1. I've never seen a claim anywhere that slashdotters are progressive, fair or open-minded.
There are plenty of discussions where the general theme is how backwards and close-minded and racist and homophobic etc. the rest of the population is, whereas Slashdotters are Gandhi reincarnated.
esp. as many of those jobs were created through American ingenuity and American tax dollars.
The only reason they had the opportunity to use that 'ingenuity' is because they were born in the right country. I'm sure that if most of these American computer programmers were born in India or Malaysia, they wouldn't be doing 'ingenius' work and paying lots of tax money and creating jobs, they'd be working in rice fields. And I bet they'd be grateful that computer programming jobs were coming to their country.
Unless you think that which country you're born in determines what job you deserve?
If you don't like it, go down the road. If you're unhappy with your terms of employment and yet put up with them, then the real fool is you. If you think being a CEO is so easy, perhaps you should be one.
The CEO doesn't clean the toilets, so why should the toilet cleaner?
In that case, how the hell do you think anyone survives on $32k or less, bearing in mind that is above the median wage? According to you, there'd be hundreds of millions living on the streets, all with high-paying full-time jobs.
If you're that stuck for cash, perhaps you shouldn't be spending so much on luxuries like cars and mortgages. How long do those car payments last? At $400 per month it shouldn't take you a year to pay it off. If you're spending $300 per month on utilities you're doing something wrong.
Also take into account the low cost of living in the US, and the low taxes, and you're doing pretty well.
Well, in a real shop I can read the box. On the Internet you just get a shitty picture and some marketing crap about how great it is. Also if you get something from a real shop you can take it back. On the Internet, you have to pay to send it back (arranging it all yourself), then hope they give you your money back, because they have no accountability, you can't go in and threaten them like you can with a real shop.
I don't have a printer because it suddenly stopped working.
Ok, I'm still trying to figure out why you didn't get modded (-1 Troll)1. Name a single 24/7 B&M computer store.
I don't need them, because I don't need things delivering, I just turn up and buy it, and take it home. This is where the Internet model falls down.
2. Is it the store's fault that you are incapable of googling the item you are thinking about purchasing before you buy it?
In the time it takes to search through the piles of crap which Google deems worthy of its database, I could have worked enough overtime to buy a whole new item altogether. Unless there's a single, neutral, accountable place which lists all the features and performances of every piece of hardware, buying off the Internet is always going to be a con. Perhaps we need a new search engine, one which actually works. Or perhaps Google should work on actually making their algorithms work rather than churning out endless hype and unoriginal web services.
3. If that DVD burner actually wrote at 0.4x then it is defective and you should have returned it to the store and gotten a refund.
How can I return it to the store when there is no store? I can't even remember where I bought it from. It's too late now anyway I've had it a while. It burns CDs OK though, but in a just society that place would have been closed down and its management in prison for fraud. But big business is too powerful to be regulated and held accountable.
Well, I have no sympathy for you IT types. You don't know how easy you have it. I work in a factory, and I'd give my left leg for a cushy IT job. Yeah, it has its downsides, but let's see what benefits you get:
1. A desk job. Sitting down, comfy chair, air conditioning or heating, no leaky roof. As much tea as you can drink. Clean air, low noise levels. No hurting your back from bending down thousands of times a day. No lugging heavy things about. No risking losing your job through injury.
2. Usable skills. If you get laid off or quit, your skills are useful elsewhere. There are computers all over the world, people will always need computer programmers or administrators etc.
3. Massive wages. I mean, really really high, for what you actually do, and for how much experience you have. And no doubt you get paid if you're sick, and you don't get fined for being late.
4. Other benefits. Read one of those articles talking about all the benefits that for example Google and Microsoft employees get. Private health care, dentists, gyms, decent food, free drinks, and a million other benefits that most people would kill for.
5. Stimulating work. You actually use your brain, you have interesting things to do. Where I work I just stand there for 8 hours. Literally ZERO to think about, nothing to work out, nothing to concentrate on. It's a form of psychological torture. A few hours here and even the most hardened terrorist would confess everything through sheer boredom.
For all that, I don't think it's too much to ask that you work some unpaid overtime now and again, and the odd weekend. Bear in mind you get a LOT back, and there are people in other parts of the world who are prepared to do the same work for a MUCH lower standard of living. I think IT types have it pretty good.
No, my work can actually be quantified, i.e. I am actually doing the same amount of work. I don't have some desk job where you can sit about all day doing nothing then claim you were 'thinking' or 'being creative', I have to actually get shit done.
But then again, you could just be trolling...
troll/trol/ v. (trolls, trolling, trolled) vti. INTERNET POST DISAGREEABLE COMMENT TO WEBSITE to post a comment to a website, particularly 'slashdot.org', which one or more people disagree with. Especially comments which conflict with the general group-think. This verb is used to describe a comment in order to put it down or to censor it, to save having to actually argue a point. [14thC. Origin uncertain: perhaps from Old French troller 'to wander', probably of Germanic origin.] -trollern.
I looked into it a while ago. It all seemed well and good. Except there are a few problems.
1. They only deliver during the day, Monday to Friday. Just when everyone's at work. Genius. Whoever thought that up should be given a Nobel Prize. For Retardation. Deliverers should work 24/7. And delivery should cost less.
2. Specs. They never tell you all the specs. Or they lie. I bought a modem that advertised itself as working with Linux. It did work. At half speed. Eventually it stopped working altogether. Non of the other modems on sale even mention Linux, that's if they're selling modems at all because they assume everyone is a rich geek with broadband. Also I got a TV card, only to find it didn't work with my OS. Even though it never even mentioned any OS on the site. Then I bought another card which was supposed to work with Linux. Except it didn't. And on Windows, the picture was jerky and the signal poor.
3. Compatability. They don't tell you what the hardware is compatible with. I bought a 16x DVD writer, and some 8x DVDRs. Of course they neglected to tell me that either the DVD writer or the DVDs were shit, because it only writes at 0.4x speed. Completely fucking useless. Of course, they took the money of me without batting an eye-lid. Selling someone known defective hardware should be a crime. Well it is, it's called fraud, but apparently crimes on the Internet don't count as much.
Of course, if you get something shit off the Internet, there's always some small print meaning you can't send it back, or sending it back will cost you money.
First, I don't think the average worker is lazy. They're just not dirt poor and have to work 90 hours a week at $.10 an hour to survive.
Well, if someone in a sweatshop in the Far East is working 90 hour weeks at $0.10 an hour just to pay off their family's debts, they yeah, in comparison you're incredibly lazy, especially considering what you get for your work.
The general attitude in this discussion seems to be: If you're born in America, you deserve an easier job, more money and a better standard of living than someone who wasn't born in America.
If someone in a third world country is working all the hours God gives, just to keep his family fed living in a mud hut, surely it's not too much to ask for a spoilt American to put in a comparable amount of hours for his life in a large, air-conditioned house with fresh food, electricity, indoor plumbing, Internet, SUV and all the luxuries associated with living in America.
The current situation is, you're doing less, and getting MUCH more, and you're complaining because the people getting less might be getting a bit more, and you might be getting less and having to do a bit more. I think this is actually a fair situation. Just because you're an American citizen doesn't mean you're of a higher race, with everyone else existing to be your servant. You're no more important or special than anyone else, and if the advantages that were given to you by birth, which you did nothing to earn or deserve, are eroded, and given to those who don't have a thousandth of the advantages and opportunities you have, then so be it.
It's amazing how people on this site, who are supposedly progressive and fair and open-minded, suddenly become greedy and nationalistic when their cosy existence is under threat. No matter how much you complain, you have no right to a better existence than anyone else on this planet just because of which country you were born in. If this were a discussion about restrictions on international Internet traffic and trade, all the slashbots would be saying how it's a terrible thing, that borders between countries are an obsolete concept, and they should be allowed to download and import all the obscene anime they want. But as soon as their employer thinks their job would be done better by someone overseas, they want 3-mile high walls erected around the borders whilst waving the stars and stripes.
To the CEO of course. A company is driven from the top. Its success is because of its management, its failures because of its management. If a company makes higher profits because of laying people off, it's the management who decided to do that, so they get the rewards. In today's climate, the low-level workers are often expendable, so there's no need to reward them.
If you're not happy with the current situation, perhaps you should be a CEO, or start your own company. Then you might find out that it's not quite as simple as going to sleep in your office and taking millions in bonuses.
Well that's a load of rubbish. I've worked my share of 80+ hour weeks, and productivity doesn't go down. Do you have some sort of defective brain that things 'ahah, 41 hours, time to go to sleep'? My productivity kept on pretty much as normal. No 'cancelling out', no 'negative work', no extra mistakes. Yeah it can get a bit boring and maybe physically tiring, but that's why it's called 'work'.
All your barriers are mental ones: you think you won't work as well, so you don't work as well. I wonder how well the army would function with your mentality: "Oh, we've come far enough today lads, let's have the rest of the day off and read Slashdot." How many hours a week do you think Phd students work? More than 40, and do you think they're doing negative work?
I think you people are just lazy: you don't want to do much work, you want loads of money, so you make up reasons why you're not allowed to so much as break a sweat or work a second over 40 hours. No wonder all the jobs are going to places where they know the meaning of hard graft.
If you're doing less work, then surely they should pay you less? Or did you think that because you've made one efficiency improvement, you should just get to sit back after that, i.e. one day's work, one year's pay?
How the hell do you do that? Whenever I try breathing through my nose I just get out of breath: the air flow through the nose is not optimal for breathing.
Shhhh...you'll break the Slashdot reality distortion field.
Next you'll be reminding them that they're criticising the business sense of a company run by self-made billionaires, whilst they themselves make $15/hour working a tech-support desk, as they have done, and will do, their entire life.
You could say the same about Google. The only part of them that makes money is the advertising business. The company is a bucket full of holes, there's just a hell of a lot more water being poured in than is leaking out.
As opposed to what, people who breath through their ears? What on earth are you talking about?
I follow the speed limits to the letter becasue I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
Come to the UK. There isn't a single reasonable speed limit in the country. It's the same outside a school at 3pm as it is on a long, straight deserted road in the middle of nowhere at 6am. All the speed cameras are in non-dangerous places, where the speed limits are much lower than the sensible driving speed, so the whole argument that speed limits are for safety is destroyed: they're revenue collectors for the police.
Sorry folks, but the roads are for people like me to get safely from one place to another.
No, the roads are for people like me to get from one place to another as efficiently as possible, not for people like you who can barely see over the steering wheel to go at 20mph on the motorway on the way to bingo.
They can, it's just that computer monitors are not very good at moving pictures, so they look blocky. Remember, computers were designed for typing things, like letters and programming, not games and videos. That 30fps refers to TVs where the animation is nice and smooth.
It's odd that someone thinks 32k is a crap wage. Who are you, Bill Gates? I make 17k and I'm grateful for that (used to be 14k). I think some of you computer types are spoiled by the Dot Com era.
At most places of employment, if you threaten to leave, they say 'OK, close the door on your way out.' It just makes things a bit easier for the next round of layoffs.
There's nowhere else to go. All the jobs are taken, that's why millions are unemployed. If you want a job you're at the end of a queue millions of people long.
the alternative is to have a simmering hatred of 1/3 of your day for the rest of your life.
I wouldn't call it a simmering hatred. I've pretty much come to terms with how shit it is, now I just endure it apathetically. The place can burn as far as I'm concerned.
But what about us who have low-paying, shit jobs? I can't take a pay cut for a more enjoyable job, because my job's already the bottom of the barrel, and all the enjoyable jobs don't exist.
Well obviously not, because in this case professional musicians can't afford to public their material freely, and the non-professionals can only produce lower-quality content.
Port forwarding is a dirty hack. And it only works if you have control over the NAT router. Once we get to a point where there are more Internet users than available IP addresses, it's not going to work. Unless of course all the poor black people (like Africans who have as many addresses as Apple) get stuck behind NAT and have to play a passive role in the Internet, whilst the rich white Americans get proper Internet.
And for telephones? It happens all the time, they are called extensions.
Every house has its own static, unique phone number. There are more possible phone numbers than IP addresses. Imagine a phone system where each street had a phone number, so you could only phone outwards, but no-one could ring you. Of course it wouldn't be a problem as long as the rich white Americans had their own numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
1. I've never seen a claim anywhere that slashdotters are progressive, fair or open-minded.
There are plenty of discussions where the general theme is how backwards and close-minded and racist and homophobic etc. the rest of the population is, whereas Slashdotters are Gandhi reincarnated.
esp. as many of those jobs were created through American ingenuity and American tax dollars.
The only reason they had the opportunity to use that 'ingenuity' is because they were born in the right country. I'm sure that if most of these American computer programmers were born in India or Malaysia, they wouldn't be doing 'ingenius' work and paying lots of tax money and creating jobs, they'd be working in rice fields. And I bet they'd be grateful that computer programming jobs were coming to their country.
Unless you think that which country you're born in determines what job you deserve?
If you don't like it, go down the road. If you're unhappy with your terms of employment and yet put up with them, then the real fool is you. If you think being a CEO is so easy, perhaps you should be one.
The CEO doesn't clean the toilets, so why should the toilet cleaner?
In that case, how the hell do you think anyone survives on $32k or less, bearing in mind that is above the median wage? According to you, there'd be hundreds of millions living on the streets, all with high-paying full-time jobs.
If you're that stuck for cash, perhaps you shouldn't be spending so much on luxuries like cars and mortgages. How long do those car payments last? At $400 per month it shouldn't take you a year to pay it off. If you're spending $300 per month on utilities you're doing something wrong.
Also take into account the low cost of living in the US, and the low taxes, and you're doing pretty well.
Oh well done, you pointed me to something on a website which doesn't have a search facility. Now who's the dumb one?
Well, in a real shop I can read the box. On the Internet you just get a shitty picture and some marketing crap about how great it is. Also if you get something from a real shop you can take it back. On the Internet, you have to pay to send it back (arranging it all yourself), then hope they give you your money back, because they have no accountability, you can't go in and threaten them like you can with a real shop.
I don't have a printer because it suddenly stopped working.
Ok, I'm still trying to figure out why you didn't get modded (-1 Troll)1. Name a single 24/7 B&M computer store.
I don't need them, because I don't need things delivering, I just turn up and buy it, and take it home. This is where the Internet model falls down.
2. Is it the store's fault that you are incapable of
googling the item you are thinking about purchasing before you buy it?
In the time it takes to search through the piles of crap which Google deems worthy of its database, I could have worked enough overtime to buy a whole new item altogether. Unless there's a single, neutral, accountable place which lists all the features and performances of every piece of hardware, buying off the Internet is always going to be a con. Perhaps we need a new search engine, one which actually works. Or perhaps Google should work on actually making their algorithms work rather than churning out endless hype and unoriginal web services.
3. If that DVD burner actually wrote at 0.4x then it is defective and you should have returned it to
the store and gotten a refund.
How can I return it to the store when there is no store? I can't even remember where I bought it from. It's too late now anyway I've had it a while. It burns CDs OK though, but in a just society that place would have been closed down and its management in prison for fraud. But big business is too powerful to be regulated and held accountable.
Well, I have no sympathy for you IT types. You don't know how easy you have it. I work in a factory, and I'd give my left leg for a cushy IT job. Yeah, it has its downsides, but let's see what benefits you get:
1. A desk job. Sitting down, comfy chair, air conditioning or heating, no leaky roof. As much tea as you can drink. Clean air, low noise levels. No hurting your back from bending down thousands of times a day. No lugging heavy things about. No risking losing your job through injury.
2. Usable skills. If you get laid off or quit, your skills are useful elsewhere. There are computers all over the world, people will always need computer programmers or administrators etc.
3. Massive wages. I mean, really really high, for what you actually do, and for how much experience you have. And no doubt you get paid if you're sick, and you don't get fined for being late.
4. Other benefits. Read one of those articles talking about all the benefits that for example Google and Microsoft employees get. Private health care, dentists, gyms, decent food, free drinks, and a million other benefits that most people would kill for.
5. Stimulating work. You actually use your brain, you have interesting things to do. Where I work I just stand there for 8 hours. Literally ZERO to think about, nothing to work out, nothing to concentrate on. It's a form of psychological torture. A few hours here and even the most hardened terrorist would confess everything through sheer boredom.
For all that, I don't think it's too much to ask that you work some unpaid overtime now and again, and the odd weekend. Bear in mind you get a LOT back, and there are people in other parts of the world who are prepared to do the same work for a MUCH lower standard of living. I think IT types have it pretty good.
No, my work can actually be quantified, i.e. I am actually doing the same amount of work. I don't have some desk job where you can sit about all day doing nothing then claim you were 'thinking' or 'being creative', I have to actually get shit done.
/trol/ v. (trolls, trolling, trolled) vti. INTERNET POST DISAGREEABLE COMMENT TO WEBSITE to post a comment to a website, particularly 'slashdot.org', which one or more people disagree with. Especially comments which conflict with the general group-think. This verb is used to describe a comment in order to put it down or to censor it, to save having to actually argue a point. [14thC. Origin uncertain: perhaps from Old French troller 'to wander', probably of Germanic origin.] -troller n.
But then again, you could just be trolling...
troll
Internet shopping is a scam.
I looked into it a while ago. It all seemed well and good. Except there are a few problems.
1. They only deliver during the day, Monday to Friday. Just when everyone's at work. Genius. Whoever thought that up should be given a Nobel Prize. For Retardation. Deliverers should work 24/7. And delivery should cost less.
2. Specs. They never tell you all the specs. Or they lie. I bought a modem that advertised itself as working with Linux. It did work. At half speed. Eventually it stopped working altogether. Non of the other modems on sale even mention Linux, that's if they're selling modems at all because they assume everyone is a rich geek with broadband. Also I got a TV card, only to find it didn't work with my OS. Even though it never even mentioned any OS on the site. Then I bought another card which was supposed to work with Linux. Except it didn't. And on Windows, the picture was jerky and the signal poor.
3. Compatability. They don't tell you what the hardware is compatible with. I bought a 16x DVD writer, and some 8x DVDRs. Of course they neglected to tell me that either the DVD writer or the DVDs were shit, because it only writes at 0.4x speed. Completely fucking useless. Of course, they took the money of me without batting an eye-lid. Selling someone known defective hardware should be a crime. Well it is, it's called fraud, but apparently crimes on the Internet don't count as much.
Of course, if you get something shit off the Internet, there's always some small print meaning you can't send it back, or sending it back will cost you money.
A complete scam.
First, I don't think the average worker is lazy. They're just not dirt poor and have to work 90 hours a week at $.10 an hour to survive.
Well, if someone in a sweatshop in the Far East is working 90 hour weeks at $0.10 an hour just to pay off their family's debts, they yeah, in comparison you're incredibly lazy, especially considering what you get for your work.
The general attitude in this discussion seems to be:
If you're born in America, you deserve an easier job, more money and a better standard of living than someone who wasn't born in America.
If someone in a third world country is working all the hours God gives, just to keep his family fed living in a mud hut, surely it's not too much to ask for a spoilt American to put in a comparable amount of hours for his life in a large, air-conditioned house with fresh food, electricity, indoor plumbing, Internet, SUV and all the luxuries associated with living in America.
The current situation is, you're doing less, and getting MUCH more, and you're complaining because the people getting less might be getting a bit more, and you might be getting less and having to do a bit more. I think this is actually a fair situation. Just because you're an American citizen doesn't mean you're of a higher race, with everyone else existing to be your servant. You're no more important or special than anyone else, and if the advantages that were given to you by birth, which you did nothing to earn or deserve, are eroded, and given to those who don't have a thousandth of the advantages and opportunities you have, then so be it.
It's amazing how people on this site, who are supposedly progressive and fair and open-minded, suddenly become greedy and nationalistic when their cosy existence is under threat. No matter how much you complain, you have no right to a better existence than anyone else on this planet just because of which country you were born in. If this were a discussion about restrictions on international Internet traffic and trade, all the slashbots would be saying how it's a terrible thing, that borders between countries are an obsolete concept, and they should be allowed to download and import all the obscene anime they want. But as soon as their employer thinks their job would be done better by someone overseas, they want 3-mile high walls erected around the borders whilst waving the stars and stripes.
To the CEO of course. A company is driven from the top. Its success is because of its management, its failures because of its management. If a company makes higher profits because of laying people off, it's the management who decided to do that, so they get the rewards. In today's climate, the low-level workers are often expendable, so there's no need to reward them.
If you're not happy with the current situation, perhaps you should be a CEO, or start your own company. Then you might find out that it's not quite as simple as going to sleep in your office and taking millions in bonuses.
Well that's a load of rubbish. I've worked my share of 80+ hour weeks, and productivity doesn't go down. Do you have some sort of defective brain that things 'ahah, 41 hours, time to go to sleep'? My productivity kept on pretty much as normal. No 'cancelling out', no 'negative work', no extra mistakes. Yeah it can get a bit boring and maybe physically tiring, but that's why it's called 'work'.
All your barriers are mental ones: you think you won't work as well, so you don't work as well. I wonder how well the army would function with your mentality: "Oh, we've come far enough today lads, let's have the rest of the day off and read Slashdot." How many hours a week do you think Phd students work? More than 40, and do you think they're doing negative work?
I think you people are just lazy: you don't want to do much work, you want loads of money, so you make up reasons why you're not allowed to so much as break a sweat or work a second over 40 hours. No wonder all the jobs are going to places where they know the meaning of hard graft.
If you're doing less work, then surely they should pay you less? Or did you think that because you've made one efficiency improvement, you should just get to sit back after that, i.e. one day's work, one year's pay?
How the hell do you do that? Whenever I try breathing through my nose I just get out of breath: the air flow through the nose is not optimal for breathing.
Shhhh...you'll break the Slashdot reality distortion field.
Next you'll be reminding them that they're criticising the business sense of a company run by self-made billionaires, whilst they themselves make $15/hour working a tech-support desk, as they have done, and will do, their entire life.
You could say the same about Google. The only part of them that makes money is the advertising business. The company is a bucket full of holes, there's just a hell of a lot more water being poured in than is leaking out.
True story: In the UK a few weeks back, a copper was let off by a judge after doing 160mph on the motorway. His excuse was he was testing his car...
One law for us, and another for everyone else. And they wonder why people throw bricks at the police.
Considering how many mouth breathers
As opposed to what, people who breath through their ears? What on earth are you talking about?
I follow the speed limits to the letter becasue I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
Come to the UK. There isn't a single reasonable speed limit in the country. It's the same outside a school at 3pm as it is on a long, straight deserted road in the middle of nowhere at 6am. All the speed cameras are in non-dangerous places, where the speed limits are much lower than the sensible driving speed, so the whole argument that speed limits are for safety is destroyed: they're revenue collectors for the police.
Sorry folks, but the roads are for people like me to get safely from one place to another.
No, the roads are for people like me to get from one place to another as efficiently as possible, not for people like you who can barely see over the steering wheel to go at 20mph on the motorway on the way to bingo.
They can, it's just that computer monitors are not very good at moving pictures, so they look blocky. Remember, computers were designed for typing things, like letters and programming, not games and videos. That 30fps refers to TVs where the animation is nice and smooth.
It's odd that someone thinks 32k is a crap wage. Who are you, Bill Gates? I make 17k and I'm grateful for that (used to be 14k). I think some of you computer types are spoiled by the Dot Com era.
At most places of employment, if you threaten to leave, they say 'OK, close the door on your way out.' It just makes things a bit easier for the next round of layoffs.
There's nowhere else to go. All the jobs are taken, that's why millions are unemployed. If you want a job you're at the end of a queue millions of people long.
the alternative is to have a simmering hatred of 1/3 of your day for the rest of your life.
I wouldn't call it a simmering hatred. I've pretty much come to terms with how shit it is, now I just endure it apathetically. The place can burn as far as I'm concerned.
But what about us who have low-paying, shit jobs? I can't take a pay cut for a more enjoyable job, because my job's already the bottom of the barrel, and all the enjoyable jobs don't exist.
Well obviously not, because in this case professional musicians can't afford to public their material freely, and the non-professionals can only produce lower-quality content.
Speaking of world records (see the article yesterday about memorising digits of ), here we have the world's worst analogy.
Port forwarding is a dirty hack. And it only works if you have control over the NAT router. Once we get to a point where there are more Internet users than available IP addresses, it's not going to work. Unless of course all the poor black people (like Africans who have as many addresses as Apple) get stuck behind NAT and have to play a passive role in the Internet, whilst the rich white Americans get proper Internet.
And for telephones? It happens all the time, they are called extensions.
Every house has its own static, unique phone number. There are more possible phone numbers than IP addresses. Imagine a phone system where each street had a phone number, so you could only phone outwards, but no-one could ring you. Of course it wouldn't be a problem as long as the rich white Americans had their own numbers.