Agreed. Closed formats support vendor lock in, and once companies and people suffer from lock in the vendor can basically release anything they want. MS Office and Autodesk's Autocad come to mind as exaples of proprietary formats keeping buggy or substandard software afloat.
I'm with you. Normally I'd bitch about the "phone home" features in WMP, but Quacktime and Reel will be doing that shortly. All 3 are spyware, in effect.
What I AM happy about is the potential that MS will actually have to document their undocumented APIs. That's the real deal maker to me.
I agree that we repress sex and it is silly, but I also think we need to be more graphic with the violence. Right now, we seem to have a whole generation of people who have no idea what violence REALLY looks like, how horrible the aftermath is.
Show sex, show violence, and show the consequences to both. Give kids the information they need to know to guide themselves.
Both parties like to run up the deficit. Actually paying bills is unpopular, even downright suicidal for a political career. But try to spend money on public works or public welfare programs, and suddenly you're a good guy. Politicians want to be heralded as good guys, so in the end the debt climbs.
The only real difference is welfare vs. warfare, and to be honest I really don't care either way.
I don't do either, I actually buy my movies that I want to see.
As far as the Bush/Ashcroft thing, I don't see how thay have anything to do with it. They are corporate puppets as well.
I bet, though, if you follow the money trail for the Finnish MPAA you'll see a large portion of the funds are (directly or not) traceable to the US MPAA entity. I don't see any evidence to support any other explanation.
Nope, I own not one single pirated DVD. Thanks for playing, though. OTOH, I think that Disney has used copyright extensions to lockout new competition from the market. After all, Disney wouldn't be here at all if they had to deal with current copyright terms at their outset.
But my reply was more directed toward the parent posters scorn about blaming the actions of other countries' MPAA on the US body, even when that is obviously the case. The MPAA is certainly pulling the strings on this one.
Heh... Ketchup boy wanted to crank up the minimum wage again. You think GW's policies are making the economy tank, image what the knock on effects from inflation and job migration resulting from another minimum wage hike would do.
Tanking the economy is not just for GWB, you know.
People buy virtual goods for real money all the time. Every MMORPG has goods, lands, and currencies listed on eBay for real money. Someone is buying it...
I would like to point out that people sell land and currency from MMORPGs on eBay for REAL MONEY all the time. This is really not that much of a stretch.
It's even illegal to have memorabilia in Germany, and you think that's the one country that should remember it most. The videogame mod Day of Defeat is technically illegal there as well, because it contains Nazi symbols...
So, naturally, it doesn't happen anywhere?
I'm glad your work experience has been so postive. Plenty of other people's experiences have not been.
Not that it doesn't happen ANYWHERE, but it doesn't happen EVERYWHERE. That means in at least some situations, it doesn't happen and trying to legislate equality just adds to the rift. Now instead of getting accused of a crime for no reason, the person in question is getting questioned about their merit to be there in the first place. This is an improvement? Seems like it is simply adding more racial tension to me.
Unfortunately getting rid of affirmative action is like deciding that you hate cancer so much you're going to stop taking chemotherapy.
Having affirmative action is like taking cyanide so you don't have to deal with the cancer! It is not fixing the problem (death) to kill yourself, much like you can't end discrimination by discriminating. It just doesn't work. As far as the employers being more interesting in hiring "white sounding" names, I can tell you firsthand why that is. It's because of the culture that get's carried into the workplace. I'm sorry, but if someone applies for a job and they are speaking ebonics, with their pants around their knees, and a comb stuck in their hair they are really not casting a good image. If enough people from one group cling to that "culture", it's going to influence the perception of that whole group. When you seek employment, you HAVE to conform to your employers standards if you want the job. I have to, you have to, everyone has to. Note that this is not a black only issue, despite my example. A resume from BillyBob McCoy or Seabass Hatfield brings it's own, potentially negative, connotations to mind. The upshot is that a few bad apples can ruin it for any group, no matter how honest and hard working. Unfortuantely, I think making laws to pretect the questionable behavior only reinforces the opinion against the group.
I call it simple deduction from the fact that most drug offenders are white while most convictions for drugs are against black people.
Sources? Actually, it's irrelevant, because drug offenders generally don't get the death penalty so that was a straw man arguement. What are the stats for assault/murder or other capital crimes? How does that break down?
You've successfully refuted racism in the criminal justice system by recourse to racism in the workplace. Not sure what you expected to accomplish with that.
The inequality in the workplace stems from a different reason, and once again has nothing to do with race. It's more of a culture issue than a race issue. My point was (and I'll be very specific now) that more blacks are sentenced than whites because more blacks live in poor areas. The skewed numbers in the justice system are NOT a measure of injustice, they are a reflection of the fact that the wealth is not distributed evenly. A failure of economics is not a failure of the judicial system.
But if you're too lazy to do you you might try Psychol Sci. 2004 Oct;15(10):674-9. The influence of Afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing.
What does that study show? Nothing. Between races, sentencing was on par. Within each racial category, people with certain sets of features get harsher sentences. Though the online text I found did not explicitly cite the specifics of "Afrocentric" facial features, I want to point out that it still doesn't prove anything about racism. Beady eyes, buck teeth, pretty much any feature humans can sport that is not considered attractive can have the same effect, pretty people get more money for the same job and get treated better in public. If the "Afrocentric" features are considered unattractive to many people, then your cause isn't racism anymore, is it? I'm not saying it's right to have a beauty bias, but jumping at shadows and blaming it on racism is not the solution either. Also, juries are juries of peers. There are blacks on jurie
Eh, the Republicans want to give my money to the big corporations, the Democrats want to give it to people who don't/won't work. Either way, I get hosed.
I just hope the EU doesn't pass the patents law, it's the only hope for fixing it in the USA. If the EU enacts legislation that gives them a clear competitive advantage and costs the US Government revenue (spelled TAX DOLLARS) then the US might abolish it's patent crap as well. If the EU folds, then darkness will simply cover the Earth or all IT innovation will go to the 3rd world or China.
He has a point. Like it or not, the main obstacle that minorities need to overcome is their own culture. Past atrocites aside, sometimes you need to just get over it and get on with it. Adapt. Survive. That includes dressing/acting/speaking in such a way to get that job you're after, even if it doesn't reflect your "culture". I hate dressing up, but I did it to get my job and I do it to keep my job. I have to adhere to the standards of the employer. I can't tell you how many people I saw interviewing at places I've worked who were unwilling to make that step, and were not hired because of it. That's not just here, that's anywhere in the world.
The problem wasn't what's happened in the past, the problem is that history is now a crutch to avoid doing what everyone else has to do to survive.
I never did anything that I need to be punished for. Why am I forced to make restitution for anything? That's silly.
(Yeah, ok mods, I've taken the bait of a troll.)
Nope, not a troll. Trolls post A.C.. I'm just someone with something to talk about who is not afraid of avoiding a "taboo" subject. It's not a fair situation, and I won't pretend that it is by keeping quiet.
While it may be unfair in most applications, and almost always a bureaucratic bungle, quota programs are an attempt to address the ongoing, unfinished results of centuries of abuse.
Again, I didn't do the abuse, why am I paying for it? It's time to level the playing field. You can't create equality while legislating perks for ANYONE.
You are obviously just too ideologically mired (or just plain parochial) to see how skin privilege actually works on the grand scale.
No, and no. I just don't think it is fair to slight againt anyone. Hey, white folks are people too. Don't we deserve a fair shake at things? Don't we deserve the same rights as anyone else? Does my white skin make me inferior? Then why don't I have the same rights as anyone else?
Every time I've been to the USA, I'm struck by how in-your-face this residual madness is.Go walk around a minority community and see how you are treated, then come back here and tell me that the in-your-face madness is one sided.
You don't have equality in the 'States, despite half-witted quota programs, and you won't for a long time. It isn't as simple as the "Sneetches."
I agree, but all these laws do is reinforce the schism. Make everyone truly equal under the law, and the social aspects of it all will work itself out in time.
First off, I apologize for my sloppy spelling in my previous post.For instance, at work, if some money goes missing from the drawer, I'm not the first person they suspect.
Funny, I've worked in places where that has happened, and I've never seen the instantaneous blame game you describe. I'm also sure the discrimination laws had nothing to do with the lack of blame.
People don't lock their car doors when I walk down the sidewalk. When I drive a nice car, I don't get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen it, or on suspicion of nothing at all.
I don't think that has anything to do with the person, more likely it's the location. You just don't see a lot of carjackings or minorites walking down the street in safe suburbia, and if I did see a black guy walking down the street in my neighborhood (NOT safe suburbia) I don't think I would panic and lock my doors. On the flip side, I know where carjackings are more likely to occur and I do lock my doors when I go there. That's common sense. Maybe you're going to tell me that carjackings happen everywhere equally and are not reported in suburbia. Somehow I doubt that is the case.
When I do get hired for a job, there's no sneaking suspcion on my or anyone else's part that the color of my skin, and not the legitimacy or quality of my experience, was the deciding factor.
That's exactly my point, you see. The stupid affirmative action legislation is what fosters this feeling, this doubt. We KNOW it is law that people are not necessarily hired based on their merits, that skin color can get you a job. That was one of the bitches in my post, remember.
Not to mention the amazing perks I'm likely to get should I find myself in the criminal justice system; for instance, a considerably lesser likelyhood of getting the death penalty, or of serving any time at all, especially for drugs.
Bullcrap, I call it correlation, not causation. The statistics you see flaunted about are meaningless because of the way the study was performed and the conclusion was drwn? More blacks get the death penalty. More crime is commited in poor areas (you see, they're POOR, if they were rich, there's less motivation and more risk to steal). Instances of crime from ALL races goes up in poor areas, but wealth is not distributed evenly so some people will be overrepresented in those areas. Again, common sense. Where are the statistics for relative DP sentences per capita by race and identical charge in the justics system? THOSE would be more meaningful- but you never see them bantered about. I wonder why...
See, that's what "white privledge" means - all those things that are so great, yet so transparent that you forget that not everyone benefits from them. These are things that you shouldn't have to be white to have, I agree. But to simply dismiss the leigions of minorities who lack these privledges every day, on the basis of some hypothetical reverse discrimination that I doubt has actually ever occured for you, isn't quite racist - it's just stupid.
Yes, we have so many perks... Not to repeat what you've already heard, but where is Mrs. White USA? The United White College Fund? White Coaches Association? White Entertainment Network? Funny, I don't think they exist. Caucasians don't have the same privileges, and once again that was the point of my post. Segregation was horrible, but it is over and it is now time to get some sanity back into the system.
And yes, I've been the victim of "some hypothetical reverse discrimination". Before I saw how the system worked, I was in a pleasant denial state, and I shared your (understandably) naive views 100%.
Call me a baldheaded cracker; I don't care really, because at the end of the day my paleface still gives me (subtle, but noticeable) privileges.
Yes, it does.
You have the privilege to pay full price for your college tuition instead of getting scholarships based on ethnicity instead of aptitude.
You have the right to be turned down for a job in favor of a "minority" candidate, even though you are both equally qualified. Companies would have a very hard time hiring a caucasian in that situation, from a legal point of view. Not to mention that any supplier to the federal government is bound to an employment quota, and X% of their suppliers MUST be woman and minority owned. That's fair.
You have the privelege of having extra penalties put on your actions if you do break the law. If you get into a barfight with a minority, it is a "hate crime". If he kicks your ass, it is just assault on his part.
Funny how those privleges are actually disadvantages, isn't it? I would even call it "state sponsored racism".
Actually, I'm a nerd. I call it a spreadsheet of what components are in what PCs on my LAN. Otherwise I'd never know what machine had what in it. Oh, and some junk for work too...
But no pr0n, who needs pixellated poon when you get it IRL?
I throw stuff on the server becuase it is secure that way. RH9, Samba, 3Ware Escalade card in mirrored mode... All hooked to a P233 with 128MB of SIMM RAM.
I don't keep anything of importance on single disk machines, it all gets backed up. I'm sure that just adds to my crap total, but at least I'm not doing sequential backups. That's bad!;-)
There are no account numbers on it, it's just a log for payments, paychecks, gas bills... Almost a counterpart to my checkbook register. I can look at the spreadsheet and figure if I spend any money now how will it affect me on a future date. It's kept me from buying games on release dates, since I can look ahead and see the phone bill autopayment in 10 days. It's not for everyone, but it certainly helped me get my finances in order.
I am too security minded to carry any numbers on my person. I memorize those instead! Not to mention that I'd feel sorry for the mugger's next of kin when they were notified of his untimely demise... lol
I'm a digital packrat
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I save old downloads, images, all kinds of crap on my server. I even have DX5 updates from when I first installed them. Right now its around 250GB of crap.
I carry a USB stick with my financial balances on it, as well as some other stuff. Good stuff I browse at work gets saved there. Every so often, I need to dump the accumulated debris off of it. It goes right on the fileserver without even being sorted.
I'm a packrat in real life, and with me it does carry over into the digital world.
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Agreed. Closed formats support vendor lock in, and once companies and people suffer from lock in the vendor can basically release anything they want. MS Office and Autodesk's Autocad come to mind as exaples of proprietary formats keeping buggy or substandard software afloat.
What I AM happy about is the potential that MS will actually have to document their undocumented APIs. That's the real deal maker to me.
Or parents who can't be bothered to teach their kids gun safety, which is the best solution of all.
Show sex, show violence, and show the consequences to both. Give kids the information they need to know to guide themselves.
The only real difference is welfare vs. warfare, and to be honest I really don't care either way.
As far as the Bush/Ashcroft thing, I don't see how thay have anything to do with it. They are corporate puppets as well.
I bet, though, if you follow the money trail for the Finnish MPAA you'll see a large portion of the funds are (directly or not) traceable to the US MPAA entity. I don't see any evidence to support any other explanation.
But my reply was more directed toward the parent posters scorn about blaming the actions of other countries' MPAA on the US body, even when that is obviously the case. The MPAA is certainly pulling the strings on this one.
Tanking the economy is not just for GWB, you know.
Haven't you ever heard the word "puppet"? It looks like someone in the USA is pulling the strings again.
People buy virtual goods for real money all the time. Every MMORPG has goods, lands, and currencies listed on eBay for real money. Someone is buying it...
I would like to point out that people sell land and currency from MMORPGs on eBay for REAL MONEY all the time. This is really not that much of a stretch.
At least a totally freaking obvious story is better than a redundant one. ;-)
It's even illegal to have memorabilia in Germany, and you think that's the one country that should remember it most. The videogame mod Day of Defeat is technically illegal there as well, because it contains Nazi symbols...
So, naturally, it doesn't happen anywhere? I'm glad your work experience has been so postive. Plenty of other people's experiences have not been.
Not that it doesn't happen ANYWHERE, but it doesn't happen EVERYWHERE. That means in at least some situations, it doesn't happen and trying to legislate equality just adds to the rift. Now instead of getting accused of a crime for no reason, the person in question is getting questioned about their merit to be there in the first place. This is an improvement? Seems like it is simply adding more racial tension to me.
Unfortunately getting rid of affirmative action is like deciding that you hate cancer so much you're going to stop taking chemotherapy.
Having affirmative action is like taking cyanide so you don't have to deal with the cancer! It is not fixing the problem (death) to kill yourself, much like you can't end discrimination by discriminating. It just doesn't work. As far as the employers being more interesting in hiring "white sounding" names, I can tell you firsthand why that is. It's because of the culture that get's carried into the workplace. I'm sorry, but if someone applies for a job and they are speaking ebonics, with their pants around their knees, and a comb stuck in their hair they are really not casting a good image. If enough people from one group cling to that "culture", it's going to influence the perception of that whole group. When you seek employment, you HAVE to conform to your employers standards if you want the job. I have to, you have to, everyone has to. Note that this is not a black only issue, despite my example. A resume from BillyBob McCoy or Seabass Hatfield brings it's own, potentially negative, connotations to mind. The upshot is that a few bad apples can ruin it for any group, no matter how honest and hard working. Unfortuantely, I think making laws to pretect the questionable behavior only reinforces the opinion against the group.
I call it simple deduction from the fact that most drug offenders are white while most convictions for drugs are against black people.
Sources? Actually, it's irrelevant, because drug offenders generally don't get the death penalty so that was a straw man arguement. What are the stats for assault/murder or other capital crimes? How does that break down?
You've successfully refuted racism in the criminal justice system by recourse to racism in the workplace. Not sure what you expected to accomplish with that.
The inequality in the workplace stems from a different reason, and once again has nothing to do with race. It's more of a culture issue than a race issue. My point was (and I'll be very specific now) that more blacks are sentenced than whites because more blacks live in poor areas. The skewed numbers in the justice system are NOT a measure of injustice, they are a reflection of the fact that the wealth is not distributed evenly. A failure of economics is not a failure of the judicial system.
But if you're too lazy to do you you might try Psychol Sci. 2004 Oct;15(10):674-9. The influence of Afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing.
What does that study show? Nothing. Between races, sentencing was on par. Within each racial category, people with certain sets of features get harsher sentences. Though the online text I found did not explicitly cite the specifics of "Afrocentric" facial features, I want to point out that it still doesn't prove anything about racism. Beady eyes, buck teeth, pretty much any feature humans can sport that is not considered attractive can have the same effect, pretty people get more money for the same job and get treated better in public. If the "Afrocentric" features are considered unattractive to many people, then your cause isn't racism anymore, is it? I'm not saying it's right to have a beauty bias, but jumping at shadows and blaming it on racism is not the solution either. Also, juries are juries of peers. There are blacks on jurie
I just hope the EU doesn't pass the patents law, it's the only hope for fixing it in the USA. If the EU enacts legislation that gives them a clear competitive advantage and costs the US Government revenue (spelled TAX DOLLARS) then the US might abolish it's patent crap as well. If the EU folds, then darkness will simply cover the Earth or all IT innovation will go to the 3rd world or China.
The problem wasn't what's happened in the past, the problem is that history is now a crutch to avoid doing what everyone else has to do to survive.
I never did anything that I need to be punished for. Why am I forced to make restitution for anything? That's silly.
(Yeah, ok mods, I've taken the bait of a troll.)
Nope, not a troll. Trolls post A.C.. I'm just someone with something to talk about who is not afraid of avoiding a "taboo" subject. It's not a fair situation, and I won't pretend that it is by keeping quiet.
While it may be unfair in most applications, and almost always a bureaucratic bungle, quota programs are an attempt to address the ongoing, unfinished results of centuries of abuse.
Again, I didn't do the abuse, why am I paying for it? It's time to level the playing field. You can't create equality while legislating perks for ANYONE.
You are obviously just too ideologically mired (or just plain parochial) to see how skin privilege actually works on the grand scale.
No, and no. I just don't think it is fair to slight againt anyone. Hey, white folks are people too. Don't we deserve a fair shake at things? Don't we deserve the same rights as anyone else? Does my white skin make me inferior? Then why don't I have the same rights as anyone else?
Every time I've been to the USA, I'm struck by how in-your-face this residual madness is.Go walk around a minority community and see how you are treated, then come back here and tell me that the in-your-face madness is one sided.
You don't have equality in the 'States, despite half-witted quota programs, and you won't for a long time. It isn't as simple as the "Sneetches."
I agree, but all these laws do is reinforce the schism. Make everyone truly equal under the law, and the social aspects of it all will work itself out in time.
Funny, I've worked in places where that has happened, and I've never seen the instantaneous blame game you describe. I'm also sure the discrimination laws had nothing to do with the lack of blame.
People don't lock their car doors when I walk down the sidewalk. When I drive a nice car, I don't get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen it, or on suspicion of nothing at all.
I don't think that has anything to do with the person, more likely it's the location. You just don't see a lot of carjackings or minorites walking down the street in safe suburbia, and if I did see a black guy walking down the street in my neighborhood (NOT safe suburbia) I don't think I would panic and lock my doors. On the flip side, I know where carjackings are more likely to occur and I do lock my doors when I go there. That's common sense. Maybe you're going to tell me that carjackings happen everywhere equally and are not reported in suburbia. Somehow I doubt that is the case.
When I do get hired for a job, there's no sneaking suspcion on my or anyone else's part that the color of my skin, and not the legitimacy or quality of my experience, was the deciding factor.
That's exactly my point, you see. The stupid affirmative action legislation is what fosters this feeling, this doubt. We KNOW it is law that people are not necessarily hired based on their merits, that skin color can get you a job. That was one of the bitches in my post, remember.
Not to mention the amazing perks I'm likely to get should I find myself in the criminal justice system; for instance, a considerably lesser likelyhood of getting the death penalty, or of serving any time at all, especially for drugs.
Bullcrap, I call it correlation, not causation. The statistics you see flaunted about are meaningless because of the way the study was performed and the conclusion was drwn? More blacks get the death penalty. More crime is commited in poor areas (you see, they're POOR, if they were rich, there's less motivation and more risk to steal). Instances of crime from ALL races goes up in poor areas, but wealth is not distributed evenly so some people will be overrepresented in those areas. Again, common sense. Where are the statistics for relative DP sentences per capita by race and identical charge in the justics system? THOSE would be more meaningful- but you never see them bantered about. I wonder why...
See, that's what "white privledge" means - all those things that are so great, yet so transparent that you forget that not everyone benefits from them. These are things that you shouldn't have to be white to have, I agree. But to simply dismiss the leigions of minorities who lack these privledges every day, on the basis of some hypothetical reverse discrimination that I doubt has actually ever occured for you, isn't quite racist - it's just stupid.
Yes, we have so many perks... Not to repeat what you've already heard, but where is Mrs. White USA? The United White College Fund? White Coaches Association? White Entertainment Network? Funny, I don't think they exist. Caucasians don't have the same privileges, and once again that was the point of my post. Segregation was horrible, but it is over and it is now time to get some sanity back into the system.
And yes, I've been the victim of "some hypothetical reverse discrimination". Before I saw how the system worked, I was in a pleasant denial state, and I shared your (understandably) naive views 100%.
I agree about the old code and updates, but that is really the packrat mentality. "I better keep this, it might be useful someday..."
Wanna buy another C64? Actually, it's a C128 with monitor and 5.25 drive...
Yes, it does.
You have the privilege to pay full price for your college tuition instead of getting scholarships based on ethnicity instead of aptitude.
You have the right to be turned down for a job in favor of a "minority" candidate, even though you are both equally qualified. Companies would have a very hard time hiring a caucasian in that situation, from a legal point of view. Not to mention that any supplier to the federal government is bound to an employment quota, and X% of their suppliers MUST be woman and minority owned. That's fair.
You have the privelege of having extra penalties put on your actions if you do break the law. If you get into a barfight with a minority, it is a "hate crime". If he kicks your ass, it is just assault on his part.
Funny how those privleges are actually disadvantages, isn't it? I would even call it "state sponsored racism".
But no pr0n, who needs pixellated poon when you get it IRL?
I don't keep anything of importance on single disk machines, it all gets backed up. I'm sure that just adds to my crap total, but at least I'm not doing sequential backups. That's bad! ;-)
I am too security minded to carry any numbers on my person. I memorize those instead! Not to mention that I'd feel sorry for the mugger's next of kin when they were notified of his untimely demise... lol
I carry a USB stick with my financial balances on it, as well as some other stuff. Good stuff I browse at work gets saved there. Every so often, I need to dump the accumulated debris off of it. It goes right on the fileserver without even being sorted.
I'm a packrat in real life, and with me it does carry over into the digital world.