That's rather specious logic. A surprising number of advancements have come from people who had no real credentials in their field. Occasionally, from people who had no real credentials, period. That you've never heard of someone, or that they have no previous experience that you can point to, does not necessarily mean they don't know what they're talking about. The only way to be sure they're full of it, is to systematically prove it. Otherwise, you're just making an argument from authority: "Well, I've never heard of this guy, and he hasn't been to Harvard. Clearly he's a charlatan."
If you feel like someone's submission is flimsy, but you don't think there's any benefit in taking the time to prove it, say so. But don't just fall back on "Well, he has no credentials." That's just a cop-out, and you know it.
comments like yours are precisely why people my own age embraced sayings like "never trust anyone over the age of 30". you're right, though; a sweeping generalization is way better than admitting that Sturgeon's Law is the norm in every generation, and you ALWAYS have to work hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
yeah, and by owning a car, i'm leaving myself wide open for when someone steals it and uses it in a bank robbery. if that's the best you can come up with, shut up and sit back down. criminals and assholes are always gonna find some way to make things suck. that absolutely can not be a reason for us not to try and make things better.
your reply is either a massive non sequitur, a failed attempt at derailing the discussion, or just an absolutely miserable argument. you state that you're casting judgements while looking back on your own life, rather than while looking down from some ivory tower, as though the two are mutually exclusive. further, you're throwing that out there like having been through it yourself is an acceptable excuse for making other people go through it. if you truly believe that, then you've made it out of the ghetto, but the ghetto hasn't worked it's way out of you. that's the exact same philosophy behind "my da' whupped me, boy, darned if i ain't gonna whup you." congratulations: you are successfully perpetuating the cycle.
further, you're totally fighting my battle for me with your next line or two, man. "Everything I've ever gotten in my life, I fought for." is this intended to suggest that toiling through rotten jobs at bad hours for miserable pay isn't fighting for what you get? if that's what you're saying, it's absurd, and if that's not what you're saying, you're gonna have to further explain it, then, 'cause i have no idea what that sentence has to do with what we were talking aboug. and though i don't quite see how your next sentence is relevant to the discussion either, whether or not clinging to one thing for security makes you a wuss, depends a lot on what's being clung to. or is "keeping to ones scruples the entire time" (lightly paraphrased) not the same as "clinging to one thing for security" ?
as a brief aside, i think it's ironic that your original post berated people for not sticking to their guns in the face of an overpowering force, but your follow up post implies that your success was achieved by being flexible at the appropriate moments...
as a curtesy, i will decline to comment on your welfar declaration, or your "mile in my shoes" closer; it's not worth the flame war.
in part, i agree with you, and in part i disagree. i agree that there can be very little, if any, sympathy for people who knowing take jobs that they're opposed to, and try to weasel out of it by saying "i was just doing my job." and i agree that, either as a drone or a customer, you should take a stand against stupid policies. but that sort of implies that there's a black and white separation between jobs you agree with and those you don't, and there are never times when you will be asked to either "work this job that you can't stand" or "sleep in this gutter". and there are greater limits to the stands that you can take as a drone, than there are to the stands that you can take as a customer. moreover taking a stand against a stupid policy and being a dick in the face of a stupid policy are entirely different things.
and just up and quitting? even if you'd hadn't told us that you've never worked behind a register, that right there, would have made it clear. nobody works these kinds of jobs because of the great satisfaction they get from handling vast amounts of other people's money all day. those of us who work the service industry are working it because it was the job we could find in the place where we lived at the time that we needed a job. i'm temping for a fulfillment agency right now, taking incoming service calls. it's a crappy job, and there are plenty of policies that i don't agree with. but i will be canned if i don't follow them, and this was not the first place that i applied to, so it's not like i can just up and go somewhere else.
i think also you've failed to take into account what getting fired means for people who work service jobs like these. you get fired from Sears, so you go and apply at Kohl's:
"So, why'd you leave Sears?" 'I was fired for repeatedly disobeying a clearly stated policy that i was aware, but that i didn't agree with.'
maybe i'm stupid or naive, but i don't think they're gonna be calling you back.
and finally, the most important thing that you've failed to take into account is that We Don't Care. at all. service reps don't like customers, but we also don't hate customers. we just absolutely honestly do not give a goddamn about customers. we don't know about your problem until you tell us, and while you are explaining your problem to us, we care about it only in that it stands between us and the paperclip sculptures we've been building all morning. most of the time we will process your form, handle your refund, and make you as happy as we can, as efficiently as we can, all by our lonesome and without any whining and blustering. on the contrary, berating us as though the problem that we have only just now been informed of is our fault, has this odd tendency to cause typos to appear on the addressing labels for refund checks, and to create rebate form wormholes.
you made some decent enough points, but you kind of also missed the point: yelling at someone when you know it's not their fault, is uncalled for, and further, it's actually a bad idea, if their job is to keep you happy: it could encourage them to stop doing their job.
that's exactly the attitude that makes it impossible to discuss hacking in public. 'cause, you know, clearly all hackers are evil and bad. they're young punks with too much time, and too little respect for private property; always hackin' the Gibson and what have you. i know, 'cause i seen it in the movies, and on the television.
the quality of christianity that's going to make it into the media, is the same quality of hacking, or of anything else, for that matter, that's going to make it there. and if it somehow, does manage to be something worthwhile, it'll be misrepresented (DVD Jon, for example, made it to the news when they arrested him, but he wasn't good enough for prime time when they acquitted him).
when you base your opinions of the whole group of people, off of the actions of a minority of that group, that's called stereotyping. it has a tendency to be grossly inaccurate. especially if your knowledge of those actions is second or third hand.
i use coolplayer; it has native Ogg Vorbis support, and is open source. it's a standalone executable; no dlls or anything to mess with. download it, unzip it, hit "L", and you're ready to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me guess: 9-11 truther? ;-)
no, Galileo.
That's rather specious logic. A surprising number of advancements have come from people who had no real credentials in their field. Occasionally, from people who had no real credentials, period. That you've never heard of someone, or that they have no previous experience that you can point to, does not necessarily mean they don't know what they're talking about. The only way to be sure they're full of it, is to systematically prove it. Otherwise, you're just making an argument from authority: "Well, I've never heard of this guy, and he hasn't been to Harvard. Clearly he's a charlatan." If you feel like someone's submission is flimsy, but you don't think there's any benefit in taking the time to prove it, say so. But don't just fall back on "Well, he has no credentials." That's just a cop-out, and you know it.
experiencing this exact phenomenon has forever changed the way i interact with my mechanic
i would seriously appreciate it if you could find a different pejorative.
comments like yours are precisely why people my own age embraced sayings like "never trust anyone over the age of 30". you're right, though; a sweeping generalization is way better than admitting that Sturgeon's Law is the norm in every generation, and you ALWAYS have to work hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
in just a few short years, you and your k
yeah, and by owning a car, i'm leaving myself wide open for when someone steals it and uses it in a bank robbery. if that's the best you can come up with, shut up and sit back down. criminals and assholes are always gonna find some way to make things suck. that absolutely can not be a reason for us not to try and make things better.
your reply is either a massive non sequitur, a failed attempt at derailing the discussion, or just an absolutely miserable argument. you state that you're casting judgements while looking back on your own life, rather than while looking down from some ivory tower, as though the two are mutually exclusive. further, you're throwing that out there like having been through it yourself is an acceptable excuse for making other people go through it. if you truly believe that, then you've made it out of the ghetto, but the ghetto hasn't worked it's way out of you. that's the exact same philosophy behind "my da' whupped me, boy, darned if i ain't gonna whup you." congratulations: you are successfully perpetuating the cycle.
further, you're totally fighting my battle for me with your next line or two, man. "Everything I've ever gotten in my life, I fought for." is this intended to suggest that toiling through rotten jobs at bad hours for miserable pay isn't fighting for what you get? if that's what you're saying, it's absurd, and if that's not what you're saying, you're gonna have to further explain it, then, 'cause i have no idea what that sentence has to do with what we were talking aboug. and though i don't quite see how your next sentence is relevant to the discussion either, whether or not clinging to one thing for security makes you a wuss, depends a lot on what's being clung to. or is "keeping to ones scruples the entire time" (lightly paraphrased) not the same as "clinging to one thing for security" ?
as a brief aside, i think it's ironic that your original post berated people for not sticking to their guns in the face of an overpowering force, but your follow up post implies that your success was achieved by being flexible at the appropriate moments...
as a curtesy, i will decline to comment on your welfar declaration, or your "mile in my shoes" closer; it's not worth the flame war.
and just up and quitting? even if you'd hadn't told us that you've never worked behind a register, that right there, would have made it clear. nobody works these kinds of jobs because of the great satisfaction they get from handling vast amounts of other people's money all day. those of us who work the service industry are working it because it was the job we could find in the place where we lived at the time that we needed a job. i'm temping for a fulfillment agency right now, taking incoming service calls. it's a crappy job, and there are plenty of policies that i don't agree with. but i will be canned if i don't follow them, and this was not the first place that i applied to, so it's not like i can just up and go somewhere else.
i think also you've failed to take into account what getting fired means for people who work service jobs like these. you get fired from Sears, so you go and apply at Kohl's:
maybe i'm stupid or naive, but i don't think they're gonna be calling you back.
and finally, the most important thing that you've failed to take into account is that We Don't Care. at all. service reps don't like customers, but we also don't hate customers. we just absolutely honestly do not give a goddamn about customers. we don't know about your problem until you tell us, and while you are explaining your problem to us, we care about it only in that it stands between us and the paperclip sculptures we've been building all morning. most of the time we will process your form, handle your refund, and make you as happy as we can, as efficiently as we can, all by our lonesome and without any whining and blustering. on the contrary, berating us as though the problem that we have only just now been informed of is our fault, has this odd tendency to cause typos to appear on the addressing labels for refund checks, and to create rebate form wormholes.
you made some decent enough points, but you kind of also missed the point: yelling at someone when you know it's not their fault, is uncalled for, and further, it's actually a bad idea, if their job is to keep you happy: it could encourage them to stop doing their job.
And yet Christians insist
that's exactly the attitude that makes it impossible to discuss hacking in public. 'cause, you know, clearly all hackers are evil and bad. they're young punks with too much time, and too little respect for private property; always hackin' the Gibson and what have you. i know, 'cause i seen it in the movies, and on the television.
the quality of christianity that's going to make it into the media, is the same quality of hacking, or of anything else, for that matter, that's going to make it there. and if it somehow, does manage to be something worthwhile, it'll be misrepresented (DVD Jon, for example, made it to the news when they arrested him, but he wasn't good enough for prime time when they acquitted him).
when you base your opinions of the whole group of people, off of the actions of a minority of that group, that's called stereotyping. it has a tendency to be grossly inaccurate. especially if your knowledge of those actions is second or third hand.i use coolplayer; it has native Ogg Vorbis support, and is open source. it's a standalone executable; no dlls or anything to mess with. download it, unzip it, hit "L", and you're ready to go.