As a more libertarian sort, I'm much more likely to contribute to mutual aid than to give outright charity
So you are saying that Libertarians don't give unless they directly benefit from the giving? I'm honestly curious, because I've never heard anything remotely like this attached to Libertarianism. Seems more like Objectivism to me.
As for motivation, I suppose one could be motivated to help a guy out when he's been screwed. If you were standing on a street corner and someone walked off the curb without looking and into the path of an oncoming bus, would you do anything? What an idiot! Idiots deserve no help from you. Why, if he got splattered, there would be a huge scandal which would probably lead to increasing the safety training for bus drivers, thus lowering the chances of you getting hit by a bus.
IMHO, helping a guy out when he's down is another way of saying, "We are both the same," and in a world where we are permanently locked in our own skulls, that's worth a few dollars, at least to me.
Maybe one itch that should be scratched is "I'd like to have my OSS project broadly accessible to as many people as possible."
I think this discussion is vital for the future sucess of OSS. As others have noted, some projects take the view that "We don't follow the standard, we make the standard." I don't feel like this is a good approach and I think the article correctly identified cultural biases as a major obstacle to interoperability. We recently saw this taken to the point of actual aggression between two projects with the Firebird DB/Mozilla Phoenix debacle. Maybe a little unrelated, but the reaction of the FirebirdDB team was disheartening, and IMO, a quite devastating blow against the Open Source movement as a whole. This article is very timely.
The bust can come and go, yet the CEO and the CIO shall live well.
I suppose in monetary terms you are right, but remember that the CEOs and CIOs are usually extremely competitive. That's how they got on top of the food chain in the first place - they practically live and breathe their company, not so much out of loyalty as a drive to suceed. You've probably encountered rabidly pro-Microsoft people - what do you think the top brass is like? It's easy to look at someone else who doesn't have to deal with your problems and think they have it better than you. The truth is that if you traded places with them, sure, your current problems would go away, but you'd probably have lots more different kinds of problems.
My point is that the failure of a company may not interfere much with a CEO's ability to pay the bills, but they are definitely emotionally invested in the company, so what they have to say its probably relevant.
6. Web applications often include browsers and databases. Scripting languages often support both , so what will something like PHP with Firebird support mean. My feeling is after a year, noone will remember it was a database.
Scripting languages very rarely include explicit support for particular browsers. If they do, they would probably refer to either Mozilla or Gecko, not Firebird.
Also, did you ever consider renaming your product to something less generic? As others have mentioned, Firebird is pretty common name for software. You could take the opportunity to have Phoenix renamed to Mozilla Firebird while you went with something like FirebirdSQL, which is a name you are already using.
Valid points aside, your people made a grave mistake in assuming malice and then throwing a tantrum. Whenever I hear the Firebird DB name, it will conjure up memories of whiny children, and I know I'm not alone.
First of all what is so wrong with [having an agenda?
Well, nothing. I was just pointing out that those accusations go both ways. I'm not actually overly interested in the debating the merits of abstinence. I'm really interested in a meta-discussion, if you will - a discussion on typical Christian attitudes towards sex and the roots of those.
Its frustrates me that so many people (including those people who believe in God etc. etc.) seem to think that $DEITY (from any religion) is just out to make sure humans have no fun whatsoever.
I've actually done some research on the topic, tracing it back to St. Augustine and ultimately the cult of Manicheism, which is kind of weird mix of Christianity, Zoarastrianism and a few more obsure religions. One of the essential tenents of Manicheism was a very strong binary world view of black and white, good and evil, etc. Indeed, sex and every other physical pleasure was considered evil, and I think many people will agree with me that this resembles modern Christianity a great deal. I agree that $DEITY isn't trying to stop people from having fun, but lots of religious people think that. It's useful trivia to note that Christians thought smoking was a sin before it was determined that it was bad for you. (Side note: For Hindus, its @DEITY.)
Conversely, my study of both the New and Old Testaments doesn't reveal a binary world view that many have observed is common in modern Christianity. Certainly, there's good and evil, but I find that the general themes are rather less extreme, encouraging moderation in all things, etc. In fact, one could easily draw a parallel between the Pharisees, with their quick condemnation of "sinners", emphasis on monetary contributions, the letter of the law, ritual and hierarchy, and say, the Southern Baptist Convention. Plus ça change...
Again, you attempt to things by mentioning a great deal of statistics and facts to support abstinence. Teenage pregnancy, abortion, stress on marriage, higher divorce, higher incidence of STDs, oh my! One might almost come to the conclusion that traditional American family values are under attack!
It is certainly desirable to avoid these problems in one's life. You mention abstinence until marriage as the preferred solution, and probably has a 100% guarantee for those who choose to follow it. Its not the only solution. Consider this one: You meet a girl, get to know her, inquire about her sexual history and suggest that you both submit to comprehensive STD testing. It comes back clean and she goes on the pill. This is what I imagine when I say "sex outside of marriage", and many people would agree with me that this an eminently respectable and responsible approach.
Many Christians would disagree. If I took a pill that guaranteed 100% STD resistance, had myself sterilized and could somehow guarantee that I was doing no emotional damage to myself and then proceeded to have extra-marital sex, many Christians would still say that I am sinning! Why? Ultimately, because of the aforementioned Augustinian/Manichean idea that sex == evil.
Let's summarize your view of God:
God is practical, logical. Fair enough.
God created marriage... While there is a trend towards lifetime monogamy, Abraham had an extra-marital affair, and I believe it was Lot who had sex with his daughters. King David had several wives as well. Here is a fairly comprehensive list of polygamists in the Bible.
God told us not to have extra-marital sex. I'm not so sure about that one. I know Paul told the early Christians that, and if I was in the 1st century AD without the benefit of contraception and modern medecine, I would be standing right behind you yelling "Preach it, brother!"
So, God is practical and not arbitrary. When having extra-marital sex, we are violating the "Love our Neighbor" law, but if we can sucessfully remove the harmful effects, then this law no
You did a really good job of not answering the question.
You say that "[o]n-screen sex... does something far more permanent and destructive to the mind [than on-screen violence]." You don't say what that is though.
What is weird to me is that you are OK exposing your children to something that if they imitated, you would be horrified. At the same time, you protect them images of things that you probably expect them to do one day.
You also mentioned that no-one in your family will be going to see the movie because of the sexual content. Why? You reason that sexual imagery damages young people in some ill-defined way, and yet you protect yourself as well. Does it damage adults as well? Where is the line drawn? Does watching people kiss cause some kind of harm too? Maybe you'd be better off watching Bollywood movies - I believe the Hindu censors are more in line with what you are comfortable with.
All this talk about studies linking on-screen sex to immorality at home is tedious. Let's be honest - I suspect that you believe that anything of an erotic nature that involves people other than one's husband or wife is strictly forbidden. Thus, anything contrary to this belief is damaging.
I really think you'd be better off just saying this rather than trying to use studies to prove that you are right. You'd be more likely to convince people by saying "This is my belief, take it or leave it," instead of attempting to prove things to people.
I think its disingenuous to claim that my experts have an agenda, but your experts are just straight-forward right-thinking folk. Clearly, you have an agenda - that is to prevent people from having sex outside of marriage. The whole STD/AIDS thing you people harp on so much is just a cover. Do you really expect to convince us that you really just want to save us from disease? Its an obvious scare tactic. Now, I'm sure you believe you are doing the right thing, and maybe you are, but why not just be honest? Why doesn't the truth speak for itself? The STD thing is a side issue - be honest. Admit that the main issue is that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and it doesn't matter what studies come up to prove or disprove that.
So, you're trying to stop people from sinning. Isn't that God's job? I mean, you can only present them with the truth and it is their free-will decision to make to accept or reject it. I presume that God knows what he's doing.
Apparently, STDs are God's way of punishing the sinners, which is why condoms are not encouraged. If one was careful, one could enjoy virtually unlimited sinfulness. The punishment is circumvented. Indeed, God is circumvented! I can see why you'd want to ban them. Apparently sheets of latex are an effective barrier against acts of God.
I propose the following: God doesn't care about which bodily fluids you share with which people, or whether the government issued you a license to do it or not. God cares about whether you are doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the whole of the law.
So wait... Macromedia is notified about a critical flaw in the software, and they jump to getting a fix out the same day - and that's still not good enough for you? It would be great if no software ever had serious security flaws in it, but unfortunately, that's never going to happen, not in Apache and not in Linux either.
Also note that the people at eEye went out of their way to praise Macromedia for their dedication to building secure products, and you say that eEye is wrong about that. Who is right? I don't know, but it seems to me that eEye have a lot of experience with companies and reporting bugs, and they seem quite impressed with Macromedia.
Both of the exploits were fixed the same day they were found and eEye had this to say:
In this, we congratulate Macromedia for: locating the bug, fixing it, and releasing a new build in a timely fashion. This truly shows that they are dedicated to building secure products - kudos.
SMS is the best thing that ever happened to phones. The only thing that sucks is that not too many people in the US use it, or even know about it, but if you can get your friends to use it, its great.
Here are some great reasons to use it:
1a.
- "Hey, can you give me Barney's number?"
- "Yeah, its 555-"
- "Why don't you text it to me?"
- "Far out!"
2. Communicating in loud places like bars, clubs, and concerts. (Do most/.ers ever go to these places? Maybe not.)
3. Communicating with other people when you shouldn't be, i.e. at work, in class, in boring meetings, on dates, in movie theatres, in restaurants, etc.
4. Voicemail is irritating. Many people don't check it, and don't call you back right away. Text messaging means communication at the touch of a button.
5. Calling the UK is $2 a minute! Texting is $.024/msg for me if I buy 250/month. Trust me, I use them!
6. Studies show that people who use SMS have more friends and more sex! Hurray!
> 1. It will cut the number of tech jobs due to war funding.
That doesn't make any sense - the government is about to drop bags of cash on the defense industry and homeland security, both of which rely heavily on technology.
> 2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war
Also false. The younger, less-experienced people headed off to war were never applying jobs because they already have jobs. They are fulltime military personnel. As for the reserves, they'll be back pretty soon.
> 3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries
According to the article:
"As a cyclical phenomenon, jobs moving offshore isn't that important," says Robert Shimer, an associate professor of economics at Princeton. The concern... is based on the misapprehension that if our wages are high and other people's are low, all our jobs will be exported. "It turns out we are more efficient than the people we are competing with," he adds.
Speculating for a moment, I think you may be disproportionately feeling the effects of the recession, more so than other IT jobs. It seems to me that admin type jobs would be the first to go. I've read more than a few/. posts boasting about the posters ability to write shell scripts that do 90% of the administration while they play CounterStrike. Conversely, if a you've had some layoffs in your company and your sys admin is overloaded with work, you could probably suck it up and hold out for a while longer. But if you absolutely had to get your product to market because it looked like the ecomony was turning around, and you don't have the programming staff, that's simply not going to work, you have to get more programmers. In short, the consequences of not enough admin staff are less severe than the consequences of not enough programmers.
Of course that's all speculation.
Re:Why haven't they? Because the culture is broken
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That's a pretty tenuous argument. With just a little thought, I could come up with a reason why living in and accepting the allegedly dysfunctional Hindu caste system may in fact help programmers. It goes something like this:
People living under the Hindu caste system have to work around a dysfunctional and sometimes arbitrary set of rules and structures that they are unable to remove without drastic consequences. This greatly resembles the Win32 API(or C++ or Java or whatever), and as such, in order to get around the limitations and stupidity of a language/programming construct, it is beneficial to be practiced at getting around the limitations and stupidity of social constructs.
In short, I see no compelling evidence for your point of view (or mine for that matter.) Its all just idle speculation with no basis in fact. If you can offer me actual evidence supporting your claim, then we can talk, but to me, this is mostly I-Really-Wish-It-Was-True reasoning.
I can see why your pissed that you missed out on the internship, but come on! What did you want them to do? Keep the intern program and fire more full-time employees? Cutting the internship program is standard practice to keep costs down, since, as you say, its really an expensive recruiting tool, and pointless when you aren't doing any hiring in the near future. Which is never the case with Microsoft. You could say it was a poor decision to cut you after you'd already gotten all excited about the internship, but beyond that, I think you're being a bit petty.
You're right. What use is a socialite phone to a nerd with no life?
But seriously, its pretty obvious that this is not a business phone. With sound, color and a camera, its mostly for personal, non-business use. Why not evaluate it on its <i>intended</i> purpose instead of evaluating it on some other completely different purpose and then loudly complain that it doesn't fit?
The camera is not good enough to be used professionally! What an amazing observation. No, I think this is a great phone for its intended purpose. I don't think its revolutionary enough to talk about on/. though.
The thing about 'OPEN' standards is that they don't prevent anyone from selling consumer's digital identities down the river for a quick buck. Instead of just Microsoft being in control of our online identities, we have a hundred smaller but equally evil companies in charge. Wow! That's a lot better!
The thing that really bugs me is that its being sold to us as an open standard, so of course we support open standards. It's ridiculous, especially since this technology has NO BENEFIT to the consumer whatsoever. The vast majority of internet users simply don't log out of their websites. How many people have you seen with MSN messenger set to remember the password, giving access to the contents of their email? Not the most secure choice, obviously, but when you're trading cookie recipes, its hardly much of an issue at all.
I heard that there's this program called Mozart's Ghost that has a little pi symbol put there by the notorious hacking group, the Praetorians. Anyway, if you click on it while holding down control-shift-back-back-forward-punch, it opens up a backdoor and your screen goes all crazy. I think it let's you hack the gibson or something.
> so far left because of "brainwashing" by educational institutions.
There's quite a few people who come on campus where I go to school with this attitude, I guess sent by some kind of conservative organization or talk show host or something. Anyway, if you know any of these people, groups or talk show hosts, please ask them to stop sending their people! I promise, almost none of the students are godless communists, OK, and we ignore the ones that are.
Conservatives delight in painting a dark picture of impressionable 18-year olds, away from the ideological guidance of their homes, families and churches, fresh prey for the (Democratic) professors driven mad by godlessness, liberalism and feminism, and while radio hosts and pundits patronize us, the truth is somewhat different. Its quite true that most professors are left of center, no-one denies that, but do you think we, the students, actually care? Do we spring forth from the suburbs with our eyes and minds wide open, easily manipulated by the professors into rejecting God and country? Heck, no. Here's a reality check that you can cash at your local bank: No-one cares about the professors, or their politics. We hardly care about politics at all, unless it has to do with raising the cost of tuition. Students, on the whole, have zero interest in the opinions of their professors, or indeed, the content of the course. Students have two interests: Get the degree and get out and start making money. Learning, studying, rejecting Christianity, becoming a communist, thinking heavily about politics is not high on the agenda (but getting high is). The professors can say what they want, the only thing that matters to the students is what they say about the grades.
In summary, please stop sending your people on campus. Its very irritating and patronizing, especially since its obvious that these people are pretty out of touch. Thank you.
Now, I have to go to class. I think today we are drawing pentagrams and hammers-and-sickles on the floor in goat's blood, and its going to be on the final, so I can't miss it.
> No, the manufacturer sends the products to Wal-Mart and waits until the item is actually run through the checkout scanner before it receives a check.
I've heard of this amazing innovation, which is only whispered about amongst Walmart's upper echelon. It's known as "buying goods and services on credit." I have stolen this secret technology and convinced many of business who provide services to me to make use of it. For example, my monthly cellphone bill is due the month AFTER.
1. Apple's switcher ads are dumb, as are Microsoft's. In addition, I find them distasteful.
2a. Don't you think that people who 'feel' things about their computer need to get out in the sunshine a bit more?
2b. Are said people really the best kinds to be trumpeting the superiority of your product on TV? Apple's marketing department has successfully sold the idea that our modern world is so devoid of emotion, what with all these techno-gagetry. Its sucking our humanity away! But Apple's not like that. No sir! Why, some of humanity's greatest heroes used Macs. People like Ghandi, and Einstein, even Martin Luther King! And look, here are some regular Joes just like you and me! So buy a Mac, and get some simulated love in your life. Or, if you are poor, a tamagochi.
3. This is wild speculation here, but my sense is that many people who buy Macs as a lifestyle accessory tend to have a bright-eyed, future-looking aspect about them that brings to mind some sort of cyber-squirrel optimistically gazing into a techno-utopia, Powerbook clutched tightly to their chest, only they'd really rather not have to deal with the icky messiness of a regular PC, because the overall lack of cuteness doesn't match their Jetta, lifestyle or vision of techno-Utopia.
> they have SUVs in other countries
Yes. Yes, they do. But many of those people have jobs that require them to drive a four-wheel drive vehicle because of extremely poor road conditions such as UN workers in third world countries. Your average mall-going SUV driver certainly doesn't require that. Unless you have some kind of job that requires it, its an indulgence that causes environmental damage, wastes fuel and increases accidents on the freeways.
But I'm OK with that - the occupant death rate is between 6 and 8% higher than cars. Despite their reputation, SUVs are required to meet lower safety standards than cars. In my experience, the larger the vehicle, the more reckless the driver (professional drivers excepted), maybe because of the false sense of security you get from being up so high.
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So you are saying that Libertarians don't give unless they directly benefit from the giving? I'm honestly curious, because I've never heard anything remotely like this attached to Libertarianism. Seems more like Objectivism to me.
As for motivation, I suppose one could be motivated to help a guy out when he's been screwed. If you were standing on a street corner and someone walked off the curb without looking and into the path of an oncoming bus, would you do anything? What an idiot! Idiots deserve no help from you. Why, if he got splattered, there would be a huge scandal which would probably lead to increasing the safety training for bus drivers, thus lowering the chances of you getting hit by a bus.
IMHO, helping a guy out when he's down is another way of saying, "We are both the same," and in a world where we are permanently locked in our own skulls, that's worth a few dollars, at least to me.
I think this discussion is vital for the future sucess of OSS. As others have noted, some projects take the view that "We don't follow the standard, we make the standard." I don't feel like this is a good approach and I think the article correctly identified cultural biases as a major obstacle to interoperability. We recently saw this taken to the point of actual aggression between two projects with the Firebird DB/Mozilla Phoenix debacle. Maybe a little unrelated, but the reaction of the FirebirdDB team was disheartening, and IMO, a quite devastating blow against the Open Source movement as a whole. This article is very timely.
Don't work for the bureaucratic mess that is government operations!
Wow. You totally kicked cheezedawg's ass! That was cool.
I suppose in monetary terms you are right, but remember that the CEOs and CIOs are usually extremely competitive. That's how they got on top of the food chain in the first place - they practically live and breathe their company, not so much out of loyalty as a drive to suceed. You've probably encountered rabidly pro-Microsoft people - what do you think the top brass is like? It's easy to look at someone else who doesn't have to deal with your problems and think they have it better than you. The truth is that if you traded places with them, sure, your current problems would go away, but you'd probably have lots more different kinds of problems.
My point is that the failure of a company may not interfere much with a CEO's ability to pay the bills, but they are definitely emotionally invested in the company, so what they have to say its probably relevant.
I don't know which Napster you were using, but mine didn't have ads.
Scripting languages very rarely include explicit support for particular browsers. If they do, they would probably refer to either Mozilla or Gecko, not Firebird.
Also, did you ever consider renaming your product to something less generic? As others have mentioned, Firebird is pretty common name for software. You could take the opportunity to have Phoenix renamed to Mozilla Firebird while you went with something like FirebirdSQL, which is a name you are already using.
Valid points aside, your people made a grave mistake in assuming malice and then throwing a tantrum. Whenever I hear the Firebird DB name, it will conjure up memories of whiny children, and I know I'm not alone.
I don't even want to know what fiery hot wings are reborn as after they're eaten.
That's 100% accurate, except you are missing the fact that the fantasy/idealization is almost completely from a male perspective.
Well, nothing. I was just pointing out that those accusations go both ways. I'm not actually overly interested in the debating the merits of abstinence. I'm really interested in a meta-discussion, if you will - a discussion on typical Christian attitudes towards sex and the roots of those.
Its frustrates me that so many people (including those people who believe in God etc. etc.) seem to think that $DEITY (from any religion) is just out to make sure humans have no fun whatsoever.
I've actually done some research on the topic, tracing it back to St. Augustine and ultimately the cult of Manicheism, which is kind of weird mix of Christianity, Zoarastrianism and a few more obsure religions. One of the essential tenents of Manicheism was a very strong binary world view of black and white, good and evil, etc. Indeed, sex and every other physical pleasure was considered evil, and I think many people will agree with me that this resembles modern Christianity a great deal. I agree that $DEITY isn't trying to stop people from having fun, but lots of religious people think that. It's useful trivia to note that Christians thought smoking was a sin before it was determined that it was bad for you. (Side note: For Hindus, its @DEITY.)
Conversely, my study of both the New and Old Testaments doesn't reveal a binary world view that many have observed is common in modern Christianity. Certainly, there's good and evil, but I find that the general themes are rather less extreme, encouraging moderation in all things, etc. In fact, one could easily draw a parallel between the Pharisees, with their quick condemnation of "sinners", emphasis on monetary contributions, the letter of the law, ritual and hierarchy, and say, the Southern Baptist Convention. Plus ça change...
Again, you attempt to things by mentioning a great deal of statistics and facts to support abstinence. Teenage pregnancy, abortion, stress on marriage, higher divorce, higher incidence of STDs, oh my! One might almost come to the conclusion that traditional American family values are under attack!
It is certainly desirable to avoid these problems in one's life. You mention abstinence until marriage as the preferred solution, and probably has a 100% guarantee for those who choose to follow it. Its not the only solution. Consider this one: You meet a girl, get to know her, inquire about her sexual history and suggest that you both submit to comprehensive STD testing. It comes back clean and she goes on the pill. This is what I imagine when I say "sex outside of marriage", and many people would agree with me that this an eminently respectable and responsible approach.
Many Christians would disagree. If I took a pill that guaranteed 100% STD resistance, had myself sterilized and could somehow guarantee that I was doing no emotional damage to myself and then proceeded to have extra-marital sex, many Christians would still say that I am sinning! Why? Ultimately, because of the aforementioned Augustinian/Manichean idea that sex == evil.
Let's summarize your view of God:
God is practical, logical. Fair enough.
God created marriage... While there is a trend towards lifetime monogamy, Abraham had an extra-marital affair, and I believe it was Lot who had sex with his daughters. King David had several wives as well. Here is a fairly comprehensive list of polygamists in the Bible.
God told us not to have extra-marital sex. I'm not so sure about that one. I know Paul told the early Christians that, and if I was in the 1st century AD without the benefit of contraception and modern medecine, I would be standing right behind you yelling "Preach it, brother!"
So, God is practical and not arbitrary. When having extra-marital sex, we are violating the "Love our Neighbor" law, but if we can sucessfully remove the harmful effects, then this law no
You did a really good job of not answering the question.
You say that "[o]n-screen sex... does something far more permanent and destructive to the mind [than on-screen violence]." You don't say what that is though.
What is weird to me is that you are OK exposing your children to something that if they imitated, you would be horrified. At the same time, you protect them images of things that you probably expect them to do one day.
You also mentioned that no-one in your family will be going to see the movie because of the sexual content. Why? You reason that sexual imagery damages young people in some ill-defined way, and yet you protect yourself as well. Does it damage adults as well? Where is the line drawn? Does watching people kiss cause some kind of harm too? Maybe you'd be better off watching Bollywood movies - I believe the Hindu censors are more in line with what you are comfortable with.
All this talk about studies linking on-screen sex to immorality at home is tedious. Let's be honest - I suspect that you believe that anything of an erotic nature that involves people other than one's husband or wife is strictly forbidden. Thus, anything contrary to this belief is damaging.
I really think you'd be better off just saying this rather than trying to use studies to prove that you are right. You'd be more likely to convince people by saying "This is my belief, take it or leave it," instead of attempting to prove things to people.
I think its disingenuous to claim that my experts have an agenda, but your experts are just straight-forward right-thinking folk. Clearly, you have an agenda - that is to prevent people from having sex outside of marriage. The whole STD/AIDS thing you people harp on so much is just a cover. Do you really expect to convince us that you really just want to save us from disease? Its an obvious scare tactic. Now, I'm sure you believe you are doing the right thing, and maybe you are, but why not just be honest? Why doesn't the truth speak for itself? The STD thing is a side issue - be honest. Admit that the main issue is that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and it doesn't matter what studies come up to prove or disprove that.
So, you're trying to stop people from sinning. Isn't that God's job? I mean, you can only present them with the truth and it is their free-will decision to make to accept or reject it. I presume that God knows what he's doing.
Apparently, STDs are God's way of punishing the sinners, which is why condoms are not encouraged. If one was careful, one could enjoy virtually unlimited sinfulness. The punishment is circumvented. Indeed, God is circumvented! I can see why you'd want to ban them. Apparently sheets of latex are an effective barrier against acts of God.
I propose the following: God doesn't care about which bodily fluids you share with which people, or whether the government issued you a license to do it or not. God cares about whether you are doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the whole of the law.
So wait... Macromedia is notified about a critical flaw in the software, and they jump to getting a fix out the same day - and that's still not good enough for you? It would be great if no software ever had serious security flaws in it, but unfortunately, that's never going to happen, not in Apache and not in Linux either.
Also note that the people at eEye went out of their way to praise Macromedia for their dedication to building secure products, and you say that eEye is wrong about that. Who is right? I don't know, but it seems to me that eEye have a lot of experience with companies and reporting bugs, and they seem quite impressed with Macromedia.
SMS is the best thing that ever happened to phones. The only thing that sucks is that not too many people in the US use it, or even know about it, but if you can get your friends to use it, its great.
/.ers ever go to these places? Maybe not.)
Here are some great reasons to use it:
1a.
- "Hey, can you give me Barney's number?"
- "Yeah, its 555-"
- "Why don't you text it to me?"
- "Far out!"
2. Communicating in loud places like bars, clubs, and concerts. (Do most
3. Communicating with other people when you shouldn't be, i.e. at work, in class, in boring meetings, on dates, in movie theatres, in restaurants, etc.
4. Voicemail is irritating. Many people don't check it, and don't call you back right away. Text messaging means communication at the touch of a button.
5. Calling the UK is $2 a minute! Texting is $.024/msg for me if I buy 250/month. Trust me, I use them!
6. Studies show that people who use SMS have more friends and more sex! Hurray!
That doesn't make any sense - the government is about to drop bags of cash on the defense industry and homeland security, both of which rely heavily on technology.
> 2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war
Also false. The younger, less-experienced people headed off to war were never applying jobs because they already have jobs. They are fulltime military personnel. As for the reserves, they'll be back pretty soon.
> 3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries
According to the article:
Speculating for a moment, I think you may be disproportionately feeling the effects of the recession, more so than other IT jobs. It seems to me that admin type jobs would be the first to go. I've read more than a few /. posts boasting about the posters ability to write shell scripts that do 90% of the administration while they play CounterStrike. Conversely, if a you've had some layoffs in your company and your sys admin is overloaded with work, you could probably suck it up and hold out for a while longer. But if you absolutely had to get your product to market because it looked like the ecomony was turning around, and you don't have the programming staff, that's simply not going to work, you have to get more programmers. In short, the consequences of not enough admin staff are less severe than the consequences of not enough programmers.
Of course that's all speculation.
That's a pretty tenuous argument. With just a little thought, I could come up with a reason why living in and accepting the allegedly dysfunctional Hindu caste system may in fact help programmers. It goes something like this:
People living under the Hindu caste system have to work around a dysfunctional and sometimes arbitrary set of rules and structures that they are unable to remove without drastic consequences. This greatly resembles the Win32 API(or C++ or Java or whatever), and as such, in order to get around the limitations and stupidity of a language/programming construct, it is beneficial to be practiced at getting around the limitations and stupidity of social constructs.
In short, I see no compelling evidence for your point of view (or mine for that matter.) Its all just idle speculation with no basis in fact. If you can offer me actual evidence supporting your claim, then we can talk, but to me, this is mostly I-Really-Wish-It-Was-True reasoning.
I can see why your pissed that you missed out on the internship, but come on! What did you want them to do? Keep the intern program and fire more full-time employees? Cutting the internship program is standard practice to keep costs down, since, as you say, its really an expensive recruiting tool, and pointless when you aren't doing any hiring in the near future. Which is never the case with Microsoft. You could say it was a poor decision to cut you after you'd already gotten all excited about the internship, but beyond that, I think you're being a bit petty.
You're right. What use is a socialite phone to a nerd with no life?
/. though.
But seriously, its pretty obvious that this is not a business phone. With sound, color and a camera, its mostly for personal, non-business use. Why not evaluate it on its <i>intended</i> purpose instead of evaluating it on some other completely different purpose and then loudly complain that it doesn't fit?
The camera is not good enough to be used professionally! What an amazing observation. No, I think this is a great phone for its intended purpose. I don't think its revolutionary enough to talk about on
The thing about 'OPEN' standards is that they don't prevent anyone from selling consumer's digital identities down the river for a quick buck. Instead of just Microsoft being in control of our online identities, we have a hundred smaller but equally evil companies in charge. Wow! That's a lot better!
The thing that really bugs me is that its being sold to us as an open standard, so of course we support open standards. It's ridiculous, especially since this technology has NO BENEFIT to the consumer whatsoever. The vast majority of internet users simply don't log out of their websites. How many people have you seen with MSN messenger set to remember the password, giving access to the contents of their email? Not the most secure choice, obviously, but when you're trading cookie recipes, its hardly much of an issue at all.
I heard that there's this program called Mozart's Ghost that has a little pi symbol put there by the notorious hacking group, the Praetorians. Anyway, if you click on it while holding down control-shift-back-back-forward-punch, it opens up a backdoor and your screen goes all crazy. I think it let's you hack the gibson or something.
> so far left because of "brainwashing" by educational institutions.
There's quite a few people who come on campus where I go to school with this attitude, I guess sent by some kind of conservative organization or talk show host or something. Anyway, if you know any of these people, groups or talk show hosts, please ask them to stop sending their people! I promise, almost none of the students are godless communists, OK, and we ignore the ones that are.
Conservatives delight in painting a dark picture of impressionable 18-year olds, away from the ideological guidance of their homes, families and churches, fresh prey for the (Democratic) professors driven mad by godlessness, liberalism and feminism, and while radio hosts and pundits patronize us, the truth is somewhat different. Its quite true that most professors are left of center, no-one denies that, but do you think we, the students, actually care? Do we spring forth from the suburbs with our eyes and minds wide open, easily manipulated by the professors into rejecting God and country? Heck, no. Here's a reality check that you can cash at your local bank: No-one cares about the professors, or their politics. We hardly care about politics at all, unless it has to do with raising the cost of tuition. Students, on the whole, have zero interest in the opinions of their professors, or indeed, the content of the course. Students have two interests: Get the degree and get out and start making money. Learning, studying, rejecting Christianity, becoming a communist, thinking heavily about politics is not high on the agenda (but getting high is). The professors can say what they want, the only thing that matters to the students is what they say about the grades.
In summary, please stop sending your people on campus. Its very irritating and patronizing, especially since its obvious that these people are pretty out of touch. Thank you.
Now, I have to go to class. I think today we are drawing pentagrams and hammers-and-sickles on the floor in goat's blood, and its going to be on the final, so I can't miss it.
> No, the manufacturer sends the products to Wal-Mart and waits until the item is actually run through the checkout scanner before it receives a check.
I've heard of this amazing innovation, which is only whispered about amongst Walmart's upper echelon. It's known as "buying goods and services on credit." I have stolen this secret technology and convinced many of business who provide services to me to make use of it. For example, my monthly cellphone bill is due the month AFTER.
Amazing.
I have this to say:
1. Apple's switcher ads are dumb, as are Microsoft's. In addition, I find them distasteful.
2a. Don't you think that people who 'feel' things about their computer need to get out in the sunshine a bit more?
2b. Are said people really the best kinds to be trumpeting the superiority of your product on TV? Apple's marketing department has successfully sold the idea that our modern world is so devoid of emotion, what with all these techno-gagetry. Its sucking our humanity away! But Apple's not like that. No sir! Why, some of humanity's greatest heroes used Macs. People like Ghandi, and Einstein, even Martin Luther King! And look, here are some regular Joes just like you and me! So buy a Mac, and get some simulated love in your life. Or, if you are poor, a tamagochi.
3. This is wild speculation here, but my sense is that many people who buy Macs as a lifestyle accessory tend to have a bright-eyed, future-looking aspect about them that brings to mind some sort of cyber-squirrel optimistically gazing into a techno-utopia, Powerbook clutched tightly to their chest, only they'd really rather not have to deal with the icky messiness of a regular PC, because the overall lack of cuteness doesn't match their Jetta, lifestyle or vision of techno-Utopia.
A new SlashDot poll reveals that when MSN Careers publishes a fluffy article based solely on idle message board speculation, the end is surely near.
> they have SUVs in other countries Yes. Yes, they do. But many of those people have jobs that require them to drive a four-wheel drive vehicle because of extremely poor road conditions such as UN workers in third world countries. Your average mall-going SUV driver certainly doesn't require that. Unless you have some kind of job that requires it, its an indulgence that causes environmental damage, wastes fuel and increases accidents on the freeways. But I'm OK with that - the occupant death rate is between 6 and 8% higher than cars. Despite their reputation, SUVs are required to meet lower safety standards than cars. In my experience, the larger the vehicle, the more reckless the driver (professional drivers excepted), maybe because of the false sense of security you get from being up so high.