didn't signficantly impact how my house is built... Jesus isn't mentioned much as an innovator in building techniques or carpentry skill... I don't understand what you mean... *:)
Hmm... psychological disorders ARE defined socially/culturally to some extent or another. Some cultures do not have any context of clinical depression, for example, so for someone outside that culture to interview people there looking for depression could easily conclude that that culture has a very low rate of depression.
...but the problem is that SOMEONE with an agenda will use it as the basis for their agenda. Geeks and Nerds are to be feared, much like Jews, Asians, etc., in the White Supremacy movement.
It could even take on a quasi-rational basis, such as the hysteria after the Columbine shootings. "Fear the miscreants in their long black coats, Johnny!" "Quake and Doom are the tools of the Devil!", etc.
Just yesterday I was riding my bike, and having a running conversation out loud of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherman as I rode up a hill. "Ah, here comes the Lantern Rouge finally!" It was sort of amusing at the time.
but all it takes is one person who is annoyed by this, who feels it is his or her duty to try and stamp it out because its mere existance is a great evil, to turn it into something bad.
(stereo)typically, it is seen in women. Low self esteem, but not clinically depressed. Low threshold of tolerance for authority [can't/won't hold a job]. Degree of self-abuse that could be seen as suicide attempts (wrist slashing), but aren't [slashes aren't deep enough, etc.]. Some degree of codependence.
But that is my layman's view of how my wife has described it.
If you ask a question, "can you do this for me?", and the person says, "No", and then you blow up on him, how civil and polite is THAT? Look at how much is countered against civility in the guise of "being assertive", "don't take NO for an answer", etc., as in, be as close to rude and obnoxious as you dare... Can't have it both ways, although everyone seems to try...
If you ask a question and aren't willing to hear all the answers, then rephrase your question to the request that it really is. If the sign says, "only regular or plain hamburgers on $.29 hamburger day", and you try to order a hamburger without pickles, don't blow up on the dude working the register because you didn't look at the sign or believe that it applied to YOU. You are not the emperor of rome.
Trying to deal with social hypochrises, inconsistencies, nuances, etc., is what drives people crazy.
Hmm... maybe. Does he talk about voices commanding him to do things? That is sort of the traditional, textbook description of schizophrenia.
I don't know, but my wife would (she's a psych nurse). I am just a geek who has read too much, but not recieved any education in it.
Look at the DSM-IV (or, better, the DSM-IV Made Easy)...why have I done this? I was trying to make an application that did some of this, and part of it was putting in DSM diagnoses boilerplate, so I needed a db of DSM stuff... Schizoid, I think my wife would be likely to say.
Here's how I see this. Commercial chickens are quite uniform. White leghorns. They are all white, with red combs. Paint a red spot on a chicken. It'll be pecked to death soon enough.
I see the same happening here. Can't talk to Joe? OK, let's marginalize him with an appropriate label (mild autism? geek? nerd?), find out what's wrong with him, try to fix him (ritalin, ostracize him, reeducate him). Can't leave well enough alone now, can we? what if he asks to be left alone, and we keep insisting on wanting to talk with him, and he gets violent? Now he's an anti-social, paranoid schizophrenic freak that now we feel safely justified in institutionalizing him, one way or the other.
See how fast this snowballs, and how in some ways this trait of ours, it sort of creates its own problems that it tries to find solutions for?
Yes, I am as guilty as anyone else (who isn't guilty of it? Maybe Mtr. Teresa), in my own way. All of us who laugh about PHBs, the "jocks", "suits", "stupid lusers", "rednecks", "nonecks", et al. It is the same in reverse. But we of the geekly/nerdish tend to not go much further than that, or at least because our culture isn't mainstream, so it isn't a problem for everyone else as long as it is out of sight/mind. The flip side (i.e., "outing" the geeks and nerds, trying to "fix" them) is going a bit further.
Notice how there aren't too many studies finding out why ex-cheerleaders make the best telemarketing employees, and other BS research on stereotyped groups?
Is it safe to draw analogies between this social atmosphere and the atmosphere that convinces those who would seek to "fix" homosexuals by beating the shit out of them, figure out why they're so "queer" [ref: studies of "homosexuals have morphological brain differences". I'll look up some references in Medline if you need them], etc.? Probably not, but I'll lay it out there., because it seems like the next step.
I guess I have seen parts of the story of the "Lords of Chaos" that gets run on MSNBC too many times...
Yes, I know that it takes all types to make the world go round. But when a large group of the population starts to forget that/refuse to accept it/{wish/want to make the world more like them}, and buys into the "us vs. them" mentality, especially the "it's their fault" part of it, then problems start to happen...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... hack automount to look for some program or shell script named "AUTORUN", and execute it?
Possible security hole, especially if it insists on running with root priveleges? How many Windows people care to look at the setup.STF files before they install software?
2. a dummy-fied RPM/DEB/any other kind of package installer/viewer/uninstaller that can be used cross-distribution and cross-version with similar functionality to the dreaded "add/remove programs" control panel
Hmm... hack a shell script ("setup") to do this with the right generic flags for installing, or removing software, as in "setup [-r|--remove] nethack-2.2.3-i386.rpm".
3. less jargon.
This is a red herring, as people pick up jargon quickly when they don't think too much about it. Actually, "tarball" is a better analogy than "zip file"... If there is a positive culture about learning about Linux, people will pick up the jargon.
How intuitive are The Registry, Win.ini, normal.dot, shortcuts, PIF files, etc.? But plenty enough Windows users know how to manipulate these things... People will learn, just don't make it seem like a negative for them. While MS still tries to FUD on this issue, once people realize that text config files are just easier to deal with than the Registry, that most changes you make to a system configuration don't require rebooting the system, and as long as things like Enlightenment & Gnome customizations can be contained in something like Windows Themes, with a rational setup [hey, it does this now...], then it'll be OK. As more apps start being written in KDE or GTK, then this common set of functionality will help satisfy the "look and feel" wonks. OK, it's nice in Gnome that the mouse wheel works, but not in Netscape 4.51... that's what I mean...
But how many of these new people will think they're bypassing "complexity" in Linux by always running it as root?
We're getting there.
While things may be in a state now where linux+gnome/kde+icewm/enlightenemnt/* may be "mom friendly". It's certainly not friendly to someone who's going to be installing hundreds of programs cluelessly every day -- like your average computer using teenager.
Most of your computer-using teenagers, once shown the basic ropes (man x, x -h, x -?) will probably figure things out VERY quickly...or do you forget your days of sysadmining your parents' or school's PC for the all-knowing adults?
-Chris
Hmm...
MS could pull a fast one and LGPL all the COM/DCOM and MFC stuff and include it with their own Linux. Could they LGPL the kernel ("embrace and extend")? Hmm...
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe MS wants to buy the stocks of lots of competing companies, so if they say something that pushes market caps way down, then they can make a move this way. or BG and Paul Allen can buy back more MS stock, or MS says, "we're buying back 100 million shares of common stock at $35/share [after the value has dropped to $30]."
or Bill and Steve [and their various funds, trusts, etc.] have lots of short options open right now and could use a big deflation...
It was in the LA Times as well.
funny how we keep going on these cycles.
So your Linux box has VMWare on it, with VNC or Citrix winframe running in it. A call to a windows binary gets passed to the VMWare vm, which interacts with the client via ICA or VNC's protocol.
Wait...lessee...Netware as an application server. WP51 running on a netware box. Hmm...
XWindows...
WinFrame...
Hmm... how many times do we have to go around this bush?
XML does NOT compete with Java.
MS wants to use XML stuff so that it can say that it uses "open standards"-based stuff in their products, so that it is just another thing to check off on yours, or your boss's checklist...
If they make the box on something like a Dreamcast or PlayStation2, and you can "do" things via whatever ROM-based programs you have, then it's still "useful" if your netconnection isn't up.
I think you miss the boat on MS & XML. The problem isn't that MS is using XML. It's that all MS is using XML for is to store ActiveX controls within MS XML documents. Great, but not if you're not using a MS XML document viewer (IE5 or Office2K), because you don't have an environment for the ActiveX control to run [amok] in.
...why? Before they were private. That's how it works. Once you go "public", you have to release certain financial info quarterly. Duh.
You shouldn't make your living off of someone else's database without reimbursing them? OK, what if state gives away DMV records (and making them basically non-public in the process) to a company that then makes a shitload of dough by redoing that data and selling slices of it? Where, as a licensed driver, have I been reimbursed for my data?
For you business and stock wonks, have you used any form of EDGAR (database pushed by Dept. of Commerce, with all sorts of basic business info)? Should that data from the govment be locked down so it can only be accessed through some company? No?
Thank you.
Databases, although they may or may not be private things, shouldn't be copyrightable.
We then get to argue what constitutes a database...
I think I remember reading about this proposed legislation, and the desired intent is to allow companies that currently repackage publicly available (maybe not easily available) datasets and claim "copyright" on them.
All hail the mighty buck.
The sports score stuff has been directly aimed at such things as automatic score updates via pager, etc. If your job was to go to games and keep score with your laptop that then get zapped to Corporate, which then zaps the scores via pager, the leagues were pissed about this as it constituted some sort of "unlicensed" broadcast of "their" information. I don't know how this shook out. It wasn't as much a copyright issue as a (un)licensing issue.
making neutrinos will be much easier than detecting them.
Check out the capture rate of the neutrino detectors... it's pretty sad.
actually, someone has already hung a network of photomultipliers off of Hawaii to do the same thing.
As far as the people who put big tanks of stuff with photomultipliers in them, they usually use dry-cleaning fluid in them, not H20. They have the PM tubes to detect the flashes, but actually count the amount of argon gas "cooked" off by the neutrino collisions for the aggregate rate.
Maybe they need to change it so that the loser of a case pays costs.
So Doubleclick gets lame patent. OK, it takes someone $40K to get into patent court to argue the invalidity of the patent. Someone wins. Doubleclick owes that person for his/their courtcosts.
Doubleclick wins? Same.
At least for software patents.
You or I can create software algorithms up the wazoo without breaking a sweat and having our hands tied behind our backs and the only thing it costs us mainly is time.
Not as easy for you or I to create a new drug (process), for example.
IBM won't release specs or driver on the modem, because they get it from someone else (Lucent Technologies?), who has no interest in opening the specs or driver code.
Find *any* technical info on LT's web site, for example, for LT Winmodems... About all I could find today was the list of AT+ commands that LT modems were expected to support. (http://www.lucent.com/micro/k56flex/driver.html)
So...
No, we're forgetting the point of Big Business and how they view/want things. Big Business does not give a flying f**k what you or I think. They only care about what they want, and who will give it to them, not what those who have things to give want Big Business to think of them.
As the line in "Pretty Woman" goes, where Larry Miller is laying it on Richard Gere to make up for his big gaff:
"More suckup?"
If you want the DOS TSR that runs the LT WinModem that I got with my Aptiva a couple of years ago, send e-mail to clawson-at-home.com and I'll blop what I've figured out (not much...) about the LT WinModem & Win95, at least, to you. I have it in a zip file...
I haven't tested it in DOSEMU in Linux. But if someone were to reverse-engineer it, or if there was a good book(s) on how to RE DOS TSRs and hardware that someone could point me out so I could do it, but that would mean I get to buy the Linux Device Driver book and thus figure out how to write a Linux Device Driver as well... Hmm...
Hulk confused...
Hmm... there are lots of articles, testimonials, etc., of bipolar (aka "manic-depressive") who have written about their experiences, and especially for the creative ones, how their treatments have affected their creative output during their manic phases, and whether their treatment was worth it...
I guess I don't subscribe too much to the Puritan ethics anymore. I'm too much of a "if they're not hurting you or themselves or breaking something, leave them alone. If they want help, help them. Don't force it down their throat unless they are a danger."
Sure, this is way too simplified, and there are too many easy examples that stretch this model to the breaking point... But I guess I'm this way with lots of "broken" people. Gamblers? Let them gamble. Heroin shooters? Let 'em. And so on. We already have laws against things they might do in the course of them getting their fix.
Is it tragic what can happen without "intervention"? Yes. Do I feel pity for John Daly [a golfer with some addiction problems]? Yep. If I were in the business of helping people like him, I'd try to help him as best as I can, if he came to me for help. BUT HE HAS TO DO THAT. We can't force him to do it. He has to reach rock bottom [in his own mind] before anything will change.
What about schizophrenics who stop taking their meds? yeah, this is a tricky one, too. But what about people with high blood pressure who don't take their BP meds every day, and blow an artery one day when they don't?
There was an ad running on the radio here in SD a few months ago for some mortgage vampire company that was actually kind of humorous...
"All our available customer service representatives are with other callers. Your call IS important to us, and will be answered in the order recieved. The current average wait time is..." "Four Days." "Eleven Minutes".
Hmm... Jesus didn't signficantly impact how my house is built... Jesus isn't mentioned much as an innovator in building techniques or carpentry skill... I don't understand what you mean... *:)
Hmm... psychological disorders ARE defined socially/culturally to some extent or another. Some cultures do not have any context of clinical depression, for example, so for someone outside that culture to interview people there looking for depression could easily conclude that that culture has a very low rate of depression.
...but the problem is that SOMEONE with an agenda will use it as the basis for their agenda. Geeks and Nerds are to be feared, much like Jews, Asians, etc., in the White Supremacy movement.
It could even take on a quasi-rational basis, such as the hysteria after the Columbine shootings. "Fear the miscreants in their long black coats, Johnny!" "Quake and Doom are the tools of the Devil!", etc.
Just yesterday I was riding my bike, and having a running conversation out loud of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherman as I rode up a hill. "Ah, here comes the Lantern Rouge finally!" It was sort of amusing at the time.
but all it takes is one person who is annoyed by this, who feels it is his or her duty to try and stamp it out because its mere existance is a great evil, to turn it into something bad.
..and what would one say about Michael Jordan and his wagging tongue as he's doing some inhuman thing on a basketball court?
the observation of BillG seems kind of groundless, imho.
BPD is kind of scary.
(stereo)typically, it is seen in women. Low self esteem, but not clinically depressed. Low threshold of tolerance for authority [can't/won't hold a job]. Degree of self-abuse that could be seen as suicide attempts (wrist slashing), but aren't [slashes aren't deep enough, etc.]. Some degree of codependence.
But that is my layman's view of how my wife has described it.
But why say them if you totally do not mean them?
If you ask a question, "can you do this for me?", and the person says, "No", and then you blow up on him, how civil and polite is THAT? Look at how much is countered against civility in the guise of "being assertive", "don't take NO for an answer", etc., as in, be as close to rude and obnoxious as you dare... Can't have it both ways, although everyone seems to try...
If you ask a question and aren't willing to hear all the answers, then rephrase your question to the request that it really is. If the sign says, "only regular or plain hamburgers on $.29 hamburger day", and you try to order a hamburger without pickles, don't blow up on the dude working the register because you didn't look at the sign or believe that it applied to YOU. You are not the emperor of rome.
Trying to deal with social hypochrises, inconsistencies, nuances, etc., is what drives people crazy.
Hmm... maybe. Does he talk about voices commanding him to do things? That is sort of the traditional, textbook description of schizophrenia.
I don't know, but my wife would (she's a psych nurse). I am just a geek who has read too much, but not recieved any education in it.
Look at the DSM-IV (or, better, the DSM-IV Made Easy)...why have I done this? I was trying to make an application that did some of this, and part of it was putting in DSM diagnoses boilerplate, so I needed a db of DSM stuff...
Schizoid, I think my wife would be likely to say.
why, so you or me can talk to/with them?
Here's how I see this. Commercial chickens are quite uniform. White leghorns. They are all white, with red combs. Paint a red spot on a chicken. It'll be pecked to death soon enough.
I see the same happening here. Can't talk to Joe? OK, let's marginalize him with an appropriate label (mild autism? geek? nerd?), find out what's wrong with him, try to fix him (ritalin, ostracize him, reeducate him). Can't leave well enough alone now, can we? what if he asks to be left alone, and we keep insisting on wanting to talk with him, and he gets violent? Now he's an anti-social, paranoid schizophrenic freak that now we feel safely justified in institutionalizing him, one way or the other.
See how fast this snowballs, and how in some ways this trait of ours, it sort of creates its own problems that it tries to find solutions for?
Yes, I am as guilty as anyone else (who isn't guilty of it? Maybe Mtr. Teresa), in my own way. All of us who laugh about PHBs, the "jocks", "suits", "stupid lusers", "rednecks", "nonecks", et al. It is the same in reverse. But we of the geekly/nerdish tend to not go much further than that, or at least because our culture isn't mainstream, so it isn't a problem for everyone else as long as it is out of sight/mind. The flip side (i.e., "outing" the geeks and nerds, trying to "fix" them) is going a bit further.
Notice how there aren't too many studies finding out why ex-cheerleaders make the best telemarketing employees, and other BS research on stereotyped groups?
Is it safe to draw analogies between this social atmosphere and the atmosphere that convinces those who would seek to "fix" homosexuals by beating the shit out of them, figure out why they're so "queer" [ref: studies of "homosexuals have morphological brain differences". I'll look up some references in Medline if you need them], etc.? Probably not, but I'll lay it out there., because it seems like the next step.
I guess I have seen parts of the story of the "Lords of Chaos" that gets run on MSNBC too many times...
Yes, I know that it takes all types to make the world go round. But when a large group of the population starts to forget that/refuse to accept it/{wish/want to make the world more like them}, and buys into the "us vs. them" mentality, especially the "it's their fault" part of it, then problems start to happen...