All of you "OH NOES! GOOGLE IS TEH EVIL!!!11!eleventyone" people need to re-evaluate their lives. Do you all consider yourselves evil? No? How many of you are working on systems whose parts were manufactured in China? How many of your clothes and shoes were made there? How many objects can you find within ten feet of you right this second that were made in China? You are doing business in China, by buying their goods, but you are not evil. Why are you applying a double standard to Google?
Look at page 5 of the.cn results. I don't read Chinese, but I would be willing to bet that those bloggers might have something to say about what happened.
It simply isn't practical to filter the entire internet. Some things are going to get past the filter. My question is: are those things that fall through the cracks easier to find with Google, or without? I'm guessing easier...and I am also guessing that Google will be fairly literal minded about interpreting filtering rules. A little malicious compliance on their part (ok, they said we can't show pictures of tanks in Tiananmen...they didn't say anything about pictures of newspapers with those same shots on the cover...)...
Ok, seriously, what exactly motivates all these "I'm so glad I don't play MMOs" comments?
Because we are immediately suspicious of any transaction where one side has a financial interest in how you spend your time. If MMORPGs did not have subscription fees, I'd be all over them.
We have that reaction because on some level, we realize that publishers of MMORPG's are the electronic equivalent of tobacco companies. They have a direct vested interest in making their games as addictive as possible, and they are going after kids. Sony hired shrinks to make sure EQ put asses in seats and kept them there. They didn't care how many lives they ruined (see EverQuest Widows), they don't care about player experiences (see all comments about grinding) - they only care about whether you keep playing.
Bottom line: we don't trust the publishers of these games to deliver the best quality experience to us. There are too many incentives for them to do otherwise.
And you're absolutely correct. Pay attention to the road, not to the car. The car should do as much of its own functioning as is possible, leaving me to point it where it needs to go. Not distracting people with a manual transmission is a Good Thing. It's bad enough that they're paying attention to cell phones, radios, coffee, A/C, makeup, kids, etc. We don't need to add a shift lever and clutch pedal to the mix. I, for one, will not be sorry to see the day when all manufacturers decide to completely quit building passenger vehicles with a manual transmission.
Totally disagree. It is obvious this post was written by someone who doesn't drive a stick.
Speaking as someone who has driven sticks exclusively for 15 years, I can tell you that once you get used to driving one, operating the clutch and shifter becomes a second order action - concious thought is not involved. Best way I can describe it the way the slashdot crowd would understand is touch typing - you don't have to think about typing every letter; your fingers know where they are and just do it. There is not concious thought involved (you are not thinking "OK, type 'letter'. The 'l' key is home row, third finger on the right hand...). Driving a stick is the same way.
What a stick *does* force me to do is use all four limbs while I drive. I *can't* talk on a cell phone, I need my hands. I don't get my gas pedal and brake confused, because every time I brake, I have to clutch - which (effectively) disables the accelerator. I have to pay attention to the distance between me and all the cars around me, because what gear I am in determines how long it takes to stop (downshifting), and whether or not I will roll into the car behind me. Driving a stick forces you to do little other than *drive*. I know it sounds like I have a lot more work to do, but remember, a lot of it is not concious. I have no doubt that I am a better driver than my wife who drives automatics, if only because I am forced by the mechanics of driving the car to attempt fewer non-driving activities.
...is not getting to place a link to the site of your chosing. The reward for having a story accepted is to have a story accepted. If you are submitting stories for any other reason, then your motivation is wrong. Add the no follow tag, and end the debate for good.
Agnosticism does not create a stance apart from atheism or theism. If you hold a belief in a god or gods, you're a theist. If you don't, you're an atheist. Agnosticism (usually) describes why the proponent doesn't hold a belief, so it's usually simply a description of the atheist stance.
As a former religion major, I've got to jump in here. I have yet to see a good definition of an agnostic on Slashdot, so I'll clarify.
Agnostics believe that it is logically impossible to understand God (or the Divine, or Reality, or whatever you want to call it). The argument goes like this:
GIVEN:
1. God is inifite.
Stop right there. As soon you assert that anything has infinite being, that is the last thing you can say about it. Anything else you say about it becomes a limiting factor on the infinite. ("God is male", "God has will", "God wants"...all have counters based on our first assertion.) This is actually the first thing they teach you in Philosophy of Religion, which is why I ultimately decided the entire field was mental masturabtion. (Really. They assert God is infinite, and then refuse to discuss it. The pointlessness of it is staggering.)
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117ish)
You really don't understand the meaning of that passage, do you? Shakespeare wrote it before sarcasm tags were around, but anyone with passing familiarity with the subtext of that scene would never toss that quote up to support this particular point. The preceeding lines (from memory, so forgive misquotes...)
I have of late, but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with gold and fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestulant congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is man!...
Then they are entitled to due process under our own Constitution. Either we are at war, and Geneva applies, or we are not, and the Constitution does. What is so hard to understand about that?
What is the ethical problem with executing all the people in jail for life terms? They are otherwise going to die in jail anyways.
Because you can reverse a life sentence if you find someone is wrongly convicted. You can't reverse an execution.
What is the ethical problem with using said prisoners in medical research when they are going be die anyways? They are otherwise going to be executed anyways.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
I dunno, what exactly is the benefit to society of funding astronomy? Oh, you were talking about some other space program? Ok, fine, what is the benefit to society of funding whatever it is you're talking about?
Let's see...microwave ovens, velcro, tang, mammography, LEDs, global communications networks, satellite television, jaws of life, breathing systems for firefighters, Vancouver's stadium, laser surgery...all came about because of NASA funded research. That good enough?
ACLU would not get anywhere in Europe, it it were to start by defending Nazi marches and protests.
That's too bad. The ACLU does not defend Nazi marches and protests; the ACLU defends their rights to march and protest. I personally suspect that most ACLU members find those people reprehensible - but they recognize that they have a right to an opinion, and the right to express that opinion - no matter how jacked up that opinion is.
Though most Americans often forget, the US was found on the principle that all speech has value, and that society as a whole is diminished by censorship. If you want to know where most of these beliefs came from try Jonathan Swift's On Liberty.
They only need a handful of justices to defeat Utah's propensity to legislate their moral values.
Let me translate: They only need a handful of justices to defeat the choice of the Utah voter majority.
"There is no greater threat to individual liberty than the tyranny of the majority."
-Thomas Jefferson
In times past, the majority thought slavery was ok, women shouldn't vote, and it was perfectly ok to beat your wife. We have freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, etc. - basically the entire Bill of Rights - to protect us from the majority.
Let me put it this way - the majority thinks Britney Spears is an artist. The majority thinks Iraq had WMDs. The majority thinks Bush is a good president.
The majority scares the hell out of me, and I for one am glad that we have this thing called the Constitution to keep them in check.
Hold on there, sport. Not everyone who lives in Jesusland agrees with these wackos. I live in St. Louis, and I am horrified by what the rest of the state is doing, as are most of the people I know. If you break down the political maps of the states, the red areas are almost all rural, and the cities are blue. The difference between New York and Missouri is there is a far greater proportion of urban population to rural in New York.
I actually have a theory to why rural areas are so conservative compared to cities...people who live in cities are exposed to far more diversity than people who live in rural areas, and are therefore forced to be more tolerant as a matter of survival. An interesting anecdote...Missouri recently cut Medicaid drastically (now a single mother of two who makes more than 3500 a year no longer qualifies). Polling suggests that people believe that the majority of people on Medicaid are urban blacks, so they have no problem cutting it. The truth is that 75% of Medicaid recipients in Missouri are rural whites. Living in isolated rural communities puts you so out of touch with the reality because you simply aren't exposed to it. It's a lot easier to hate gay people when you don't know any, and it's a lot easier not to know any when you live in a town of 20,000, for example.
Steam will throw a fit if you mess with your game files because that is what cheaters do. Steam is just as much about preventing cheating in their online games as it is about content delivery and management. Speaking as an avid Counter Strike player, Steam has been a HUGE success, and a great boon for the online community. Hackers are not nearly the problem they once were.
I would much rather put up with the minor headaches that Steam causes than the ones caused by every idiot with a wall hack.
The best thing that Kyoto would do would be to make a market for green technologies. It works like this: say the US has 100 pollution "credits". Of that 100, AmerenUE needs 5, but they are only allotted 3. They now need to buy 2 credits for another company. What you have now done is create a market in pollution credits - people will buy and sell them, and wealth will be generated - just like the stock market. When AmerenUE buys those credits, they will have to pass along the cost to consumers. What you have done now is to have created a real cost associated with polluting. Because it has a cost now, people have incentives to try to lower that cost. This creates a market for green technologies where there was none before.
It doesn't matter if the effect is to materially reduce overall pollution, because if it diverts funds to research into emission reducing technologies, all you need is that one discovery - penicillin for pollution. Right now there is actually a disincentive to research those technologies - without economic benefit from such an implementation, even if a company were to discover such a thing, it would not generate any cost savings.
Even if the US doesn't participate, Kyoto may have its desired effect. Europe or Japan may be the ones to discover the silver bullet we need.
I get so many requests to fix spyware laden 98 machines that have been running un-patched for 4 years that I adopted a standard reply: $50 an hour, 1 hour minimum, and all I will do for you is wipe your system and start over. Estimate 3 hours for a wipe and reinstall. Install firefox, zone alarm, and ad-aware, and give it back to them. When they call back in six months: $50 an hour, 1 hour minimum, and all I will do for you is wipe your system and start over.
This way you are not "fixing" the machine - you are giving it back to them in a "brand new" state. If they screw it up again, it is clearly their fault, especially because you gave them written instructions on what not to do. Moreover, your user gets a real education on what it takes to migrate from an old system to a new one. This isn't a way to run a business, but rather a way to protect yourself from being roped into fixing the computer of everyone your mother-in-law has ever known.
Call me crazy, but I think that in the richest country in the world, everyone should have access to affordable healthcare. Anyone care to argue this point?
I don't care how you do it. Figuring it out is not my job. But we supposedly we have some very bright people running things around here, and I say to them - make it happen. Where there is a will, there is a way. The fact the we haven't come up with a solution tells me that there is no will - that some people think it is ok that because you are poor, you are not entitled to pre-natal care, or glasses, or medication necessary to extend your life.
In my state, we can afford subsidies for Amtrak, but a single mother of three who makes more than $4700 a year is no longer qualified for Medicaid. It's beyond belief.
That social contract works in both directions. Remember, every manager is also an employee. If people who work for me institute policies for no other reason than to make me look good, I have failed in my duty as an employee to make my manager look good.
You are correct, this approach does have the potential for abuse. And the majority of making your boss look good is doing your job to the best of your ability. However, it is possible to do your job very well and still make your manager look bad (when he has given you poor directions and you know it, for example).
I'm not saying that these are the rules, just a philosophy. Guidelines to follow. They have worked for me in the past, and I am truly sorry that you seem to have had a string of poor managers. Not all of us are like that.
Re:Best management advice I ever heard
on
Geeks in Management?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The parent post sounds quite a bit like my philosophy of management. I believe in a social contract between management and employees. As an employee, it is my primary job to make my boss look good. As a manager, it is my primary job to get my employees what they want - be it more money, a different position, whatever. Find out what your employees want and help them make it happen.
When both sides understand and adhere to this social contract, everyone wins. You end up looking good, and your people are happy, because they actively see you fighting for them. People are much more willing to go to the wall for you if they believe that you care about them.
Yep, you can die from video games. Games influance people just like anything else. Have enough apathy? Feeling easily irritable? Think it is cool to take a gun to school? These are the attributes to video games.
We never had people bringing guns to school before video games became popular. So I would tell you to get your facts straight.
Um, no. White kids didn't bring guns to school before video games became popular. Black kids have been killing each other for *years* and nobody gave two shits until some affluent whites got killed.
The problem with asserting that violent media causes viloent behavior is that there is no science behind it, and quite a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Japanese media is the most violent on the face of the earth, and their society doesn't have remotely the problem of violence that the US does.
Yeah. My desire to cut my electric bill in half is "stupid." My desire to increase my energy efficiency is "stupid." Attempting to be environmentally responsible is "stupid."
Unless you need your computer to be running 24/7, leaving it on is a tremendous waste of energy, and I think it's unethical. You're an ass.
If you use your system every day, like I do, the wear and tear on the hardware by all the added start cycles will eliminate your cost savings. Have a CPU fan go out and your processor melts, and all of your cost savings go out the window. Since I leave my PC on all the time, on the occasions when I do shut it down and let it cool off, I can always tell. The sounds it makes when it starts from a cold boot are *awful*, and they all go away when the components get warm again. I've had more parts fail on start than at any other time.
As far as power consumption is concerned, an idle PC consumes less energy than your average light bulb. Leave your porch light on at night? Chances are it consumes three times as much energy as your PC left on all night.
And as far as environmentally responsible is concerned...unless you don't own a car, are completely off the power grid, never flush your toilets unless they are full, take sponge baths, and recycle absolutely everything, I'd shut the hell up. All of us could do more to help the environment, but we don't and that's life. I think we all have bigger fish to fry than my 35 watts/hour it takes to keep my PC on all night.
So, in short, if you use your system every day, it *is* smarter to leave it on 24/7 than shut it down. Not to mention convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
All of you "OH NOES! GOOGLE IS TEH EVIL!!!11!eleventyone" people need to re-evaluate their lives. Do you all consider yourselves evil? No? How many of you are working on systems whose parts were manufactured in China? How many of your clothes and shoes were made there? How many objects can you find within ten feet of you right this second that were made in China? You are doing business in China, by buying their goods, but you are not evil. Why are you applying a double standard to Google?
It simply isn't practical to filter the entire internet. Some things are going to get past the filter. My question is: are those things that fall through the cracks easier to find with Google, or without? I'm guessing easier...and I am also guessing that Google will be fairly literal minded about interpreting filtering rules. A little malicious compliance on their part (ok, they said we can't show pictures of tanks in Tiananmen...they didn't say anything about pictures of newspapers with those same shots on the cover...)...
Because we are immediately suspicious of any transaction where one side has a financial interest in how you spend your time. If MMORPGs did not have subscription fees, I'd be all over them.
We have that reaction because on some level, we realize that publishers of MMORPG's are the electronic equivalent of tobacco companies. They have a direct vested interest in making their games as addictive as possible, and they are going after kids. Sony hired shrinks to make sure EQ put asses in seats and kept them there. They didn't care how many lives they ruined (see EverQuest Widows), they don't care about player experiences (see all comments about grinding) - they only care about whether you keep playing.
Bottom line: we don't trust the publishers of these games to deliver the best quality experience to us. There are too many incentives for them to do otherwise.
Totally disagree. It is obvious this post was written by someone who doesn't drive a stick.
Speaking as someone who has driven sticks exclusively for 15 years, I can tell you that once you get used to driving one, operating the clutch and shifter becomes a second order action - concious thought is not involved. Best way I can describe it the way the slashdot crowd would understand is touch typing - you don't have to think about typing every letter; your fingers know where they are and just do it. There is not concious thought involved (you are not thinking "OK, type 'letter'. The 'l' key is home row, third finger on the right hand...). Driving a stick is the same way.
What a stick *does* force me to do is use all four limbs while I drive. I *can't* talk on a cell phone, I need my hands. I don't get my gas pedal and brake confused, because every time I brake, I have to clutch - which (effectively) disables the accelerator. I have to pay attention to the distance between me and all the cars around me, because what gear I am in determines how long it takes to stop (downshifting), and whether or not I will roll into the car behind me. Driving a stick forces you to do little other than *drive*. I know it sounds like I have a lot more work to do, but remember, a lot of it is not concious. I have no doubt that I am a better driver than my wife who drives automatics, if only because I am forced by the mechanics of driving the car to attempt fewer non-driving activities.
...is not getting to place a link to the site of your chosing. The reward for having a story accepted is to have a story accepted. If you are submitting stories for any other reason, then your motivation is wrong. Add the no follow tag, and end the debate for good.
As a former religion major, I've got to jump in here. I have yet to see a good definition of an agnostic on Slashdot, so I'll clarify.
Agnostics believe that it is logically impossible to understand God (or the Divine, or Reality, or whatever you want to call it). The argument goes like this:
GIVEN:
1. God is inifite.
Stop right there. As soon you assert that anything has infinite being, that is the last thing you can say about it. Anything else you say about it becomes a limiting factor on the infinite. ("God is male", "God has will", "God wants"...all have counters based on our first assertion.) This is actually the first thing they teach you in Philosophy of Religion, which is why I ultimately decided the entire field was mental masturabtion. (Really. They assert God is infinite, and then refuse to discuss it. The pointlessness of it is staggering.)
You really don't understand the meaning of that passage, do you? Shakespeare wrote it before sarcasm tags were around, but anyone with passing familiarity with the subtext of that scene would never toss that quote up to support this particular point. The preceeding lines (from memory, so forgive misquotes...)
I have of late, but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with gold and fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestulant congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is man!...
Then they are entitled to due process under our own Constitution. Either we are at war, and Geneva applies, or we are not, and the Constitution does. What is so hard to understand about that?
THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!
Can you see what you missed?
Actually, it's the reverse, thanks to the 10th ammendment. If it is not expressly forbidden, it is legal at the federal level.
Because you can reverse a life sentence if you find someone is wrongly convicted. You can't reverse an execution.
What is the ethical problem with using said prisoners in medical research when they are going be die anyways? They are otherwise going to be executed anyways.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Next question?
Let's see...microwave ovens, velcro, tang, mammography, LEDs, global communications networks, satellite television, jaws of life, breathing systems for firefighters, Vancouver's stadium, laser surgery...all came about because of NASA funded research. That good enough?
That's too bad. The ACLU does not defend Nazi marches and protests; the ACLU defends their rights to march and protest. I personally suspect that most ACLU members find those people reprehensible - but they recognize that they have a right to an opinion, and the right to express that opinion - no matter how jacked up that opinion is.
Though most Americans often forget, the US was found on the principle that all speech has value, and that society as a whole is diminished by censorship. If you want to know where most of these beliefs came from try Jonathan Swift's On Liberty.
Let me translate: They only need a handful of justices to defeat the choice of the Utah voter majority.
"There is no greater threat to individual liberty than the tyranny of the majority."
-Thomas Jefferson
In times past, the majority thought slavery was ok, women shouldn't vote, and it was perfectly ok to beat your wife. We have freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, etc. - basically the entire Bill of Rights - to protect us from the majority.
Let me put it this way - the majority thinks Britney Spears is an artist. The majority thinks Iraq had WMDs. The majority thinks Bush is a good president.
The majority scares the hell out of me, and I for one am glad that we have this thing called the Constitution to keep them in check.
I actually have a theory to why rural areas are so conservative compared to cities...people who live in cities are exposed to far more diversity than people who live in rural areas, and are therefore forced to be more tolerant as a matter of survival. An interesting anecdote...Missouri recently cut Medicaid drastically (now a single mother of two who makes more than 3500 a year no longer qualifies). Polling suggests that people believe that the majority of people on Medicaid are urban blacks, so they have no problem cutting it. The truth is that 75% of Medicaid recipients in Missouri are rural whites. Living in isolated rural communities puts you so out of touch with the reality because you simply aren't exposed to it. It's a lot easier to hate gay people when you don't know any, and it's a lot easier not to know any when you live in a town of 20,000, for example.
I would much rather put up with the minor headaches that Steam causes than the ones caused by every idiot with a wall hack.
It doesn't matter if the effect is to materially reduce overall pollution, because if it diverts funds to research into emission reducing technologies, all you need is that one discovery - penicillin for pollution. Right now there is actually a disincentive to research those technologies - without economic benefit from such an implementation, even if a company were to discover such a thing, it would not generate any cost savings.
Even if the US doesn't participate, Kyoto may have its desired effect. Europe or Japan may be the ones to discover the silver bullet we need.
This way you are not "fixing" the machine - you are giving it back to them in a "brand new" state. If they screw it up again, it is clearly their fault, especially because you gave them written instructions on what not to do. Moreover, your user gets a real education on what it takes to migrate from an old system to a new one. This isn't a way to run a business, but rather a way to protect yourself from being roped into fixing the computer of everyone your mother-in-law has ever known.
I don't care how you do it. Figuring it out is not my job. But we supposedly we have some very bright people running things around here, and I say to them - make it happen. Where there is a will, there is a way. The fact the we haven't come up with a solution tells me that there is no will - that some people think it is ok that because you are poor, you are not entitled to pre-natal care, or glasses, or medication necessary to extend your life.
In my state, we can afford subsidies for Amtrak, but a single mother of three who makes more than $4700 a year is no longer qualified for Medicaid. It's beyond belief.
Preach, brother!
You are correct, this approach does have the potential for abuse. And the majority of making your boss look good is doing your job to the best of your ability. However, it is possible to do your job very well and still make your manager look bad (when he has given you poor directions and you know it, for example).
I'm not saying that these are the rules, just a philosophy. Guidelines to follow. They have worked for me in the past, and I am truly sorry that you seem to have had a string of poor managers. Not all of us are like that.
When both sides understand and adhere to this social contract, everyone wins. You end up looking good, and your people are happy, because they actively see you fighting for them. People are much more willing to go to the wall for you if they believe that you care about them.
Um, no. White kids didn't bring guns to school before video games became popular. Black kids have been killing each other for *years* and nobody gave two shits until some affluent whites got killed.
The problem with asserting that violent media causes viloent behavior is that there is no science behind it, and quite a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Japanese media is the most violent on the face of the earth, and their society doesn't have remotely the problem of violence that the US does.
If you use your system every day, like I do, the wear and tear on the hardware by all the added start cycles will eliminate your cost savings. Have a CPU fan go out and your processor melts, and all of your cost savings go out the window. Since I leave my PC on all the time, on the occasions when I do shut it down and let it cool off, I can always tell. The sounds it makes when it starts from a cold boot are *awful*, and they all go away when the components get warm again. I've had more parts fail on start than at any other time.
As far as power consumption is concerned, an idle PC consumes less energy than your average light bulb. Leave your porch light on at night? Chances are it consumes three times as much energy as your PC left on all night.
And as far as environmentally responsible is concerned...unless you don't own a car, are completely off the power grid, never flush your toilets unless they are full, take sponge baths, and recycle absolutely everything, I'd shut the hell up. All of us could do more to help the environment, but we don't and that's life. I think we all have bigger fish to fry than my 35 watts/hour it takes to keep my PC on all night.
So, in short, if you use your system every day, it *is* smarter to leave it on 24/7 than shut it down. Not to mention convenient.