Having done a fair amount of political phone banking I can tell you that almost never do people ask to be removed from the list. Most people that get phone banked are registered, likely voters. Often they are activists. Every campaign I have worked on has been serious about do not call requests. We don't want to piss people off so they don't vote. Phone banks are typically get out the vote campaigns, not persuasive ones. The only time I have participated in persuasive phone banks is during primaries. Little objection then either. The people who abuse the political exception are charities who now constitute 100% of our unsolicited phone calls.
Re:Ok but pretending all races are the same is stu
on
Hacking the Governator
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· Score: 1
I've seen it and I understand what you are saying. It wasn't what arnold was saying at all. He was talking about race.
Yeah, well it wouldn't be offensive if he said "black people are hot". He didn't, he said they are hot-blooded. That means something and it has no basis in reality.
Re:Ok but pretending all races are the same is stu
on
Hacking the Governator
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· Score: 1
This is one of those discussions that makes me think I am on another planet. Calling latino people "hot-blooded" is retrograde and offensive. He didn't say, "you know, black people have dark skin". He said they are hot-blooded. Outside the context this is racist on any level. Its like saying asian people can't drive. A lot of slashdotters seem to have crawled out of the woodworks on this one to claim that there are differences between races. Well no shit, but as far as anyone can tell they are purely physical. Unless you have come up with an experiment that can empirically test for "hot bloodedness". Arnold wasn't making an observation based on facts, he was repeating a tired stereotype.
As to your desire to embrace our differences, I am all for that, but we don't need to bring along absurd stereotypes that have no grounding in reality.
Now, on the other issues with this...yes, this was a private conversation. Also, of course this is plain election year politicking and Angelides should have known better than to get involved in it. But its still racist, sorry.
The point I was trying to make was no one cares what you or I think. We are the minority in the market. The fact is Microsoft may have media extender and it may well be the easiest thing in the world to use. If it is that great I might consider using it myself. But That doesn't make it a success in the marketplace. I just think that Apple has a better chance of selling something like this. No, we don't know what the iTV is going to be like.
"That's because you've assumed how it works even thought it doesn't." Yes, that's the point I was trying to make. This is how things sell, not based on their ACTUAL merits, but their percieved merits. I know it sucks but its a fact. People pay 2-5x as much for Bose stuff. It isn't better. But that really doesn't matter in the end.
Now if apple buys tivo...they would be in a very strong position to take over. But I think apple thinks that tivo is a stopgap before true (itunes-based) video on demand takes over.
You make a classic mistake when analyzing Apple or Tivo whatever. They aren't selling the features, because EVERYONE has the same features. They are selling the interface or rather complete user experience. This system will certainly be easy easy. Ok, you have itunes installed. Next step, plug in the iTV to the wall. Then plug the wires to your tv, which will be just like hooking up a VCR. Ok...now I'm done! I can use the itunes interface to buy, which I understand, and the movies I want will show up on my TV. Not only is it simple, but it doesn't break the user's metaphor for how these things work. My movies are on my computer, but I can play them on my TV.
Xbox 360 breaks the metaphor. Ok, so I want to buy a movie. I plug in my xbox 360 (wait...isn't that for games?) then I go to the movie store on the xbox. I browse and press download. Ok...where are my movies living now? On the xbox? Uhhh..ok...but what if I turn off the xbox?
A savvy user knows the answer to these questions. Of course the xbox is just like your pc, and I'm sure the xbox movie download will work great. But the issue here is that the experience seems a little more confusing, just a little harder to deal with. And that is a major marketing hurdle. Tivo and Apple overcame consumer resistance to tech that savvy people were never afraid to use. The Tivo is so easy to deal with the consumer loses their fear of using a computer to record shows, which sounds too complex. The previous barrier to mp3 player adoption was the complexity in sorting music and getting it on the device. Apple combined ideas and features everyone else already had in a way that wasn't too indimitating for average users. Now, in the consumer's mind an ipod is something they can use. Apple comes around with a thing that is like an ipod for your tv. Easy. The consumer will not be afraid of this because they already have an idea of how this works (of course, they are wrong about that, but that doesn't matter). It will make sense to people, the fear of complexity is easy to overcome here. Microsoft (or sony or amazon or whoever) has a major hill to climb. The first user objection to the Amazon system is "how does it get on my TV?". The objection to the xBox 360 is that people think of it as a game console and using it to download movies is going to sound complex, even if it isn't. Most consumers didn't want Tivo because they hadn't seen it and it sounded too hard. Tivo caught on once enough people had it that people could see how easy it was and lose that fear. So like a sibling poster said, the major innovation here is marketing, followed up by products that deliver as promised. Apple marketing convinces people that they CAN use an ipod. Then the product actually is easy enough to use that it meets this expectation.
Let's be serious...microsoft does not have a reputation for ease of use.
I don't think popular thing is a global variable. Its all about scope you see. When I was a film student I had the same attitude. But because I was in film school things were all backwards, so the popular thing was usually not the same as it was in society as a whole. So I made myself feel good despite my sucktastic film making skills by bashing the popular thing...in this case Tarantino, Donnie Darko, that sort of business. Correct notation would be, php style: ${$local_scope}->popular_thing;
Although, I like encapsulate popular things in to a popular thing singleton, so...$popularStuffObject::getInstance()->getPopula rThing('movie');
No shit. If I try to install something in user mode it won't prompt me for a password. I have to switch users or I have to run as from the cmd. Trivial I know, but I pain in the ass.
This is way OT, but is it just me or are Troll mods getting more common and more arbitrary? This was clearly not a troll! Just because something is controversial it isn't trolling.
Google video does the same thing. Flash video actually rocks. Great compression, fast reliable player and widely supported (requires flash player 7). Flash video player is pretty much everything that realplayer et al aren't. And the fact is there isn't a good, open embedded movie format yet.
What kind of people do you want teaching, exactly? (I'm guessing the same crowd you have slated for work at a gas station or McDonalds) $11 an hour for a college-educated person? It seems to me that you have some personal animosity towards the people you encountered in high school that hated school. I wonder if you are aware that education is not compulsory after age 16, and that to graduate most districts require very little math. What evidence do you have that people don't already understand that education has value and adds to your income? And what $11/hour worker is going to inspire someone to like science? Please tell me you're just trolling me.
Actually, I slightly agree with you. There are a lot of incompetent teachers (and administrators) and this is a huge problem. The difficulty is not that you can't fire teachers (you can). Teachers should be accountable for their performance, and they way this is done is not more testing. Its management. Adminstrators don't spend time in the class room observing and managing the teachers.
The fact is there isn't much incentive for good people and good performance in teaching. Positions are hard to fill and teachers can't expect to make more than a blue coller salary. The standard political approach to this is always to act like accountability is the answer. All carrot and no stick for teachers. In your job do you do good work just to keep from getting fired? Teachers need to be paid for performance and they need to have a lot more opportunity to make a real salary.
As always slashdot is just plain wrong. They aren't burning books. They are simply purging books that no one read anyway. The president has said that most of these books are out of date and no one has any reason to look at them. So typical to leave out the facts that explain this is a completely reasonable step. I know the slashdot crowd that blames everything on Bush will say that requiring government censoring on all new books published is some kind of violation of the first amendment. Of course, they will leave out the fact that free speech is not the same as the freedom to print any kind of anti-freedom and anti-american drivel.
Well, if that is their goal they sure suck at it. They haven't killed very many. They just managed to be mass-murderes. Which is bad, I know, but they are a long damn way from wiping anything out.
Luckily, by and large, these guys are a bunch of, shall we say, fuckwits. We have the balls to stop them, eh? And the rest of the world is just going to let terrorists attack them?
This is not a war between a few thousand dumbasses with bombs and the military might of the US. These people may think they can take over the world, but they aren't going to so they are just non-rational criminals. 15 guys with bombs aren't going to be able to take over a country. The totalitarians you should be afraid of are the ones that have power or real access to power. Not a bunch of disaffected people in the London suburbs or a cave in pakistan. They could target us all day and night but if they think they can destroy our country they are just fools. They couldn't destroy our country if we did nothing. They don't have the man power or the firepower. World domination is way beyond their ability. I think they know this as well. There goals are probably small and specific.
Small companies sound good on paper. They suck in practice. They have no cash at all, so they can't pay you, can't buy you the softs you need and they put the servers in the basement and cross their fingers. You can't get promoted, so you have to leave to advance. I would give up the "fun" atmosphere and "non-corporate" environment for a more paid vacation and quarterly salary reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
Having done a fair amount of political phone banking I can tell you that almost never do people ask to be removed from the list. Most people that get phone banked are registered, likely voters. Often they are activists. Every campaign I have worked on has been serious about do not call requests. We don't want to piss people off so they don't vote. Phone banks are typically get out the vote campaigns, not persuasive ones. The only time I have participated in persuasive phone banks is during primaries. Little objection then either. The people who abuse the political exception are charities who now constitute 100% of our unsolicited phone calls.
I've seen it and I understand what you are saying. It wasn't what arnold was saying at all. He was talking about race.
Yeah, well it wouldn't be offensive if he said "black people are hot". He didn't, he said they are hot-blooded. That means something and it has no basis in reality.
This is one of those discussions that makes me think I am on another planet. Calling latino people "hot-blooded" is retrograde and offensive. He didn't say, "you know, black people have dark skin". He said they are hot-blooded. Outside the context this is racist on any level. Its like saying asian people can't drive. A lot of slashdotters seem to have crawled out of the woodworks on this one to claim that there are differences between races. Well no shit, but as far as anyone can tell they are purely physical. Unless you have come up with an experiment that can empirically test for "hot bloodedness". Arnold wasn't making an observation based on facts, he was repeating a tired stereotype.
As to your desire to embrace our differences, I am all for that, but we don't need to bring along absurd stereotypes that have no grounding in reality.
Now, on the other issues with this...yes, this was a private conversation. Also, of course this is plain election year politicking and Angelides should have known better than to get involved in it. But its still racist, sorry.
The point I was trying to make was no one cares what you or I think. We are the minority in the market. The fact is Microsoft may have media extender and it may well be the easiest thing in the world to use. If it is that great I might consider using it myself. But That doesn't make it a success in the marketplace. I just think that Apple has a better chance of selling something like this. No, we don't know what the iTV is going to be like.
"That's because you've assumed how it works even thought it doesn't."
Yes, that's the point I was trying to make. This is how things sell, not based on their ACTUAL merits, but their percieved merits. I know it sucks but its a fact. People pay 2-5x as much for Bose stuff. It isn't better. But that really doesn't matter in the end.
Now if apple buys tivo...they would be in a very strong position to take over. But I think apple thinks that tivo is a stopgap before true (itunes-based) video on demand takes over.
You make a classic mistake when analyzing Apple or Tivo whatever. They aren't selling the features, because EVERYONE has the same features. They are selling the interface or rather complete user experience. This system will certainly be easy easy. Ok, you have itunes installed. Next step, plug in the iTV to the wall. Then plug the wires to your tv, which will be just like hooking up a VCR. Ok...now I'm done! I can use the itunes interface to buy, which I understand, and the movies I want will show up on my TV. Not only is it simple, but it doesn't break the user's metaphor for how these things work. My movies are on my computer, but I can play them on my TV.
Xbox 360 breaks the metaphor. Ok, so I want to buy a movie. I plug in my xbox 360 (wait...isn't that for games?) then I go to the movie store on the xbox. I browse and press download. Ok...where are my movies living now? On the xbox? Uhhh..ok...but what if I turn off the xbox?
A savvy user knows the answer to these questions. Of course the xbox is just like your pc, and I'm sure the xbox movie download will work great. But the issue here is that the experience seems a little more confusing, just a little harder to deal with. And that is a major marketing hurdle. Tivo and Apple overcame consumer resistance to tech that savvy people were never afraid to use. The Tivo is so easy to deal with the consumer loses their fear of using a computer to record shows, which sounds too complex. The previous barrier to mp3 player adoption was the complexity in sorting music and getting it on the device. Apple combined ideas and features everyone else already had in a way that wasn't too indimitating for average users. Now, in the consumer's mind an ipod is something they can use. Apple comes around with a thing that is like an ipod for your tv. Easy. The consumer will not be afraid of this because they already have an idea of how this works (of course, they are wrong about that, but that doesn't matter). It will make sense to people, the fear of complexity is easy to overcome here. Microsoft (or sony or amazon or whoever) has a major hill to climb. The first user objection to the Amazon system is "how does it get on my TV?". The objection to the xBox 360 is that people think of it as a game console and using it to download movies is going to sound complex, even if it isn't. Most consumers didn't want Tivo because they hadn't seen it and it sounded too hard. Tivo caught on once enough people had it that people could see how easy it was and lose that fear. So like a sibling poster said, the major innovation here is marketing, followed up by products that deliver as promised. Apple marketing convinces people that they CAN use an ipod. Then the product actually is easy enough to use that it meets this expectation.
Let's be serious...microsoft does not have a reputation for ease of use.
I don't think popular thing is a global variable. Its all about scope you see. When I was a film student I had the same attitude. But because I was in film school things were all backwards, so the popular thing was usually not the same as it was in society as a whole. So I made myself feel good despite my sucktastic film making skills by bashing the popular thing...in this case Tarantino, Donnie Darko, that sort of business. Correct notation would be, php style: ${$local_scope}->popular_thing;
a rThing('movie');
Although, I like encapsulate popular things in to a popular thing singleton, so...$popularStuffObject::getInstance()->getPopul
Ok, no more studying for interviews....
No shit. If I try to install something in user mode it won't prompt me for a password. I have to switch users or I have to run as from the cmd. Trivial I know, but I pain in the ass.
What about the SYSTEM user? Is that gone? That is a critical issue.
This is way OT, but is it just me or are Troll mods getting more common and more arbitrary? This was clearly not a troll! Just because something is controversial it isn't trolling.
Google video does the same thing. Flash video actually rocks. Great compression, fast reliable player and widely supported (requires flash player 7). Flash video player is pretty much everything that realplayer et al aren't. And the fact is there isn't a good, open embedded movie format yet.
Um, do you have anything better to do than promote your website on slashdot? Have you considered adwords or something?
Minuses...it thrashes the layout on slashdot. I don't know why, but it does. I guess we are all going to be working on IE7 fixed for the next year...
Oh, that's easy. Banks do.
What kind of people do you want teaching, exactly? (I'm guessing the same crowd you have slated for work at a gas station or McDonalds) $11 an hour for a college-educated person? It seems to me that you have some personal animosity towards the people you encountered in high school that hated school. I wonder if you are aware that education is not compulsory after age 16, and that to graduate most districts require very little math. What evidence do you have that people don't already understand that education has value and adds to your income? And what $11/hour worker is going to inspire someone to like science? Please tell me you're just trolling me.
Special bonus question: Will step 5 ever execute?
Actually, I slightly agree with you. There are a lot of incompetent teachers (and administrators) and this is a huge problem. The difficulty is not that you can't fire teachers (you can). Teachers should be accountable for their performance, and they way this is done is not more testing. Its management. Adminstrators don't spend time in the class room observing and managing the teachers.
The fact is there isn't much incentive for good people and good performance in teaching. Positions are hard to fill and teachers can't expect to make more than a blue coller salary. The standard political approach to this is always to act like accountability is the answer. All carrot and no stick for teachers. In your job do you do good work just to keep from getting fired? Teachers need to be paid for performance and they need to have a lot more opportunity to make a real salary.
As always slashdot is just plain wrong. They aren't burning books. They are simply purging books that no one read anyway. The president has said that most of these books are out of date and no one has any reason to look at them. So typical to leave out the facts that explain this is a completely reasonable step. I know the slashdot crowd that blames everything on Bush will say that requiring government censoring on all new books published is some kind of violation of the first amendment. Of course, they will leave out the fact that free speech is not the same as the freedom to print any kind of anti-freedom and anti-american drivel.
God slashdot is predictable.
Well, if that is their goal they sure suck at it. They haven't killed very many. They just managed to be mass-murderes. Which is bad, I know, but they are a long damn way from wiping anything out.
I know, we'll put security checkpoints in front of the checkpoints! Then, no bombs will get into the line and the problem is solved, once and for all.
Once and for all!
Luckily, by and large, these guys are a bunch of, shall we say, fuckwits. We have the balls to stop them, eh? And the rest of the world is just going to let terrorists attack them?
This is not a war between a few thousand dumbasses with bombs and the military might of the US. These people may think they can take over the world, but they aren't going to so they are just non-rational criminals. 15 guys with bombs aren't going to be able to take over a country. The totalitarians you should be afraid of are the ones that have power or real access to power. Not a bunch of disaffected people in the London suburbs or a cave in pakistan. They could target us all day and night but if they think they can destroy our country they are just fools. They couldn't destroy our country if we did nothing. They don't have the man power or the firepower. World domination is way beyond their ability. I think they know this as well. There goals are probably small and specific.
Small companies sound good on paper. They suck in practice. They have no cash at all, so they can't pay you, can't buy you the softs you need and they put the servers in the basement and cross their fingers. You can't get promoted, so you have to leave to advance. I would give up the "fun" atmosphere and "non-corporate" environment for a more paid vacation and quarterly salary reviews.
Can we define business skills here?
Good riddence to bad rubbish. Frontpage is finally EOLed anyway.