You better believe Norway looks good. Norway has a higher standard of living than the US, its people have a longer life expectancy, crime is very low, they have free universal healthcare and education, and it's one of the most beautiful places on the planet....
The only problem for us disaffected Americans is that the Norwegians have strict immigration laws and it is very difficult for us to move there!
Good point, I was stereotyping the entire group. It was an editorial comment I should have left out. My only excuse is that I had just finished reading something like 50 posts that explained with great certainty that women's brains were just not capable of analytical thinking on a par with men.
The only difference in my comments and theirs is that I once was a 20-something year-old male, so I know how self-assured they can be while still being entirely wrong.:-)
I must have replied to the wrong post - I thought I was replying to the female engineer... however in reply to your latest comments...
Dude, the people working at best buy know nothing about computers. Just start throwing around a few acronyms and that'll fix that. ("How many PCI slots does...
I am well aware of my ability to let them know I am not ignorant, it is just that I don't want to be bothered with having to do it. My point was that having that attitude after only a short time of being classified as incompetent in the eyes of salespeople, how much more frustrating it must be for women who have had to put up with it all their lives.
See my reply to her where I explained that when my wife bought a new car and started announcing it to the world, women would first ask "What color?" and men would ask "What kind?".
This is a great aphorism that conveniently supports the stereotype, but I don't really see any objective data on who said what. Maybe it is that you just *expected* the women to ask what color so those are the comments you remember. Even if you are right, so what? It doesn't tell us anything about women other than certain expectations of response and behavior have been pounded into them from that first pink dress.
If any woman is good at coding (or whatever the job is), she will automatically be recognized.
Oh, but that were true. Your idea that all it takes is ability is very naive. You are clearly a white, middle-class male who has never experienced discrimination in your life. There are countless ways that people are kept in their places that have nothing to do with ability.
Let's look at some other examples:
Minority individuals will rise to the top of the corporate ladder - all they have to be is good at business. What your theory that ability is all that matters leaves out is: a)get enough money to go to college, b)get accepted to Harvard or Duke business schools (despite the old-boy network), and c)get accepted to the Country Club to make those all-important connections.
Children of migrant workers should be able to be electrical engineers - all they have to do is be good at math and science. What your ability-is-all theroy leaves out is: a)they have to work in the fields, b)they don't have math and science role-models and c)they have to speak English proficiently. Then you have to add the money and education part from the first example.
The current problem with women in technical fields is two-fold: women are discouraged from entering male-dominated fields from the first time their parents put that pink outfit on them and a blue outfit on their brother; and then, if they do go technical they are discriminated against because the paucity of women in the technical fields "shows" that women just don't have the brain structure for doing that work. It is a self-perpetuating loop.
Thank you for taking the time to explain things to these people who just assume that the issue is within the women, when it is really within their perception of women. Unfortunatly you have very little chance of changing their male 20-something minds because they are convinced that their view of the world is the only valid one.
I would like to add that the stereotype of the non-technical woman is likely perpetuated by women themselves out of shear frustration. As I get older I find that sales people have started talking down to me because as an "old guy" (50) I must not know anything about computers (or HDTV or you name it). I usually just let them insult me because it isn't worth my time to smack them between the eyes. This assumption by sales people that I am a moron is a recent pheomenon with me so I can't even imagine what it must be like for women who have been talked down to for their entire lives.
You want just the specs, nothing else and certainly no marketing aimed specifically at a you. That's pretty funny and self-centered because products sold that way ARE using marketing aimed at a technical sub-group. Those bullet-pointed spec sheets are written specifically for your market segment and what is more, they clearly work because you prefer them.
Sure, I see your point, but I am right now more concerned with the reality of the current mess we're in rather than the problems with the overall system. When you are drowning you first have to get yourself to the surface, THEN you worry about fixing the boat.
Anyone who thinks that the system is wrong should do things like vote for the Greens or for Nader-like candidates - BUT NOT in this presidential election. It is good to get the seeds of change started in other elections, but the sad fact today is that a vote for anyone other than Kerry (not my first choice in the candidate crop) would be a vote for Bush.
My feelings today are that we should not give up on the system just because there are no immediate fast fixes. If you think there should be term limits then encourage, support and vote for candidates who think likewise. Politics is like going to the optometrist who asks you again and again which is better - "one or two", and we pick the best lens of the two. Eventually we get the right lens and maybe eventually we will get this rebublic thing right, too.
There's nothing we can do to stop the corruption. The power lies, in many cases, not in the democratically elected (ahem) president and congresspeople, but in the appointed heads of departments and the intelligence we receive from heads of our intelligence agencies
How exactly does this get the President and Congress off the hook? The President appoints the department and agency heads and then tells them what to say and do! When the administration couldn't get the intelligence community to say the "correct" thing about WMD even under pressure, they formed their own tame intelligence committees outside of the normal intelligence community to gin up the evidence they needed. I do not believe for one second Bush's claim that he got the wrong information from the CIA about WMD. Kudo's to the CIA analysts who wouldn't cave, which as the Valarie Plame fiasco showed was a real risk to life and career.
Not to say that we shouldn't criticize America's corruption, but I see little short of an election of an isolationist pacifist and appointment of isolationist pacifist heads, that will change anything about the operations of the American government.
That is buying into the Great Lie promulgated by the right-wing that anyone who disagrees with them is an unpatriotic ultra-liberal pacifist extremist. Curtailing the lies and corruption in our current government by kicking the lying bastards out of office does not mean we move to pacifist or isolationists (and who could possibly be more isolating than the Bush administration anyway?). It only means that we move toward rationality and the mainstream. It is the false argument of the right-wingers that security and patriotism are the sole domain of the extreme right.
I would vote for a dead horse before voting for George W. Bush for another term (that's no joke). There may be no perfect candidates for Congress or the Presidency, but there are clearly those who are trying to take away our freedoms more aggressively than others. If we have to kick someone out I say start with those.
As Ben Franklin said, perhaps prophetically, when leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1776: "We have provided a Republic, madam - if you can keep it."
Restricting the challenges letters and numerals gives the spammers a big advantage if they do try to decode the challenges with software since there are only limited numbrs of ASCII characters to pick from. Most people seems to be thinking the CR has to be letters or numbers, but it doesn't. Your example of faces is a perfect example. Facial expressions are universal and it would be very easy to have the responder pick the happy face or the angry face from a selection of other faces. This is trivial for humans and nearly impossible for computers, plus the available faces number in the billions, rather than just 255 (?) or so ASCII characters available.
I suspect the almost universal use of letters and numerals in challenges today resulted simply from 1) the original programmers were just thinking that way, and 2) nothing more complex or creative has really been necessary yet.
If advances in character recognition begin to figure out the current crop of CR it should be trivial to develop methods that will be much more difficult to circumvent. Spammers should realize that spending a lot of effort to overcome the letter/numeral system would be a waste of their time and money because it would be trivial to make the challenges orders of magnitude more difficult for computers. Ironically, that may be a reason why the letters and numerals may be all we ever need.
Not every solution to a technological problem has to be technological as well. Recent/. post told of looters in Chernobyl stealing contaminated TV's and reselling them to unsuspecting customers in flea-markets. The Russian government caught four doing this and shot them. Looting problem dropped to near zero afterwards.
Serious jail time or financial punishment for illegal spamming would be a real deterent to spam. Currently there is almost no punishment for any spammer even if he or she is caught.
The only way the people who are so intent on taking away our rights are going to get the message is if they are soundly voted out of office in November. Even then they won't change because it is the right thing to do, but because they want to save their own asses and keep on being fat cats. But so what. As long as we Americans tell them in no uncertain terms to get the hell out, we accomplish our goals.
I have faith only as far as next November. If George W. Bush gets re-elected I'm moving to a country where the government and the people are sane.
Congress is the only entity that has the power to reign these people in, and I don't see a lot of effort being expended there on our behalf.
Congress and the courts. Unfortunately for us all the courts are being packed with right-wing zealots by the current Bush administration. The heavy handed Republican party, having gained the Whitehouse and a majority in Congress, is now on a crusade to change the very nature of our society from one that values individuality and personal freedom to one that values totalitarian security. The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving.
If you don't like what Congress and the Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld administration is doing then place your vote for people who see that protecting the Constitution and individual liberty is what Patriotism is really all about - not protecting Halliburton and the money-making abilities of the fat cats.
IANAL but I seem to remember that companies cannot just absolve themselves of blame by saying in advance that they are blameless. If a product would reasonably be expected to perform a function by a reasonable user then the company is liable if injury occurs as a result of a product flaw. For example a company can't make a lousy car tire that explodes at 55 mph and get out of it by saying "Not for use at speeds over 45 MPH", because car tires are reasonably expected to be able to go faster than 55 MPH by any reasonable person.
In the MS example used earlier, MS can say all day that Windows is not to be used to run PC's used in critical applications but since Windows runs 99% of all computers on the planet it really doesn't mean much for them to say it. Please note that the point I'm making is that MS can't proactively absolve themselves of responsibility by the EULA, NOT the reasonableness of having a Windows PC run a critical operation - that would be for a jury to decide.
Why do you think places like Vegas, Miami and other touristy spots get chosen for big shows
Because that is where the hotel rooms and convention centers are, not because they are great places to hold a convention. As an occasionally drafted meeting planner I can assure you that the foremost reason for picking a location is having enough sleeping-room nights and floor space.
Of course they are going to watch your card closely - you are a new account. I've had my card for years and never get it rejected. I once had to put an unexpected $22,000 charge for a group-day cruise in Switzerland on my card and there was not a squeak from AMEX.
What you need to do, at least until they realize you are a real person and are going to pay your bills, is call them in advance and tell them you are expecting to be making some purchases in another state. You probably won't have a problem.
I only use paypal with people I trust. it does NOT inulate you from parties you don't trust. They have notices saying they are a safe way to tranfer funds and they imply that you can initiate an investigation to get a refund just like a credit card, but it isn;t true - hence the problems with NY State Attorney General.
I paid a person $45 using paypal who never sent the merchandise. I initiated a complaint and after months paypal came back and said they had found I was right and they were refunding my money in the amount of $0.01! I suspect that one cent refund was so they could claim they had resolved the situation and sent a refund to yet another customer. Bullsh*t.
If you have 1000 people and only 100 of them have PhDs in Physics, then even if the other 900 disagree, the opinions that matter are the opinions of those 100 physicists.
Not true. It might be more true to say that the opinions of the 100 Ph.D.'s count for MORE that the opinions of the other 900, but not that they opinions of the other 900 don't matter.
Basically a PH.D. is just a tag to insure that certain persons are duly indoctrinated into the conventional wisdom of the time. It does not make them smarter, it does not make them more "right" than anyone else - it simply means that they can converse with other experts in the field using a common framework that all understand and they at least KNOW the scientific method.
I trust a PH.D. no more than I trust anyone. Each has his or her own personal, politcal and economic goals. That is why the tobacco and drug industries (and now the Bush administration) have such an easy time of getting tame researchers to publish studies to support any position they want to have supported, no matter what position that may be. It can be yes or no, blue or green, top or bottom, safe or dangerous - you name it and a PH.D. can be bought to support it.
Effective in some ways, but ineffective in others. For example, I assume that 99% of your reviewers are English-speakers from western cultures. I'm not saying the review strategy Wikipedia uses is not valuable (and I can't suggest anything better), but just keep in mind that hundreds of like-thinking reviewers can give unwarranted validity to an article's conclusions.
Some are trying to do the archiving you are talking about. It isn't perfect, but the "wayback machine" is one of those attempts. I don't know the web address but it should be easy to Google.
Slashdot Mirror
You better believe Norway looks good. Norway has a higher standard of living than the US, its people have a longer life expectancy, crime is very low, they have free universal healthcare and education, and it's one of the most beautiful places on the planet....
The only problem for us disaffected Americans is that the Norwegians have strict immigration laws and it is very difficult for us to move there!
Good point, I was stereotyping the entire group. It was an editorial comment I should have left out. My only excuse is that I had just finished reading something like 50 posts that explained with great certainty that women's brains were just not capable of analytical thinking on a par with men.
:-)
The only difference in my comments and theirs is that I once was a 20-something year-old male, so I know how self-assured they can be while still being entirely wrong.
I must have replied to the wrong post - I thought I was replying to the female engineer... however in reply to your latest comments...
Dude, the people working at best buy know nothing about computers. Just start throwing around a few acronyms and that'll fix that. ("How many PCI slots does...
I am well aware of my ability to let them know I am not ignorant, it is just that I don't want to be bothered with having to do it. My point was that having that attitude after only a short time of being classified as incompetent in the eyes of salespeople, how much more frustrating it must be for women who have had to put up with it all their lives.
See my reply to her where I explained that when my wife bought a new car and started announcing it to the world, women would first ask "What color?" and men would ask "What kind?".
This is a great aphorism that conveniently supports the stereotype, but I don't really see any objective data on who said what. Maybe it is that you just *expected* the women to ask what color so those are the comments you remember. Even if you are right, so what? It doesn't tell us anything about women other than certain expectations of response and behavior have been pounded into them from that first pink dress.
If any woman is good at coding (or whatever the job is), she will automatically be recognized.
Oh, but that were true. Your idea that all it takes is ability is very naive. You are clearly a white, middle-class male who has never experienced discrimination in your life. There are countless ways that people are kept in their places that have nothing to do with ability.
Let's look at some other examples:
Minority individuals will rise to the top of the corporate ladder - all they have to be is good at business. What your theory that ability is all that matters leaves out is: a)get enough money to go to college, b)get accepted to Harvard or Duke business schools (despite the old-boy network), and c)get accepted to the Country Club to make those all-important connections.
Children of migrant workers should be able to be electrical engineers - all they have to do is be good at math and science. What your ability-is-all theroy leaves out is: a)they have to work in the fields, b)they don't have math and science role-models and c)they have to speak English proficiently. Then you have to add the money and education part from the first example.
The current problem with women in technical fields is two-fold: women are discouraged from entering male-dominated fields from the first time their parents put that pink outfit on them and a blue outfit on their brother; and then, if they do go technical they are discriminated against because the paucity of women in the technical fields "shows" that women just don't have the brain structure for doing that work. It is a self-perpetuating loop.
Thank you for taking the time to explain things to these people who just assume that the issue is within the women, when it is really within their perception of women. Unfortunatly you have very little chance of changing their male 20-something minds because they are convinced that their view of the world is the only valid one.
I would like to add that the stereotype of the non-technical woman is likely perpetuated by women themselves out of shear frustration. As I get older I find that sales people have started talking down to me because as an "old guy" (50) I must not know anything about computers (or HDTV or you name it). I usually just let them insult me because it isn't worth my time to smack them between the eyes. This assumption by sales people that I am a moron is a recent pheomenon with me so I can't even imagine what it must be like for women who have been talked down to for their entire lives.
You want just the specs, nothing else and certainly no marketing aimed specifically at a you. That's pretty funny and self-centered because products sold that way ARE using marketing aimed at a technical sub-group. Those bullet-pointed spec sheets are written specifically for your market segment and what is more, they clearly work because you prefer them.
Sure, I see your point, but I am right now more concerned with the reality of the current mess we're in rather than the problems with the overall system. When you are drowning you first have to get yourself to the surface, THEN you worry about fixing the boat.
Anyone who thinks that the system is wrong should do things like vote for the Greens or for Nader-like candidates - BUT NOT in this presidential election. It is good to get the seeds of change started in other elections, but the sad fact today is that a vote for anyone other than Kerry (not my first choice in the candidate crop) would be a vote for Bush.
My feelings today are that we should not give up on the system just because there are no immediate fast fixes. If you think there should be term limits then encourage, support and vote for candidates who think likewise. Politics is like going to the optometrist who asks you again and again which is better - "one or two", and we pick the best lens of the two. Eventually we get the right lens and maybe eventually we will get this rebublic thing right, too.
There's nothing we can do to stop the corruption. The power lies, in many cases, not in the democratically elected (ahem) president and congresspeople, but in the appointed heads of departments and the intelligence we receive from heads of our intelligence agencies
How exactly does this get the President and Congress off the hook? The President appoints the department and agency heads and then tells them what to say and do! When the administration couldn't get the intelligence community to say the "correct" thing about WMD even under pressure, they formed their own tame intelligence committees outside of the normal intelligence community to gin up the evidence they needed. I do not believe for one second Bush's claim that he got the wrong information from the CIA about WMD. Kudo's to the CIA analysts who wouldn't cave, which as the Valarie Plame fiasco showed was a real risk to life and career.
Not to say that we shouldn't criticize America's corruption, but I see little short of an election of an isolationist pacifist and appointment of isolationist pacifist heads, that will change anything about the operations of the American government.
That is buying into the Great Lie promulgated by the right-wing that anyone who disagrees with them is an unpatriotic ultra-liberal pacifist extremist. Curtailing the lies and corruption in our current government by kicking the lying bastards out of office does not mean we move to pacifist or isolationists (and who could possibly be more isolating than the Bush administration anyway?). It only means that we move toward rationality and the mainstream. It is the false argument of the right-wingers that security and patriotism are the sole domain of the extreme right.
I would vote for a dead horse before voting for George W. Bush for another term (that's no joke). There may be no perfect candidates for Congress or the Presidency, but there are clearly those who are trying to take away our freedoms more aggressively than others. If we have to kick someone out I say start with those.
As Ben Franklin said, perhaps prophetically, when leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1776: "We have provided a Republic, madam - if you can keep it."
Restricting the challenges letters and numerals gives the spammers a big advantage if they do try to decode the challenges with software since there are only limited numbrs of ASCII characters to pick from. Most people seems to be thinking the CR has to be letters or numbers, but it doesn't. Your example of faces is a perfect example. Facial expressions are universal and it would be very easy to have the responder pick the happy face or the angry face from a selection of other faces. This is trivial for humans and nearly impossible for computers, plus the available faces number in the billions, rather than just 255 (?) or so ASCII characters available.
I suspect the almost universal use of letters and numerals in challenges today resulted simply from 1) the original programmers were just thinking that way, and 2) nothing more complex or creative has really been necessary yet.
If advances in character recognition begin to figure out the current crop of CR it should be trivial to develop methods that will be much more difficult to circumvent. Spammers should realize that spending a lot of effort to overcome the letter/numeral system would be a waste of their time and money because it would be trivial to make the challenges orders of magnitude more difficult for computers. Ironically, that may be a reason why the letters and numerals may be all we ever need.
Not every solution to a technological problem has to be technological as well. Recent /. post told of looters in Chernobyl stealing contaminated TV's and reselling them to unsuspecting customers in flea-markets. The Russian government caught four doing this and shot them. Looting problem dropped to near zero afterwards.
Serious jail time or financial punishment for illegal spamming would be a real deterent to spam. Currently there is almost no punishment for any spammer even if he or she is caught.
The only way the people who are so intent on taking away our rights are going to get the message is if they are soundly voted out of office in November. Even then they won't change because it is the right thing to do, but because they want to save their own asses and keep on being fat cats. But so what. As long as we Americans tell them in no uncertain terms to get the hell out, we accomplish our goals.
I have faith only as far as next November. If George W. Bush gets re-elected I'm moving to a country where the government and the people are sane.
As Ben Franklin said when exiting from the Constitutional Convention:
"We have provided a Republic, madam. If you can keep it."
And a good time to do that would be November when we can vote them out of office.
Congress is the only entity that has the power to reign these people in, and I don't see a lot of effort being expended there on our behalf.
Congress and the courts. Unfortunately for us all the courts are being packed with right-wing zealots by the current Bush administration. The heavy handed Republican party, having gained the Whitehouse and a majority in Congress, is now on a crusade to change the very nature of our society from one that values individuality and personal freedom to one that values totalitarian security. The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving.
If you don't like what Congress and the Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld administration is doing then place your vote for people who see that protecting the Constitution and individual liberty is what Patriotism is really all about - not protecting Halliburton and the money-making abilities of the fat cats.
Since they had to pay salaries.
Hundreds of doomsayers predicting the demise of this, and not one mention (modded up at least) of Windows ripping off the Mac interface.
Excuse me...
Apple ripped off HP for the windows concept AND the mouse. I really can't get too upset for poor ol' Apple having the same done to them.
IANAL but I seem to remember that companies cannot just absolve themselves of blame by saying in advance that they are blameless. If a product would reasonably be expected to perform a function by a reasonable user then the company is liable if injury occurs as a result of a product flaw. For example a company can't make a lousy car tire that explodes at 55 mph and get out of it by saying "Not for use at speeds over 45 MPH", because car tires are reasonably expected to be able to go faster than 55 MPH by any reasonable person.
In the MS example used earlier, MS can say all day that Windows is not to be used to run PC's used in critical applications but since Windows runs 99% of all computers on the planet it really doesn't mean much for them to say it. Please note that the point I'm making is that MS can't proactively absolve themselves of responsibility by the EULA, NOT the reasonableness of having a Windows PC run a critical operation - that would be for a jury to decide.
Why do you think places like Vegas, Miami and other touristy spots get chosen for big shows
Because that is where the hotel rooms and convention centers are, not because they are great places to hold a convention. As an occasionally drafted meeting planner I can assure you that the foremost reason for picking a location is having enough sleeping-room nights and floor space.
Here's your problem:
The day after I received a new AMEX card,
Of course they are going to watch your card closely - you are a new account. I've had my card for years and never get it rejected. I once had to put an unexpected $22,000 charge for a group-day cruise in Switzerland on my card and there was not a squeak from AMEX.
What you need to do, at least until they realize you are a real person and are going to pay your bills, is call them in advance and tell them you are expecting to be making some purchases in another state. You probably won't have a problem.
I only use paypal with people I trust. it does NOT inulate you from parties you don't trust. They have notices saying they are a safe way to tranfer funds and they imply that you can initiate an investigation to get a refund just like a credit card, but it isn;t true - hence the problems with NY State Attorney General.
I paid a person $45 using paypal who never sent the merchandise. I initiated a complaint and after months paypal came back and said they had found I was right and they were refunding my money in the amount of $0.01! I suspect that one cent refund was so they could claim they had resolved the situation and sent a refund to yet another customer. Bullsh*t.
If you have 1000 people and only 100 of them have PhDs in Physics, then even if the other 900 disagree, the opinions that matter are the opinions of those 100 physicists.
Not true. It might be more true to say that the opinions of the 100 Ph.D.'s count for MORE that the opinions of the other 900, but not that they opinions of the other 900 don't matter.
Basically a PH.D. is just a tag to insure that certain persons are duly indoctrinated into the conventional wisdom of the time. It does not make them smarter, it does not make them more "right" than anyone else - it simply means that they can converse with other experts in the field using a common framework that all understand and they at least KNOW the scientific method.
I trust a PH.D. no more than I trust anyone. Each has his or her own personal, politcal and economic goals. That is why the tobacco and drug industries (and now the Bush administration) have such an easy time of getting tame researchers to publish studies to support any position they want to have supported, no matter what position that may be. It can be yes or no, blue or green, top or bottom, safe or dangerous - you name it and a PH.D. can be bought to support it.
Effective in some ways, but ineffective in others. For example, I assume that 99% of your reviewers are English-speakers from western cultures. I'm not saying the review strategy Wikipedia uses is not valuable (and I can't suggest anything better), but just keep in mind that hundreds of like-thinking reviewers can give unwarranted validity to an article's conclusions.
Some are trying to do the archiving you are talking about. It isn't perfect, but the "wayback machine" is one of those attempts. I don't know the web address but it should be easy to Google.
Oh, yikes! I was feeling educationally superior until you mentioned semicolon placement!