"Singling out a few teachers for a salary bonus, we did not believe is fair," said Kentucky Education Association President Frances Steenbergen. "We believe that the preschool teacher on up to the 12th-grade AP physics teacher deserves huge increases in salaries."
Okay, let me get this straight. The preschool teacher is worth the same amount as the person who busts her ass to study and then teach Physics? Even if the AP Physics teacher has an advanced degree?
WTF?
Gah. Certain people need to be whacked with a cluebat. No, miss preschool teacher, you are NOT worth the same as an AP science teacher (Physics? Are they kidding???). If you want the same salary, then GO AND GET THE SAME QUALIFICATIONS and TEACH THE SAME MATERIAL. If you can't do it then you aren't worth it. People need to be paid on their merits -- otherwise there is little incentive for people to do the work to gain that expertise in the first place (and Physics IS an ass-breaker -- otherwise everyone would be doing it).
I understand that they're charging $4000 for all of the patches, and on all of an enterprise's machines. I also understand that they're choosing to not offer the patch to private users for a nominal fee, nor are they offering the option to buy just this one patch for a lesser price. My response is that this is what you get when you have a monopoly: they can offer whatever they wish -- or, to not put too fine a point on it, choose to NOT offer whatever they wish -- and charge however many limbs they want for it. It's disgusting, and to me particularly offensive. I'm sure there will be rants about the evils of capitalism and such here -- this IS Slashdot, after all -- and I can't really disagree here. I'm about as far to the right as they come and as rabid a capitalist as you'll ever see but this just makes us look bad. Capitalism REQUIRES adequate levels of competition to function properly and what you're seeing here is what happens when that competition is absent.
...be broken in very short order. Now that the processing key is known, people know what to look for in RAM. How many versions of HD-DVD players are out there? I don't have an HD-DVD drive so I'm not up on the scene, but I'd guess a great deal. Each and every one of them (and perhaps some standalone ones, too) can now be scanned for the processing key in memory. We're talking about MAJOR instantaneous breakage. I'd imagine that the hacker groups will now be racing to break every player they can get their hands on, and they'll keep that list of players a closely guarded secret. It's death by a thousand cuts, all happening at once. Vaunted DRM...just wow. Talk about your spectacular failures.
I've been wanting to try this for a while, but it doesn't seem to be at all easy. If you're a Windows user, be prepeared to have "Windoze" thrown in your face a few times, conflicting instructions, and no real step-by-step instructions (yes, for *Windows* users -- not all of us are hip enough to run Linux boxes). And, make DAMN SURE you have your Palm backed up, because you WILL need to restore it.
I still want to try it, but they seriously need to put some thought toward people actually being able to use it.
Hear, hear. I just bought Delphi 2006 and within four days I was back to my trusty Delphi 6.
- Delphi 6 has WAY better help (what in God's name were they thinking when they changed it?)
- The classic MDI interface is easier to work with
- Being a native Win32 app, the IDE is way faster
Delphi 6 came out in 2001, and for Win32 development it's just as useful to me as it was when I first bought it. I seriously don't understand the C# zealotry. Delphi is simply killer.
This is why I STOPPED going to movies
on
Death By DMCA
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· Score: 1
Hollywood needs to go under. Bankrupt. Insolvent. Gone.
No movie, TV show, or other inane content they can produce is worth this. They're like the neighborhood crack dealer -- keep everyone addicted to the latest blow-the-universe-up Mission Impossible shoot-fest, the latest computer-farm-the-size-of-Utah-rendered-but-plotle ss Star Wars blockbuster, or some other piece of garbage. "Keep the teeny-boppers coming, they'll slit their wrists to see the effects, the 'cool' one-liners, or the female skin we can get past the rating board. The old fogies will go for the tear-jerkers, and we get to keep buying new Jaguars and more mansions. Keep the money flowing and we'll buy whatever Congressman we need to lock them in."
These people need to go the way of the T-Rex. Nothing is worth this -- whether it's some four-star tear-fest (written by one of their sycophants) or the UTTER CRAP that comes out between Memorial Day and Labor Day every year.
*Nothing* is worth this. Culture has existed for thousands of years before Hollywood existed and it can exist for thousands of years long after they're gone.
...the emphasis on "skill sets" and not on whether you can think and learn.
"Does your skill set include J2EE? No, just Java?"
Click. Phone goes dead, you never hear from that recruiter again.
"Does your skill set include XYZ?"
I'm so sick of this nonsense. The problem, as I see it, is several-fold:
- Recruiters who want the immediate "sell" to get their finder's fee: they only want that person with experience in the exact buzzword they see in front of them
- Employers who don't want to give an intelligent, experienced, agile person the couple of months to learn the new technology flavor-of-the-month
- Employers who think coders are people who simply bang on the keyboard and, if they could train a cat to do the same, they would do so. They don't understand that it takes either education or experience (and likely both) to create code that is efficient, thread-safe, maintainable, etc. Cats can't do this--intelligent, experienced, educated software developers can.
- Employers who have an immediate crisis (hmm...how did they let that happen to begin with?) and want someone they can immediately drop into the meat grinder. When you hear "off to a running start" from one of these, beware.
- Recruiters and employers who don't understant that computer science concepts span languages and technologies and that someone who has grasped them in one implementation of computer science (read: technology) can apply them in another if only given a chance to learn the details (language, API, etc.)
Non-developers are too focused on buzzwords and not on software. What makes software good software goes way beyond particular languages or API's. There are far more workers who can satisfy employers' needs; for some reason they simply won't use them.
Sorry but I'm not buying it for one second. I've been looking for a development position for over a year, and had to take an administrative position over a software project just to get something that pays (what I have pays great but I otherwise absolutely hate it).
This "demand" that we keep hearing about is for people who ALREADY have experience in skill XYZ. No matter how intelligent someone is, no matter their education, no matter how many times that individual has proven how easily and well he can learn new technologies, skills, and tools, no matter that person's experience in technologies that existed in the market before the new skill XYZ existed, if he doesn't ALREADY have experience in XYZ, he doesn't get the change to ever learn it. "You don't have experience in it? Well, then we're not going to take the chance of allowing you a chance to pick it up. You might be stupid and cost us a fortune waiting for you to pick it up or maybe you aren't but we have a crisis situation and we need someone we can drop right in to the meat grinder (or maybe we just want to maximize our profits). Sorry, charlie, maybe next time we have something matching your current skill set." Click. Smart, agile candidate never hears from them again.
There are PLENTY of people who can meet your needs -- the problem is that many employers either don't or won't understand the simple fact that technologies change every five years, and the current workforce needs to be allowed to change with them.
You might be noticing a lot of anger on these boards. The people here have every right to be angry.
Today the "big thing" for the Java community is J2EE -- if you already know it, that is. It doesn't matter if you've learned Java, C, C++, Pascal, etc. ad nauseaum on the job, it doesn't matter if you went to college on a full academic scholarship, or that you have 15 years experience doing great work as a software developer for previous employers ("brilliant" even, as I've been told). It doesn't matter that you have a master's in a hard science in addition to a formal CS education, or that you've proven yourself intelligent and able to learn. It doesn't even matter that all those moons ago you had an SAT north of 1,300, or that you have years of Java experience. If you don't ALREADY know J2EE everyone assumes that you either can't learn it or aren't worth the expense of giving you the chance to learn it. "Don't already know it? Sorry, we thought you already had experience in J2EE." Click, the line goes dead, you never hear from them again, even though you KNOW you could do the job if only given half a chance.
Employers like this are a BIG part of the problem. The technologies change every five years. It's unrealistic, insane, and downright inhuman to never give the current workforce the chance to change with them.
Everything will eventually go digital, and once no one is manufacturing analog equipment (VCRs) anymore, there won't be any more VCR's (or anything that does the same thing). Say goodbye to your capture card, too, or be prepared to PAY everytime you want to record something on your ATI All-In-Wonder.
From my standpoint, they couldn't possibly poison the well any further. The day I give them any cash so they can use it to buy my representatives is the day Satan's snowplow crews start making money.
For me the main issue is battery life. I can't speak for Pocket PCs, but Palm devices don't have removable batteries, and even a Tungsten T3.5 (see the Brighthand forums to learn what one of those is) only lats a maximum of 6 hours with the screen brightness at minumum. My iRiver can last many times that, and it uses a standard removable AA battery. If Palm devices had better battery life and removable batteries (e.g. allow the use of thicker, ultra-high-capacity batteries), then they might become a much more viable alternative. A Power To Go sled can add more life by recharging your Palm but they don't make them anymore, presumably because the new Palms don't use the Universal Connector. It also isn't all that great a solution -- a better alternative would be the cell-phone model where you simply swap batteries, and have choices of battery capacity.
In terms of battery life, currently the best Palm MP3 player would be a Tungsten T2.5 (T2 with a Powerizer 1400MAh battery shoehorned in), which will give you 12 hours with screen brightness at minimum, but you have to perform serious surgery to get the battery in there (I've done it to a Tungsten T and it's not for the squeamish).
...it's not what's causing them to lose money. They're losing money because they're making movies no one wants to see. They don't seem to understand that word gets around about bad movies and we're not such undiscriminating cattle that we'll shell out $9.50 just for the heck of it.
I just saw AVP: Aliens vs. Predator for the first time on cable. On the one hand I'm glad I knew to wait for cable (you can usually tell if a movie is dog sh*t from the trailer), but I'm also sorry I wasted two hours last night watching it. It's bad enough that it was crap -- but it's such a blatant attempt to sucker in the fanboys that it's just sickening.
As I think about this, I think there needs to be a Godwin's Movie Law:
When a movie is compared to Aliens in an effort to sell it, it is immediately relegated to the category 'Dog Sh*t' and should not be watched on any medium, ever (even free ones).
Translation: if moviemakers can't make their Sci-Fi film stand on its own and have to try to ride the popularity of Aliens to sell it, then you already know everything you need to know about it: it's crap.
And here are some of my personal movie laws:
- Do not watch a movie based on a video game, ever. It is not worth watching. If you know someone who actually paid to watch one, slap him with a large trout for being such a sucker.
- Do not star in any of the above movies -- it will wreck your career. People sometimes confuse bad writing with bad acting. Don't walk away from such a movie, RUN.
- CGI is no substitute for talent (yes, George, I'm talking to YOU)
I thought Boeing was talking about man-rating the Delta-IV-Heavy for use with the CRV. The Delta-IV is a new design that's built at a single plant in Alabama to keep costs low. Does it not provide enough delta-v?
Gates (in Brando-esque voice): What is it with these open-source guys? All they want is war. Every day -- 'Microsoft's got to go! Gates is an evil man!' All we want is to do business. What is it with these people? What do I gotta do to just do some business?
Concilieri (imagine James Caan's voice): I hear there's a group of people trying to rewrite Windows from scratch. I figure we've got two years at most before we have to act.
Thug: Yeah, you should hear what people are saying about us. People are running over to their side.
Gates Jr.: Pop, let me handle this. I mean, if a bunch of losers are saying, 'Bill Gates did this, Bill Gates did that', you know, we gotta find out whose saying these things.
Thug: Yeah, boss, just say the word. We can tare care of these creeps.
Gates: No, no. The heat's already watching us close. Business is hard enough without you two making it worse. (points to Gates Jr.) Send Mikey over there. Tell them I want a sit-down. It's too hot right now -- we can't do business like this.
Gates Jr. (argumentative): Pop--
Gates: (waves to cut him off) Tell them.
(Gates Jr. waves Thug to follow and leaves in a huff)
Gates: (waves Concilieri close) We'll try to get them to see reason. If they decide to be unreasonable-- (shrugs)
Concilieri: (nods) Understand. I'll handle it. (leaves)
That's the difference between conservatives and libs on this issue, I guess. Many of us understood that the WMD link was likely BS, that it was insulting our intelligence, but *we* decided that -- and I'm going to stress this, so pay attention -- that it was IRRELEVANT. I'll say it again to make sure you understand: WMD in Iraq was IRRELEVANT. You see, we actually paid attention when news of one UN resolution after another came on TV over the years, to Saddam's expelling inspectors, and to the fact that he flat-out violated the cessation of hostilities treaty he signed. I know the libs don't care about any of this, that they only listened to the WMD argument (and yes, I'll say it again: as far as I'm concerned, it was BS and utterly unnecessary). We conservatives feel the Iraq war to be a just war in and of itself, with no connections whatsoever to 9/11, Afghanistan, etc.
My earlier statement stands: the WMD link was to many of us a BS argument, but an irrelevant one at that. If you want to get angry at being sold on a bogus argument, then I'm conflicted -- I think it was disingenuous to use it in the first place, but anyone actually paying attention to events in Iraq since 1991 should have known from day one that 17 UN resolutions and a breach of a treaty trumps it anyway. For we conservatives, at least it does -- if it doesn't for you, there's nothing I can say. That's your value judgment, and this is ours. So spare me the high-and mighty rant about US troop corpses -- why don't you try *asking* them how they feel about the Iraq war instead? I guarantee that the vast majority will tell you that they were and still are for it, even after no WMD were found. WMD wasn't the point.
Yes, yes, yes -- the same arrogant argument. "We leftists are educated, enlightened, intelligent, and, above all, rational, while those who support conservatives are easily-frightened, easily-duped, emotional, hyper-religious SHEEP who bought the propaganda, drank the Kool-Aid, (insert your favorite cliche here)."
Translation: "liberals are SMART and conservatives are STUPID".
Well, please allow me to enlighten you. Believe it or not, many of us Bush supporters are highly educated, quite intelligent, scholarly, and are capable of recognizing propaganda for what it is. Maybe some of us recognized that the terror link to Saddam was just that, propaganda, but because we agree with GWB on most other issues we decided to let it go. Maybe some of us really do think that the Christian right are extremists, but we would rather talk to them and rein them in a touch rather than accept the alternative -- a totally secular, moral relativist society with no social norms whatsoever. That's not to say we all agree with him on everything -- far from it -- but by and large we take the good with the bad, and with him we largely feel there is more good than bad.
And maybe -- just maybe -- we know what Socialism is, what damage it has done throughout the world, and we collectively decided that we would fall on our proverbial swords rather than let it gain a foothold here. Just maybe we support Conservatives (and welcome the alliance of the religious right) because we face a common enemy (in most cases, enemies) on idelogical grounds -- Socialism, and the social and moral consequences it produces. Maybe we support GWB because we actually agree with him on ideological grounds.
Understand that for people like us, no amount of repackaging Socialism, secular humanism, or Communism-lite will work. We know them for what they are, we actively oppose them, and many of us dedicate ourselves toward rooting such efforts out and exposing them to the light of day. A great many of us voted for GWB because WE DON'T WANT SUCH THINGS. We are not going to wake up one day and say, "Wow, that (leftist politician) is really making some sense! Socialized medicine/income redistribution/high-taxes/other Socialist program is the way to go! All he had to do was say it in a way that I could understand!" Sorry, Charlie. We're smarter than that. We vote such things down because we disagree with them on grounds of principle, not because people like GWB "scare" us into it. You should go read some conservative forums -- Bush gets slammed pretty regularly, usually because he has taken some stand or made some statement that flies in the face of conservative (here it comes) principles.
Raise holy hell and watch them squirm
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Tracking Your Taxes
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They can only get away with this because they haven't been called out on the carpet for it. Single a bank out and make sure all the bloggers get the word. Eventually the news will filter to the MSM that "Bank XYZ" is selling customers' info. Even if they all are doing it, the other banks will get the message that they're next. If the pressure is strong enough, you can get them to change...all it takes is one bank to give in and the rest will follow suit to compete.
Before 1913, our Senators were elected by our state legistatures. This produced Senators that were nigh untouchable, and their job was just another rung on the politican's ladder. All their parties had to do was demagogue national-level concerns to keep the state voters in line and they could keep their man in power. Finally we had to amend our own Constitution to do something about it, oh, only about 120 years after it was created in the first place (Amendment XVII). Something like this can last a long time.
I'm not writing to gloat, merely to inform. From my standpoint, unelected legislators are never a good idea. If you must have two legislative houses in the EU, better to have an upper and a lower house where both are popularly elected. If I lived over there I would vote against any Constitution that featured an unelected body.
I wasn't going to dignify this with a response, but just to humor you I went and read it. While I think the ideals it enunciates are commendable (and I would love to live in such a world), I don't believe it to be realistic. As long as there are people who want to invade other countries or otherwise kill people they hate, nations must oppose them with whatever means required. Sometimes that involves putting up a strong defense, sometimes it involves having a strong offense as a deterrent, and sometimes it means using that offense if it is deemed necessary to halt an imminent threat. I think it foolhardy to believe that among all nations that develop arms, that none will ever use them except in defense. I especially don't think that the religious fanatics in the Middle East will exercise such restraint.
Were the world comprised only of nations that shared the same European traditions of freedom and peace, I might agree with you. I do not consider countries such as Iran, North Korea, or China to fit this mold (or to not put too fine a point on it, their leaders who are in control of their weapons). I have no trouble imagining a mullah, a crazed North Korean leader, or a Chinese premier using destructive weapons without provocation. I especially have no trouble imagining it when religious fanaticism comes into play.
You apparently believe that war against Iran or Iraq would be trumped-up. I do not. I won't try to convince you, as it appears to be an impasse. I don't know your position on using force in a pre-emptive manner, and I assume that will also prove to be an impasse. The Atlantic Charter is a wonderful ideal, but I don't believe it accounts for the scenario of a mullah handing an atomic bomb to a terrorist merely because he hates the West, or the scenario of a blitzkrieg across the Korean DMZ because the North Korean premier got up one day and went off his rocker. I'll be the first one to say that people are broken, but it is the duty of all good nations everywhere to keep their people (and each other) safe from such madmen. In that sense I (almost) miss the USSR. They were evil, but at least they were sane.
You've got a lot more guts than I have, and I should say, more than a lot of the people here. Good luck and God bless.
Don't listen to the people here who are criticizing you, especially those who clearly live outside the U.S. They don't like anything we do for (at least) two reasons:
1. We twice elected a right-wing President. As long as we do so, we can do no good. The only good American is a Socialist American, and that's all there is to it. If Gore was president and took the exact same actions, Europe would either applaud or at the very least give off deafening silence. It's all about ideology. A lot of Europeans want Socialism and we've largely shown that we don't, and many hate us for it (or their professors have told them to hate us for it, but it amounts to the same thing).
2. We can take actions like this and not have to ask for permission. We collaborate with Britain because the "special relationship" British PM's like to speak of so often is very real: while we are allied with other NATO countries such as France and Germany, we would throw ourselves in front of a train for Great Britain, and *everyone* knows it, though for the purpose of courtesy we don't speak of it. We genuinely wish no ill on our allies (yes, even France), however, we neither need nor want greater Europe's "permission" to act in the name of our survival and they resent it. Don't sweat it. Someday they'll realize their mistake, just not today (it probably won't be until the day some Islamic fundamentalist vaporizes the Vatican with an atomic bomb).
I know I'll get flamed (the first one will probably accuse me of being a Bible-thumping Christian fundamentalist. Let me had that one off by saying I'm a rather cynical Catholic in a blue state). Have at it. By God, it's the truth, and I'm not afraid to say it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Singling out a few teachers for a salary bonus, we did not believe is fair," said Kentucky Education Association President Frances Steenbergen. "We believe that the preschool teacher on up to the 12th-grade AP physics teacher deserves huge increases in salaries."
Okay, let me get this straight. The preschool teacher is worth the same amount as the person who busts her ass to study and then teach Physics? Even if the AP Physics teacher has an advanced degree?
WTF?
Gah. Certain people need to be whacked with a cluebat. No, miss preschool teacher, you are NOT worth the same as an AP science teacher (Physics? Are they kidding???). If you want the same salary, then GO AND GET THE SAME QUALIFICATIONS and TEACH THE SAME MATERIAL. If you can't do it then you aren't worth it. People need to be paid on their merits -- otherwise there is little incentive for people to do the work to gain that expertise in the first place (and Physics IS an ass-breaker -- otherwise everyone would be doing it).
I understand that they're charging $4000 for all of the patches, and on all of an enterprise's machines. I also understand that they're choosing to not offer the patch to private users for a nominal fee, nor are they offering the option to buy just this one patch for a lesser price. My response is that this is what you get when you have a monopoly: they can offer whatever they wish -- or, to not put too fine a point on it, choose to NOT offer whatever they wish -- and charge however many limbs they want for it. It's disgusting, and to me particularly offensive. I'm sure there will be rants about the evils of capitalism and such here -- this IS Slashdot, after all -- and I can't really disagree here. I'm about as far to the right as they come and as rabid a capitalist as you'll ever see but this just makes us look bad. Capitalism REQUIRES adequate levels of competition to function properly and what you're seeing here is what happens when that competition is absent.
I give it a week before someone writes a hand-optimized assembler version that runs an order of magnitude faster.
*shudder*
(runs and hugs his Win2k CD to make sure it's still there)
...be broken in very short order. Now that the processing key is known, people know what to look for in RAM. How many versions of HD-DVD players are out there? I don't have an HD-DVD drive so I'm not up on the scene, but I'd guess a great deal. Each and every one of them (and perhaps some standalone ones, too) can now be scanned for the processing key in memory. We're talking about MAJOR instantaneous breakage. I'd imagine that the hacker groups will now be racing to break every player they can get their hands on, and they'll keep that list of players a closely guarded secret. It's death by a thousand cuts, all happening at once. Vaunted DRM...just wow. Talk about your spectacular failures.
TClock3 is plenty enough for me.
I've been wanting to try this for a while, but it doesn't seem to be at all easy. If you're a Windows user, be prepeared to have "Windoze" thrown in your face a few times, conflicting instructions, and no real step-by-step instructions (yes, for *Windows* users -- not all of us are hip enough to run Linux boxes). And, make DAMN SURE you have your Palm backed up, because you WILL need to restore it.
I still want to try it, but they seriously need to put some thought toward people actually being able to use it.
Hear, hear. I just bought Delphi 2006 and within four days I was back to my trusty Delphi 6.
- Delphi 6 has WAY better help (what in God's name were they thinking when they changed it?)
- The classic MDI interface is easier to work with
- Being a native Win32 app, the IDE is way faster
Delphi 6 came out in 2001, and for Win32 development it's just as useful to me as it was when I first bought it. I seriously don't understand the C# zealotry. Delphi is simply killer.
Hollywood needs to go under. Bankrupt. Insolvent. Gone.
e ss Star Wars blockbuster, or some other piece of garbage. "Keep the teeny-boppers coming, they'll slit their wrists to see the effects, the 'cool' one-liners, or the female skin we can get past the rating board. The old fogies will go for the tear-jerkers, and we get to keep buying new Jaguars and more mansions. Keep the money flowing and we'll buy whatever Congressman we need to lock them in."
No movie, TV show, or other inane content they can produce is worth this. They're like the neighborhood crack dealer -- keep everyone addicted to the latest blow-the-universe-up Mission Impossible shoot-fest, the latest computer-farm-the-size-of-Utah-rendered-but-plotl
These people need to go the way of the T-Rex. Nothing is worth this -- whether it's some four-star tear-fest (written by one of their sycophants) or the UTTER CRAP that comes out between Memorial Day and Labor Day every year.
*Nothing* is worth this. Culture has existed for thousands of years before Hollywood existed and it can exist for thousands of years long after they're gone.
When a politician talks about a tax being "temporary", DON'T YOU EFFIN' BELIEVE IT.
...the emphasis on "skill sets" and not on whether you can think and learn.
"Does your skill set include J2EE? No, just Java?"
Click. Phone goes dead, you never hear from that recruiter again.
"Does your skill set include XYZ?"
I'm so sick of this nonsense. The problem, as I see it, is several-fold:
- Recruiters who want the immediate "sell" to get their finder's fee: they only want that person with experience in the exact buzzword they see in front of them
- Employers who don't want to give an intelligent, experienced, agile person the couple of months to learn the new technology flavor-of-the-month
- Employers who think coders are people who simply bang on the keyboard and, if they could train a cat to do the same, they would do so. They don't understand that it takes either education or experience (and likely both) to create code that is efficient, thread-safe, maintainable, etc. Cats can't do this--intelligent, experienced, educated software developers can.
- Employers who have an immediate crisis (hmm...how did they let that happen to begin with?) and want someone they can immediately drop into the meat grinder. When you hear "off to a running start" from one of these, beware.
- Recruiters and employers who don't understant that computer science concepts span languages and technologies and that someone who has grasped them in one implementation of computer science (read: technology) can apply them in another if only given a chance to learn the details (language, API, etc.)
Non-developers are too focused on buzzwords and not on software. What makes software good software goes way beyond particular languages or API's. There are far more workers who can satisfy employers' needs; for some reason they simply won't use them.
Sorry but I'm not buying it for one second. I've been looking for a development position for over a year, and had to take an administrative position over a software project just to get something that pays (what I have pays great but I otherwise absolutely hate it). This "demand" that we keep hearing about is for people who ALREADY have experience in skill XYZ. No matter how intelligent someone is, no matter their education, no matter how many times that individual has proven how easily and well he can learn new technologies, skills, and tools, no matter that person's experience in technologies that existed in the market before the new skill XYZ existed, if he doesn't ALREADY have experience in XYZ, he doesn't get the change to ever learn it. "You don't have experience in it? Well, then we're not going to take the chance of allowing you a chance to pick it up. You might be stupid and cost us a fortune waiting for you to pick it up or maybe you aren't but we have a crisis situation and we need someone we can drop right in to the meat grinder (or maybe we just want to maximize our profits). Sorry, charlie, maybe next time we have something matching your current skill set." Click. Smart, agile candidate never hears from them again. There are PLENTY of people who can meet your needs -- the problem is that many employers either don't or won't understand the simple fact that technologies change every five years, and the current workforce needs to be allowed to change with them. You might be noticing a lot of anger on these boards. The people here have every right to be angry.
!!!!!MOD PARENT UP!!!!!
Today the "big thing" for the Java community is J2EE -- if you already know it, that is. It doesn't matter if you've learned Java, C, C++, Pascal, etc. ad nauseaum on the job, it doesn't matter if you went to college on a full academic scholarship, or that you have 15 years experience doing great work as a software developer for previous employers ("brilliant" even, as I've been told). It doesn't matter that you have a master's in a hard science in addition to a formal CS education, or that you've proven yourself intelligent and able to learn. It doesn't even matter that all those moons ago you had an SAT north of 1,300, or that you have years of Java experience. If you don't ALREADY know J2EE everyone assumes that you either can't learn it or aren't worth the expense of giving you the chance to learn it. "Don't already know it? Sorry, we thought you already had experience in J2EE." Click, the line goes dead, you never hear from them again, even though you KNOW you could do the job if only given half a chance.
Employers like this are a BIG part of the problem. The technologies change every five years. It's unrealistic, insane, and downright inhuman to never give the current workforce the chance to change with them.
Everything will eventually go digital, and once no one is manufacturing analog equipment (VCRs) anymore, there won't be any more VCR's (or anything that does the same thing). Say goodbye to your capture card, too, or be prepared to PAY everytime you want to record something on your ATI All-In-Wonder.
From my standpoint, they couldn't possibly poison the well any further. The day I give them any cash so they can use it to buy my representatives is the day Satan's snowplow crews start making money.
For me the main issue is battery life. I can't speak for Pocket PCs, but Palm devices don't have removable batteries, and even a Tungsten T3.5 (see the Brighthand forums to learn what one of those is) only lats a maximum of 6 hours with the screen brightness at minumum. My iRiver can last many times that, and it uses a standard removable AA battery. If Palm devices had better battery life and removable batteries (e.g. allow the use of thicker, ultra-high-capacity batteries), then they might become a much more viable alternative. A Power To Go sled can add more life by recharging your Palm but they don't make them anymore, presumably because the new Palms don't use the Universal Connector. It also isn't all that great a solution -- a better alternative would be the cell-phone model where you simply swap batteries, and have choices of battery capacity.
In terms of battery life, currently the best Palm MP3 player would be a Tungsten T2.5 (T2 with a Powerizer 1400MAh battery shoehorned in), which will give you 12 hours with screen brightness at minimum, but you have to perform serious surgery to get the battery in there (I've done it to a Tungsten T and it's not for the squeamish).
...it's not what's causing them to lose money. They're losing money because they're making movies no one wants to see. They don't seem to understand that word gets around about bad movies and we're not such undiscriminating cattle that we'll shell out $9.50 just for the heck of it.
I just saw AVP: Aliens vs. Predator for the first time on cable. On the one hand I'm glad I knew to wait for cable (you can usually tell if a movie is dog sh*t from the trailer), but I'm also sorry I wasted two hours last night watching it. It's bad enough that it was crap -- but it's such a blatant attempt to sucker in the fanboys that it's just sickening.
As I think about this, I think there needs to be a Godwin's Movie Law:
When a movie is compared to Aliens in an effort to sell it, it is immediately relegated to the category 'Dog Sh*t' and should not be watched on any medium, ever (even free ones).
Translation: if moviemakers can't make their Sci-Fi film stand on its own and have to try to ride the popularity of Aliens to sell it, then you already know everything you need to know about it: it's crap.
And here are some of my personal movie laws:
- Do not watch a movie based on a video game, ever. It is not worth watching. If you know someone who actually paid to watch one, slap him with a large trout for being such a sucker.
- Do not star in any of the above movies -- it will wreck your career. People sometimes confuse bad writing with bad acting. Don't walk away from such a movie, RUN.
- CGI is no substitute for talent (yes, George, I'm talking to YOU)
I thought Boeing was talking about man-rating the Delta-IV-Heavy for use with the CRV. The Delta-IV is a new design that's built at a single plant in Alabama to keep costs low. Does it not provide enough delta-v?
Gates (in Brando-esque voice): What is it with these open-source guys? All they want is war. Every day -- 'Microsoft's got to go! Gates is an evil man!' All we want is to do business. What is it with these people? What do I gotta do to just do some business?
Concilieri (imagine James Caan's voice): I hear there's a group of people trying to rewrite Windows from scratch. I figure we've got two years at most before we have to act.
Thug: Yeah, you should hear what people are saying about us. People are running over to their side.
Gates Jr.: Pop, let me handle this. I mean, if a bunch of losers are saying, 'Bill Gates did this, Bill Gates did that', you know, we gotta find out whose saying these things.
Thug: Yeah, boss, just say the word. We can tare care of these creeps.
Gates: No, no. The heat's already watching us close. Business is hard enough without you two making it worse. (points to Gates Jr.) Send Mikey over there. Tell them I want a sit-down. It's too hot right now -- we can't do business like this.
Gates Jr. (argumentative): Pop--
Gates: (waves to cut him off) Tell them.
(Gates Jr. waves Thug to follow and leaves in a huff)
Gates: (waves Concilieri close) We'll try to get them to see reason. If they decide to be unreasonable-- (shrugs)
Concilieri: (nods) Understand. I'll handle it. (leaves)
That's the difference between conservatives and libs on this issue, I guess. Many of us understood that the WMD link was likely BS, that it was insulting our intelligence, but *we* decided that -- and I'm going to stress this, so pay attention -- that it was IRRELEVANT. I'll say it again to make sure you understand: WMD in Iraq was IRRELEVANT. You see, we actually paid attention when news of one UN resolution after another came on TV over the years, to Saddam's expelling inspectors, and to the fact that he flat-out violated the cessation of hostilities treaty he signed. I know the libs don't care about any of this, that they only listened to the WMD argument (and yes, I'll say it again: as far as I'm concerned, it was BS and utterly unnecessary). We conservatives feel the Iraq war to be a just war in and of itself, with no connections whatsoever to 9/11, Afghanistan, etc.
My earlier statement stands: the WMD link was to many of us a BS argument, but an irrelevant one at that. If you want to get angry at being sold on a bogus argument, then I'm conflicted -- I think it was disingenuous to use it in the first place, but anyone actually paying attention to events in Iraq since 1991 should have known from day one that 17 UN resolutions and a breach of a treaty trumps it anyway. For we conservatives, at least it does -- if it doesn't for you, there's nothing I can say. That's your value judgment, and this is ours. So spare me the high-and mighty rant about US troop corpses -- why don't you try *asking* them how they feel about the Iraq war instead? I guarantee that the vast majority will tell you that they were and still are for it, even after no WMD were found. WMD wasn't the point.
Yes, yes, yes -- the same arrogant argument. "We leftists are educated, enlightened, intelligent, and, above all, rational, while those who support conservatives are easily-frightened, easily-duped, emotional, hyper-religious SHEEP who bought the propaganda, drank the Kool-Aid, (insert your favorite cliche here)."
Translation: "liberals are SMART and conservatives are STUPID".
Well, please allow me to enlighten you. Believe it or not, many of us Bush supporters are highly educated, quite intelligent, scholarly, and are capable of recognizing propaganda for what it is. Maybe some of us recognized that the terror link to Saddam was just that, propaganda, but because we agree with GWB on most other issues we decided to let it go. Maybe some of us really do think that the Christian right are extremists, but we would rather talk to them and rein them in a touch rather than accept the alternative -- a totally secular, moral relativist society with no social norms whatsoever. That's not to say we all agree with him on everything -- far from it -- but by and large we take the good with the bad, and with him we largely feel there is more good than bad.
And maybe -- just maybe -- we know what Socialism is, what damage it has done throughout the world, and we collectively decided that we would fall on our proverbial swords rather than let it gain a foothold here. Just maybe we support Conservatives (and welcome the alliance of the religious right) because we face a common enemy (in most cases, enemies) on idelogical grounds -- Socialism, and the social and moral consequences it produces. Maybe we support GWB because we actually agree with him on ideological grounds.
Understand that for people like us, no amount of repackaging Socialism, secular humanism, or Communism-lite will work. We know them for what they are, we actively oppose them, and many of us dedicate ourselves toward rooting such efforts out and exposing them to the light of day. A great many of us voted for GWB because WE DON'T WANT SUCH THINGS. We are not going to wake up one day and say, "Wow, that (leftist politician) is really making some sense! Socialized medicine/income redistribution/high-taxes/other Socialist program is the way to go! All he had to do was say it in a way that I could understand!" Sorry, Charlie. We're smarter than that. We vote such things down because we disagree with them on grounds of principle, not because people like GWB "scare" us into it. You should go read some conservative forums -- Bush gets slammed pretty regularly, usually because he has taken some stand or made some statement that flies in the face of conservative (here it comes) principles.
They can only get away with this because they haven't been called out on the carpet for it. Single a bank out and make sure all the bloggers get the word. Eventually the news will filter to the MSM that "Bank XYZ" is selling customers' info. Even if they all are doing it, the other banks will get the message that they're next. If the pressure is strong enough, you can get them to change...all it takes is one bank to give in and the rest will follow suit to compete.
Before 1913, our Senators were elected by our state legistatures. This produced Senators that were nigh untouchable, and their job was just another rung on the politican's ladder. All their parties had to do was demagogue national-level concerns to keep the state voters in line and they could keep their man in power. Finally we had to amend our own Constitution to do something about it, oh, only about 120 years after it was created in the first place (Amendment XVII). Something like this can last a long time.
I'm not writing to gloat, merely to inform. From my standpoint, unelected legislators are never a good idea. If you must have two legislative houses in the EU, better to have an upper and a lower house where both are popularly elected. If I lived over there I would vote against any Constitution that featured an unelected body.
I wasn't going to dignify this with a response, but just to humor you I went and read it. While I think the ideals it enunciates are commendable (and I would love to live in such a world), I don't believe it to be realistic. As long as there are people who want to invade other countries or otherwise kill people they hate, nations must oppose them with whatever means required. Sometimes that involves putting up a strong defense, sometimes it involves having a strong offense as a deterrent, and sometimes it means using that offense if it is deemed necessary to halt an imminent threat. I think it foolhardy to believe that among all nations that develop arms, that none will ever use them except in defense. I especially don't think that the religious fanatics in the Middle East will exercise such restraint.
Were the world comprised only of nations that shared the same European traditions of freedom and peace, I might agree with you. I do not consider countries such as Iran, North Korea, or China to fit this mold (or to not put too fine a point on it, their leaders who are in control of their weapons). I have no trouble imagining a mullah, a crazed North Korean leader, or a Chinese premier using destructive weapons without provocation. I especially have no trouble imagining it when religious fanaticism comes into play.
You apparently believe that war against Iran or Iraq would be trumped-up. I do not. I won't try to convince you, as it appears to be an impasse. I don't know your position on using force in a pre-emptive manner, and I assume that will also prove to be an impasse. The Atlantic Charter is a wonderful ideal, but I don't believe it accounts for the scenario of a mullah handing an atomic bomb to a terrorist merely because he hates the West, or the scenario of a blitzkrieg across the Korean DMZ because the North Korean premier got up one day and went off his rocker. I'll be the first one to say that people are broken, but it is the duty of all good nations everywhere to keep their people (and each other) safe from such madmen. In that sense I (almost) miss the USSR. They were evil, but at least they were sane.
You've got a lot more guts than I have, and I should say, more than a lot of the people here. Good luck and God bless.
Don't listen to the people here who are criticizing you, especially those who clearly live outside the U.S. They don't like anything we do for (at least) two reasons:
1. We twice elected a right-wing President. As long as we do so, we can do no good. The only good American is a Socialist American, and that's all there is to it. If Gore was president and took the exact same actions, Europe would either applaud or at the very least give off deafening silence. It's all about ideology. A lot of Europeans want Socialism and we've largely shown that we don't, and many hate us for it (or their professors have told them to hate us for it, but it amounts to the same thing).
2. We can take actions like this and not have to ask for permission. We collaborate with Britain because the "special relationship" British PM's like to speak of so often is very real: while we are allied with other NATO countries such as France and Germany, we would throw ourselves in front of a train for Great Britain, and *everyone* knows it, though for the purpose of courtesy we don't speak of it. We genuinely wish no ill on our allies (yes, even France), however, we neither need nor want greater Europe's "permission" to act in the name of our survival and they resent it. Don't sweat it. Someday they'll realize their mistake, just not today (it probably won't be until the day some Islamic fundamentalist vaporizes the Vatican with an atomic bomb).
I know I'll get flamed (the first one will probably accuse me of being a Bible-thumping Christian fundamentalist. Let me had that one off by saying I'm a rather cynical Catholic in a blue state). Have at it. By God, it's the truth, and I'm not afraid to say it.
rest assured: the mullahs are watching. If you can help the people in Iran, please find a private way of getting it to them.
Loose lips sink ships.