Although this seems counter-intuitive as their are many studies available now indicating that more homes then ever are dual-income, and yet despite that they seem only just able to make ends-meet. Compare this to the 1950s where it was the norm for the man to work and the woman to tend the home.
If people are working more in order to maintain the same lifestyle...
Same lifestyle? Back in the 1950s, if you were middle class and bought a house, it was probably about 1500 square feet. And you had only one car (you carpooled with neighbors to your job at the factory and the women carpooled to run their errands), and the car you owned was nowhere near the level of quality of a modern car.
Nowadays, a middle class family lives in a 3000 square foot house and owns two cars and leases another. And even with twice the floor space in their house, they still need to rent personal storage because they have too much stuff.
Lifestyle is totally different than it was back in the 1950s; make no mistake.
This doesn't mean a PhD is useless - it's always good for getting higher pay, and impresses the girls. Heck, it may occasionally even be directly applicable to the work at hand.
Impresses the girls? 'Nuff said. I'm going back to school!
Sure there are a few good PC games out there, but the general lack of truly submersive entertainment has one really good benefit that a lot of geeks don't seem to realize. Finally, I was able to switch completely to Linux without feeling I was missing out on anything on Windows.
Not to be overly trollish here, but you could also squish poetry onto one long line or a big novel onto one really huge page, like something in Guinness's Book of World Records I suppose.
The point is, we use line counts in computer languages, even though most computer languages can be spaced out in numerous ways, because it provides a good rough estimate of length and complexity. It's not always the best metric, but oftentimes it serves its purpose well. In this case, the typical slashdot reader can see that the exploit is only "five lines" and realize that it's not a overly complicated HTML parser exploit but instead something ridiculously simple.
If you think unemployment is a lot of work, then what is your opinion of employment!
I was unemployed in TX about a year ago for 4 months, and my impression was that the unemployment offices are so overloaded these days that they're flat out incapable of checking up on most people. The net result for me was that I had to make a single phone call maybe once each week into an automated system verifying that I was still looking for work.
Mind you, I'm not complaining here. The last thing most people need when unemployed is to waste additional time putting up with The Man.
You may not call yourself a Christian, but you demonstrate that you think like one in how you use the word "ethical." There are many valid, consistent ethical systems that put the needs of humanity before the needs of the individual. If applying one of these systems, then is it not the case that we are obligated to experiment, knowing that it will cause short-term pain and suffering to a small percentage of the population?
The common response is to question the "truthfulness" of these ethical systems. However, once you start thinking your opinion is right and other persons' are wrong, you're the same as religious in my book. And if you happen to be siding with the Christians, then maybe you need to re-evaluate just how non-Christian you are.
This is what Linus seems to not be able to understand. Not caring about politics when your actions and choices have political consequences is also politics - the politics of "I don't care." If he says "I'll give you the choice of compling this into your kernel" that is in no way a neutral stand on anything.
Oh no, Linus understands this perfectly, and that's what makes him so likable in the community. He realizes that appearing non-political is his best bet for uniting people behind him.
Nobody wins friends and influences people by arguing. Ok, maybe some lucky individuals possess this gift, but they're one in a million.
Overall, I am continually amazed that most people in the world are only capable of understanding the lower level of natural language: what is spoken, written, et cetera. The high level of natural language -- the level where the true meaning exists -- lies in action and behavior. Look around, and you'll see most people lie, not just to others but also themselves. You'll see this because the two levels quite frequently contradict each other.
You're absolutely right; every choice for every person that involves anybody else is political. And more times than not the best political move is to "appear" non-political, but that's just the lower level. At the higher level, it's the same old politics...
It's kind of like the statement, "I am honest." That's lower level, and it's meaningless.
What makes you think the quality of journalism would improve by print newspapers being replaced by online newspapers?
I feel that you've read way too much into my original post. My post was clearly not offering a solution to the problem but was offering sarcastic commentary on the poorness of modern American journalism and especially about the historically popular form, newspaper. TV news is hopeless, and many people already believe this. But newspapers are little better these days, and many people still hold an implicit belief that "if it's in print, then it must be newsworthy."
The first step in improving the situation is getting most Americans aware that what they consider news is indeed not. What most Americans call news is simply press release filtering. It's a long shot, but if people can learn to think critically about the sources behind the reports, then journalism can improve. Until then, the ad-revenue model of the mass media will inherently continue to focus on quantity, not quality.
... As print newspaper readers age and die, no new readers are replacing them and one survey found that 46 percent of all journalists believe that within 15 years their publication will only be available online.
Newspapers might as well die (so long as TV news dies as well). American journalism is dead anyway. Not only are most major cities losing out to a single paper, but papers are mostly just official news (news taken from official press releases). There is indeed little to no investigative reporting done anymore, and this is sad.
... that doesn't reside in a space heater? Sure, I would like a faster computer than my current Athlon 500, but the high energy consumption, which leads to excess heat which leads to noisy fans xor fried chips (which may be good in England but not here in the States), is getting out-of-hand crazy.
I feel sorry for all the gamers out there that must buy all these $1000 space heaters every year or two just to continue their gaming fix. Outside of gaming, are even 1% of these systems even close to fully utilized? I seriously doubt it.
I understand that my needs are different from the average desktop owner. I use my computer to play DVDs, encode/decode OGGs, download and watch movie trailers and other video, and compile bucket loads of free software packages via linux from scratch. I even try a little development myself. However, for these tasks, I have found that the optimum computer remains a CPU from about 1998 or 1999. And if you have a few hundred dollars, maxing the memory of an old Athlon or P3 and replacing the IDE drives with SCSI ones leads to a surprisingly fast system.
WORK per DOLLAR is important, but it's not the only thing. Personally, I rate WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION even higher. And even more important than WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION is the REALIZED WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION, which takes into account the fact that the average desktop machine just sits at 95% idle most of the time.
This is exactly why my computer remains an original Athlon (500MHz). It's fast enough to play DVDs and encode/decode OGGs. Hell, I even run a linux from scratch system, which means I frequently must compile huge software packages. Sure, it may take a day to compile all the packages for the latest KDE release (as opposed to an hour or so), but my computer makes almost no noise and blows cool air out the back. And I don't feel like I'm wasting a significant amount of electricity keeping my system up 24/7.
I looked for a good five minutes at the picture of the Z Machine, and I couldn't locate the place where you insert the banana peels and other garbage for fuel.
I realize in advance that this post will be quite unpopular with the anti-spam slashdot community, but here goes anyway...
Although spam must technically be (by defintion) commercial, to define it as such is irrelevant to me. It takes the same amount of time to delete non-commercial unsolicited messages as it does solicited. Call this whatever you like; this is a spam issue.
While I won't insult anyone's intelligence by adding more insightless drivel to the free speech angle of this debate (because both sides are based on an interpretation of the 1st admendment that is opinion), I would like to state, however, that this whole spam issue is being tackled from the wrong side.
Instead of focusing our time and resources on deterring spammers, it is in our own interests to focus on limiting spam's detrimental effects. Necessity is the mother of invention, some say; spam provides a great need for:
Better filters. A company could make a fortune by developing a truly worthwhile spam filter. A spam filter could be the first truly useful "intelligent" device.
New electronic mail protocols. Why not? This option includes an entire array of possibilities. Yeah, SMTP is universal and it's free, but to add censorship laws of any kind just to be able to continue using this obsolete mail protocol is indeed shortsighted.
If I remember from my own experiences in public school, the current biggest problem with textbooks is the lack of photographs of beautiful, naked women.
Re:The PROOF that google is evil
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 1
The WWW is a great thing. Companies like Yahoo deliver a great number of services, nearly all of which are free to end users such as myself. But not really. Someone has to pay for these services, and someone is paying for these services: me and every other end user. How? Advertising. And it works; it really does.
How many people don't own a car more expensive than they need for transportation? How many people don't drink unhealthy, expensive soft drinks or eat fast food? How many people actually plan all their purchases and never fall victim to impulse purchasing? How many young married couples are there in which both people don't work just so that they'll make enough money to keep up with the Jones? Very few indeed, and it's because advertising works.
Yes, some people enjoy working a lot. They're called workaholics, and I seriously doubt they make up 10% of the population. Don't tell me that most people actually consciously enjoy working 40, 50, even 60 hours a week just so they can buy all sorts of self-destructive products. No, I'm not claiming that anything a person buys is necessarily bad, whether for your health or happiness, but I don't feel it's unsafe to say that a fairly large percentage of it is. So why do we continue pouring money into this stuff?
The United States has developed an amazing middle class over the last century. Finally, a majority that earns enough money to afford things like a house and decent medical coverage while still being able to save and plan for the future. But most of middle class working stiffs don't plan! Why? Because advertising works. We don't plan for the future; our lives are endless cycles of working more hours than we should so we can buy more stuff than we need. And most of the people that do such planning go to one of the giant broker houses like Merrill Lynch that screw the middle class people in order to help their bigger, important clients.
Once upon a time, in the early days of the U.S., many people (all be it, rich people) used to own newspapers because they enjoyed to process of publishing a paper. They didn't make much money at it, if any at all, but they enjoyed bringing writers together who would express opinions similar to their own, and hell, push an agenda or two. Nowadays, nobody communicates (and that includes the receiving end) without a financial purpose. Newspapers, TV, magazines -- same goes for the Web. People keep going to same big-business websites, and big-business websites don't care about their content as long as they turn a bigger profit each quarter.
This is crap. And the thing that is so frustrating is that the WWW is the perfect medium for people to take a small loss in order to publish their own works. It's the perfect medium to revert to older days when people cared about content and didn't mind paying to get it out. Yes, people are doing this, but we've all seen the numbers how more and more people spend more and more of their time at the same websites such as Yahoo and MSN.
I just can't help but think that we have so much ability today, and we're not taking advantage of it.
Search out privately owned companies and apply, even if they aren't advertising. What we're seeing right now is a lot of publically traded companies whose stock has dropped considerably in the last few years. These same companies have 1) lost a lot of capital and are 2) cutting costs in an effort to restore market capitalization. Both of factors lead to these companies not wanting to hire many, if any, new employees -- especially for entry-level positions.
However, the plus side is that many privately owned companies are doing quite well right now. They're gobbling up the best graduates and planning for the future while their public competitors merely tread water.
So... do what many others are doing right now. Go get a job with a privately owned company that is beating up on its competitors right now. In another year or two when the industry evens out and more companies start hiring like they once did, you can jump ship as you like. However, remember this: it's easier to get a job when you currently have a job.
You see this all the time. Some study will directly correlate x and y, and people will illogically conclude that x causes y. Well, it's just as logical to conclude that y causes x, too (which is to say, it is not very logical).
One cannot correctly create causal statements based solely on correlations. It could also be the case that there are other variables involved, and x and y may be both effects of that other variable.
In this case, it seems quite possible that persons who are more likely to have health problems (e.g., ones who do not exercise) are frequently attracted to jobs that involve sitting in front of a computer screen all day. Thus, as they enjoy their sedentary lifestyle for years, health problem accumulate.
In short, correlations are useful but not for drawing causal statements.
This sig is false.
Re:Clever, 0x90, but I'm changing my name to 0x120
on
InvisibleNet Presents IIP
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
2006? That's such a long way off, like 4 or 5 years right? Wait, what year is it again?
Although this seems counter-intuitive as their are many studies available now indicating that more homes then ever are dual-income, and yet despite that they seem only just able to make ends-meet. Compare this to the 1950s where it was the norm for the man to work and the woman to tend the home.
If people are working more in order to maintain the same lifestyle...
Same lifestyle? Back in the 1950s, if you were middle class and bought a house, it was probably about 1500 square feet. And you had only one car (you carpooled with neighbors to your job at the factory and the women carpooled to run their errands), and the car you owned was nowhere near the level of quality of a modern car.
Nowadays, a middle class family lives in a 3000 square foot house and owns two cars and leases another. And even with twice the floor space in their house, they still need to rent personal storage because they have too much stuff.
Lifestyle is totally different than it was back in the 1950s; make no mistake.
This doesn't mean a PhD is useless - it's always good for getting higher pay, and impresses the girls. Heck, it may occasionally even be directly applicable to the work at hand.
Impresses the girls? 'Nuff said. I'm going back to school!
Sure there are a few good PC games out there, but the general lack of truly submersive entertainment has one really good benefit that a lot of geeks don't seem to realize. Finally, I was able to switch completely to Linux without feeling I was missing out on anything on Windows.
No joke.
Give it up for the Halting Problem Solution. Whoo whoo!
Nah, it's a feature, man! It prevents IE users from seeing non-Microsoft-certified websites!
Not to be overly trollish here, but you could also squish poetry onto one long line or a big novel onto one really huge page, like something in Guinness's Book of World Records I suppose.
The point is, we use line counts in computer languages, even though most computer languages can be spaced out in numerous ways, because it provides a good rough estimate of length and complexity. It's not always the best metric, but oftentimes it serves its purpose well. In this case, the typical slashdot reader can see that the exploit is only "five lines" and realize that it's not a overly complicated HTML parser exploit but instead something ridiculously simple.
If you think unemployment is a lot of work, then what is your opinion of employment!
I was unemployed in TX about a year ago for 4 months, and my impression was that the unemployment offices are so overloaded these days that they're flat out incapable of checking up on most people. The net result for me was that I had to make a single phone call maybe once each week into an automated system verifying that I was still looking for work.
Mind you, I'm not complaining here. The last thing most people need when unemployed is to waste additional time putting up with The Man.
And I thought it was just going to be a space heater.
You may not call yourself a Christian, but you demonstrate that you think like one in how you use the word "ethical." There are many valid, consistent ethical systems that put the needs of humanity before the needs of the individual. If applying one of these systems, then is it not the case that we are obligated to experiment, knowing that it will cause short-term pain and suffering to a small percentage of the population?
The common response is to question the "truthfulness" of these ethical systems. However, once you start thinking your opinion is right and other persons' are wrong, you're the same as religious in my book. And if you happen to be siding with the Christians, then maybe you need to re-evaluate just how non-Christian you are.
This is what Linus seems to not be able to understand. Not caring about politics when your actions and choices have political consequences is also politics - the politics of "I don't care." If he says "I'll give you the choice of compling this into your kernel" that is in no way a neutral stand on anything.
Oh no, Linus understands this perfectly, and that's what makes him so likable in the community. He realizes that appearing non-political is his best bet for uniting people behind him.
Nobody wins friends and influences people by arguing. Ok, maybe some lucky individuals possess this gift, but they're one in a million.
Overall, I am continually amazed that most people in the world are only capable of understanding the lower level of natural language: what is spoken, written, et cetera. The high level of natural language -- the level where the true meaning exists -- lies in action and behavior. Look around, and you'll see most people lie, not just to others but also themselves. You'll see this because the two levels quite frequently contradict each other.
You're absolutely right; every choice for every person that involves anybody else is political. And more times than not the best political move is to "appear" non-political, but that's just the lower level. At the higher level, it's the same old politics...
It's kind of like the statement, "I am honest." That's lower level, and it's meaningless.
Did Voltaire actually die protecting free speech? That bastard.
What makes you think the quality of journalism would improve by print newspapers being replaced by online newspapers?
I feel that you've read way too much into my original post. My post was clearly not offering a solution to the problem but was offering sarcastic commentary on the poorness of modern American journalism and especially about the historically popular form, newspaper. TV news is hopeless, and many people already believe this. But newspapers are little better these days, and many people still hold an implicit belief that "if it's in print, then it must be newsworthy."
The first step in improving the situation is getting most Americans aware that what they consider news is indeed not. What most Americans call news is simply press release filtering. It's a long shot, but if people can learn to think critically about the sources behind the reports, then journalism can improve. Until then, the ad-revenue model of the mass media will inherently continue to focus on quantity, not quality.
Newspapers might as well die (so long as TV news dies as well). American journalism is dead anyway. Not only are most major cities losing out to a single paper, but papers are mostly just official news (news taken from official press releases). There is indeed little to no investigative reporting done anymore, and this is sad.
... that doesn't reside in a space heater? Sure, I would like a faster computer than my current Athlon 500, but the high energy consumption, which leads to excess heat which leads to noisy fans xor fried chips (which may be good in England but not here in the States), is getting out-of-hand crazy.
I feel sorry for all the gamers out there that must buy all these $1000 space heaters every year or two just to continue their gaming fix. Outside of gaming, are even 1% of these systems even close to fully utilized? I seriously doubt it.
I understand that my needs are different from the average desktop owner. I use my computer to play DVDs, encode/decode OGGs, download and watch movie trailers and other video, and compile bucket loads of free software packages via linux from scratch. I even try a little development myself. However, for these tasks, I have found that the optimum computer remains a CPU from about 1998 or 1999. And if you have a few hundred dollars, maxing the memory of an old Athlon or P3 and replacing the IDE drives with SCSI ones leads to a surprisingly fast system.
WORK per DOLLAR is important, but it's not the only thing. Personally, I rate WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION even higher. And even more important than WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION is the REALIZED WORK per ENGERGY CONSUMPTION, which takes into account the fact that the average desktop machine just sits at 95% idle most of the time.
This is exactly why my computer remains an original Athlon (500MHz). It's fast enough to play DVDs and encode/decode OGGs. Hell, I even run a linux from scratch system, which means I frequently must compile huge software packages. Sure, it may take a day to compile all the packages for the latest KDE release (as opposed to an hour or so), but my computer makes almost no noise and blows cool air out the back. And I don't feel like I'm wasting a significant amount of electricity keeping my system up 24/7.
I looked for a good five minutes at the picture of the Z Machine, and I couldn't locate the place where you insert the banana peels and other garbage for fuel.
I realize in advance that this post will be quite unpopular with the anti-spam slashdot community, but here goes anyway ...
Although spam must technically be (by defintion) commercial, to define it as such is irrelevant to me. It takes the same amount of time to delete non-commercial unsolicited messages as it does solicited. Call this whatever you like; this is a spam issue.
While I won't insult anyone's intelligence by adding more insightless drivel to the free speech angle of this debate (because both sides are based on an interpretation of the 1st admendment that is opinion), I would like to state, however, that this whole spam issue is being tackled from the wrong side.
Instead of focusing our time and resources on deterring spammers, it is in our own interests to focus on limiting spam's detrimental effects. Necessity is the mother of invention, some say; spam provides a great need for:
Boost Morale? That's laughable. Just do what every other company does: buy a longer whip!
If I remember from my own experiences in public school, the current biggest problem with textbooks is the lack of photographs of beautiful, naked women.
Uh, dude, you forgot the ".com" part.
This sig is false.
The WWW is a great thing. Companies like Yahoo deliver a great number of services, nearly all of which are free to end users such as myself. But not really. Someone has to pay for these services, and someone is paying for these services: me and every other end user. How? Advertising. And it works; it really does.
How many people don't own a car more expensive than they need for transportation? How many people don't drink unhealthy, expensive soft drinks or eat fast food? How many people actually plan all their purchases and never fall victim to impulse purchasing? How many young married couples are there in which both people don't work just so that they'll make enough money to keep up with the Jones? Very few indeed, and it's because advertising works.
Yes, some people enjoy working a lot. They're called workaholics, and I seriously doubt they make up 10% of the population. Don't tell me that most people actually consciously enjoy working 40, 50, even 60 hours a week just so they can buy all sorts of self-destructive products. No, I'm not claiming that anything a person buys is necessarily bad, whether for your health or happiness, but I don't feel it's unsafe to say that a fairly large percentage of it is. So why do we continue pouring money into this stuff?
The United States has developed an amazing middle class over the last century. Finally, a majority that earns enough money to afford things like a house and decent medical coverage while still being able to save and plan for the future. But most of middle class working stiffs don't plan! Why? Because advertising works. We don't plan for the future; our lives are endless cycles of working more hours than we should so we can buy more stuff than we need. And most of the people that do such planning go to one of the giant broker houses like Merrill Lynch that screw the middle class people in order to help their bigger, important clients.
Once upon a time, in the early days of the U.S., many people (all be it, rich people) used to own newspapers because they enjoyed to process of publishing a paper. They didn't make much money at it, if any at all, but they enjoyed bringing writers together who would express opinions similar to their own, and hell, push an agenda or two. Nowadays, nobody communicates (and that includes the receiving end) without a financial purpose. Newspapers, TV, magazines -- same goes for the Web. People keep going to same big-business websites, and big-business websites don't care about their content as long as they turn a bigger profit each quarter.
This is crap. And the thing that is so frustrating is that the WWW is the perfect medium for people to take a small loss in order to publish their own works. It's the perfect medium to revert to older days when people cared about content and didn't mind paying to get it out. Yes, people are doing this, but we've all seen the numbers how more and more people spend more and more of their time at the same websites such as Yahoo and MSN.
I just can't help but think that we have so much ability today, and we're not taking advantage of it.
</RANT>
This sig is false.
Search out privately owned companies and apply, even if they aren't advertising. What we're seeing right now is a lot of publically traded companies whose stock has dropped considerably in the last few years. These same companies have 1) lost a lot of capital and are 2) cutting costs in an effort to restore market capitalization. Both of factors lead to these companies not wanting to hire many, if any, new employees -- especially for entry-level positions.
However, the plus side is that many privately owned companies are doing quite well right now. They're gobbling up the best graduates and planning for the future while their public competitors merely tread water.
So ... do what many others are doing right now. Go get a job with a privately owned company that is beating up on its competitors right now. In another year or two when the industry evens out and more companies start hiring like they once did, you can jump ship as you like. However, remember this: it's easier to get a job when you currently have a job.
This sig is false.
You see this all the time. Some study will directly correlate x and y, and people will illogically conclude that x causes y. Well, it's just as logical to conclude that y causes x, too (which is to say, it is not very logical).
One cannot correctly create causal statements based solely on correlations. It could also be the case that there are other variables involved, and x and y may be both effects of that other variable.
In this case, it seems quite possible that persons who are more likely to have health problems (e.g., ones who do not exercise) are frequently attracted to jobs that involve sitting in front of a computer screen all day. Thus, as they enjoy their sedentary lifestyle for years, health problem accumulate.
In short, correlations are useful but not for drawing causal statements.
This sig is false.
It's also gross in decimal, as in, a gross (144).
This sig is false.