Its the same reason why they were saying at one point that it would be a 'smart move' if Yahoo were to buy DISNEY..yes, that's right, DISNEY because they were supposedly 'valuated better' and 'better equipped to handle the New Economy' than the Mouse House..
At that point I started preparing my shorting strategy.
Re:An area where women are very common in IT
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 1
I'm in this situation as well (I'm a guy, not a chick). I actually improved my salary because I moved from working in corporate in a depressed wage state to a government outfit in a state that actually gives a damn and I love the fact that I'm not doing other incompetent peoples' work, nor do I have to work 60 hours because Lumbourg asked me to come in on Sunday for something he should have done the previous Wednesday.
I love it and with the bennies, I'm hesitant to go back to corporate because I can contract on the side at my discretion to make extra money when I please.
You're not taking monopolies into account. In fact, your entire argument is assinine.
If 8 out of 10 people patronize a certain company, product, player in the industry..whatever..then its a good assumption that the remaining two will eventually, because of monopolistic conditions, patronize what the other 8 are as well.
Look at consumer OS market. Microsoft controls what, like 90 percent of the marketplace... leaving a fraction of a percent for *nix derivatives. In that kind of marketplace, MS is able to bully OEMS and other firms in the market into leaning towards, and strongly pimping their shit under implied threat, thereby forcing the majority of users in the market to use Microsoft stuff.
Do consumers in the market have the freedom to choose? To a limited extent, yes..and that limitation is IMPOSED by the controlling interest in the marketplace..because as we all know, business isn't interested in fairness or charity.
Democracy is a type of government. Capitalism is an economic system. Don't mix up the two.
You're missing the point. I was trading MP3s back in 1997 when it was almost exclusively done on IRC, and even then it was a side deal for all the software we moved after Georgia Tech did the cracking.
The record companies didn't care then, and didn't really give a shit at all until Napster came along and made it EASY to do so. IRC has a barrier to entry. Finding the genres and tracks you want on IRC requires social engineering or a close friend group that can get it and share it amongst themselves, kind of like what you have.. but when any mouthbreathing idiot (read: the people most likely to buy the garbage that's out there now and who are, generally, not very tech savvy) can download the same music, it then becomes a problem.
And when it becomes a problem, that's when the record labels step in.
To test this, I'll ask you: How many lawsuits have you heard from people trading on IRC. I can't recall any and I think the one or two they actually pulled off came from people that were sending out GIGS of MP3s at a time.
That was weak and you could have said it under your own name.
Fact is, the man has a point. Its like the knuckleheads from New York who send heavy winter coats to relief efforts on the Gulf Coast. Nice gesture, but pretty fucking useless.
Your argument fails though, because you completely left out the consumer sentiment side of the equation. People don't like paying double digit percentage increases in service costs when the top brass are cutting themselves 8 figure paydays.
You just can't justify it. Not by the numbers.
Second, you're placing too much faith in the human condition. See, people don't just go to wor......wait........OOhhh..I get it...:-~
If there isn't a major push to port gaming to Linux in an effective way (and before you start screaming at me..NO this hasn't happened yet), it will never occupy the hotseat.
I run FD3 on my main box at home, but honestly that's really only because A) I have the desire to learn how *nix platforms work and B) I have a laptop juiced to the gills with power that XP is installed on that I can game with. I can tell you for sure that if I didn't have a powerful PC to run Windows on, the FD box would have been relegated to one of my junkers that I experiment with.
In this scenario I kind of liken the Windows box to a good old gaming console (which, coincidently is my first overall choice for gaming, period), it works (for the most part) and you don't really have to fiddle with it if you do normal system cleanup and maintenance. The reason the XP box wins in this case is because I really don't have the desire to try to get Sim City 4 and other games I play working properly in Wine. Its fire and forget, just like a Console beats a PC hands down. Insert CD, load, go. That simple.
If Linux can't replicate this effectively, it will never be top dog. But that's secondary to the real problem, as I see it, with Linux: Installing programs..which..no matter how you want to dress it up..whether it be Yum, Apt, whatever..its still a pain in the friggen ass.
About Warren Buffet:
Buffett believes that much of the problem with the economies of the United States and other industrialized countries in recent years results from the proliferation of persons and organizations who produce nothing directly but are compensated based on the volume of business which they transact. He feels that most stock trades are recommended and made primarily to benefit the brokers rather than the investors and has stated that he feels that the world would benefit if each person had a lifetime maximum of twenty stock trades. He steadfastly refuses to split Berkshire Hathaway stock because the purpose of this would be to facilitate trading, which he has no desire to do.
-Wikipedia entry on Warren Buffett
Read that passage, then read it again..and when you're done reading it, read it one more time. Then you'll understand why some knucklehead will pay 160 million clams for absolutely nothing of real hard value.
Corporate_Drone beat me to it, but yeah, not calling them morons would be a great first step forward in the right direction. People, in general, aren't stupid but they will quickly form irrational mobs and defensive groups if they feel threatened by an outside force.
This banding together is a good way to explain why we've seen the rise in fundamentalism and the seemingly standoffish posture of everyone in the very religious, very rural south (not to mention parts of the midwest and west). For years the intelligista in the Northeast and California has looked down upon the 'less savvy' unwashed masses of the heartland.
Well you know what? Now they're making their voices heard, and unfortunately the things that they want (Bibles, guns and prevention of gay marriage) takes up about 1% of the average politico's day. You know what the other 99% is spent doing? Taking phone calls from huge special interests and passing legislation and preserving the status quo so that said special interests (usually corporate) can artificially protect broken and outdated technology and process, not to mention strip you of your rights while you're asleep at the wheel.
So please, taking that 99% percent into account, at least TRY to reach out to the 'morons' and explain to them that we're all in this creaky plywood boat together.
It is up to YOU the people to elect at least half-way savvy human beings who can change the system. Whining about it on/. isn't going to solve shit. For all the complaining that geek types do, I see scant few of us actually organizing and trying to make a difference.
Do I think Microsoft should be able to patent this? Absolutely not, because I don't believe the basic core functions of the computer should be patentable. Now taking those functions and tying them together into a cohesive program should definitely be copyrightable, but patenting a computer adding two numbers together (This will happen eventually, I'll bet a C note on it) is ridiculus.
Fair enough, and good to know. I just don't like screwing with my own brain chemistry for something that has many other options to help deal with. There are a wealth of kick the habit programs out there that don't require the use of pharmies.
It doesn't matter, you're still going to cost us extra money by living longer. So either die, or get off of the tax tip..because we're all going to end up costing more than we put into the system in the long run.
I've lived in New York for most of my life and I've NEVER heard of that happening. I'd like some supporting proof of that.
Actually, I call bullshit on that completely. The only ways to get to NY from Jersey (which has a controllable border and has tax amnesty on various goods you'd want to buy like clothes..CT doesn't count because you can get through to Westchester 100 different ways) are from the Tappan Zee (by way of the GSP or 287), GWB, Lincoln Tun, Holland Tun, the Goethalls Bridge via 278 to the verrazano or the Outerbridge crossing down at the south end of SI. All of those routes are major interstate routes and it'd be nigh impossible to mess with already painfull holiday traffic to shake down people for their Christmas presents.
If the cops did that, you'd see Blue and whites being thrown of the George Washington Bridge by angry commuters.
Dude, I'm in the same boat (but different state). I suggest you NOT go with the Wellbutrin option. Its originally an SSRI and I can tell you having had friends that have gone on and off of the stuff, I really don't think you should fool around with it unless you've suffered from chronic depression for a while.
By going on the SSRI, you artificially raise the amount of serotonin in play in the synapse, elevating your mood. After you go off of it though, it can have unexpected consequences with the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction.
I would suppose that has more to do with mass psychology rather than the info not being out there. It's been proven time and time again (with some spectacular failures that took a whole lot of life with them) through the history of time that humans will believe whoever believes in their purpose the most.
I think it has something to do with people basically being terrified of the unknown and the uncertainty in life. This is why we have constructs like Religion, its all just coping mechanisms.
The danger is when someone with the wrong idea gets enough steam behind him/her to gather a following that then turns into a legion of people all saying the same thing and believing the same thing even in cases where contrary evidence is right in their faces. They almost HAVE to believe because the chaotic truth proves much to scary for them to cope with.
China cannot embrace a completely 'open' western style of democracy as trumpeted by the United States, it's an impossibility with their current population numbers and the land predicament that they're in.
China has around 70% the arable land that the United States does yet it has around 4 times the population (give or take). With numbers of people like that and the sheer logistics of feeding them all, a more heavy handed form of 'population control' is needed above and beyond lightly recommending how people do things. This is why you've seen policies such as the 1 child rule and a general aversion to completely opening up internet access to the public. Some would say that this keeps them in a state of ignorance, but honestly we as Americans have absolutely no idea what it would be like to have that many Americans running around.
Imagine this country with say.. 2.4 billion people walking around. It'd be a nightmare and if you think that the government of the US, if faced with the task of controlling and moving society along with that many people around, wouldn't impelement hard core big brother control, you have another thing coming. Free is a great idea when you have sea to shining sea and amber waves of grain, things get a bit hairer when famines could potentially kill HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS people and cause unrest on a scale never seen before by man if the dinner plate isn't filled. Also keep in mind that people are generally stupid and impulsive when they get into large groups (regardless of beliefs). This fact about human behavior has the potential to produce some pretty disasterous results.
People like to point out that India is the world's largest democracy. What they fail to mention is that India also has one of the longest lived and highly adhered to caste structures ingrained into the very fabric of their society. So yeah, they're democratic but at the same time everyone is 'assigned' a place that they cannot move from, so you're back to rigid control of thoughts and ideas in one form or another. The benefit that India has is that their generally effective use of education still bolsters innovation.
China does what it has to do to get the job done. No more, no less. I don't like the fact that they're communist. I don't like that fact that they censor and propogandize everything, but looking at it objectively, I can understand the effectiveness of the method.
..Is a revenue stream. The galleries in question probably pay for dominance. Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.
The real task, it would seem, would be to find a way to have the engine return the proper pictures for the proper searches (so typing in Daddy's birthday doesn't result in pictures of some 50 something dude banging some barely legal chick with a party hat on.)
Why do we want to go to the cineplex, you ask? Because there's something pretty cosmic about watching a movie projected onto a big screen. That grain, that sound, all of it. Going to the movies is a pastime experience and its a good communal thing (except when members of the community refuse to shut the fuck up).
I do agree about the expense of it though, but that's to be expected when you have 20 screens in one building. That's alot of juice to buy from Con-Ed.
The GIMP is a poor product. The user interface is not intuitive at all and the help files AS WELL AS the tutorials you can find online are pretty lacking.
Its a shame too, because it could soo whoop PS if they really put their backs into it.
You're a Mac user aren't you? If you consider hedging all your bets on a personal music player that is driven by marketing hype alone (more feature rich, higher storage models can be bought from other manufacturers at a lower price, with the same quality) as 'on the rise' then you deserve what the guys who ran the bubbl-era bombs got.
Slashdot Mirror
Its the same reason why they were saying at one point that it would be a 'smart move' if Yahoo were to buy DISNEY..yes, that's right, DISNEY because they were supposedly 'valuated better' and 'better equipped to handle the New Economy' than the Mouse House..
At that point I started preparing my shorting strategy.
I'm in this situation as well (I'm a guy, not a chick). I actually improved my salary because I moved from working in corporate in a depressed wage state to a government outfit in a state that actually gives a damn and I love the fact that I'm not doing other incompetent peoples' work, nor do I have to work 60 hours because Lumbourg asked me to come in on Sunday for something he should have done the previous Wednesday.
I love it and with the bennies, I'm hesitant to go back to corporate because I can contract on the side at my discretion to make extra money when I please.
You're not taking monopolies into account. In fact, your entire argument is assinine.
If 8 out of 10 people patronize a certain company, product, player in the industry..whatever..then its a good assumption that the remaining two will eventually, because of monopolistic conditions, patronize what the other 8 are as well.
Look at consumer OS market. Microsoft controls what, like 90 percent of the marketplace... leaving a fraction of a percent for *nix derivatives. In that kind of marketplace, MS is able to bully OEMS and other firms in the market into leaning towards, and strongly pimping their shit under implied threat, thereby forcing the majority of users in the market to use Microsoft stuff.
Do consumers in the market have the freedom to choose? To a limited extent, yes..and that limitation is IMPOSED by the controlling interest in the marketplace..because as we all know, business isn't interested in fairness or charity.
Democracy is a type of government. Capitalism is an economic system. Don't mix up the two.
You're missing the point. I was trading MP3s back in 1997 when it was almost exclusively done on IRC, and even then it was a side deal for all the software we moved after Georgia Tech did the cracking.
The record companies didn't care then, and didn't really give a shit at all until Napster came along and made it EASY to do so. IRC has a barrier to entry. Finding the genres and tracks you want on IRC requires social engineering or a close friend group that can get it and share it amongst themselves, kind of like what you have.. but when any mouthbreathing idiot (read: the people most likely to buy the garbage that's out there now and who are, generally, not very tech savvy) can download the same music, it then becomes a problem.
And when it becomes a problem, that's when the record labels step in.
To test this, I'll ask you: How many lawsuits have you heard from people trading on IRC. I can't recall any and I think the one or two they actually pulled off came from people that were sending out GIGS of MP3s at a time.
That was weak and you could have said it under your own name.
Fact is, the man has a point. Its like the knuckleheads from New York who send heavy winter coats to relief efforts on the Gulf Coast. Nice gesture, but pretty fucking useless.
Your argument fails though, because you completely left out the consumer sentiment side of the equation. People don't like paying double digit percentage increases in service costs when the top brass are cutting themselves 8 figure paydays.
...wait.... ....OOhhh..I get it...:-~
You just can't justify it. Not by the numbers.
Second, you're placing too much faith in the human condition. See, people don't just go to wor...
If there isn't a major push to port gaming to Linux in an effective way (and before you start screaming at me..NO this hasn't happened yet), it will never occupy the hotseat.
I run FD3 on my main box at home, but honestly that's really only because A) I have the desire to learn how *nix platforms work and B) I have a laptop juiced to the gills with power that XP is installed on that I can game with. I can tell you for sure that if I didn't have a powerful PC to run Windows on, the FD box would have been relegated to one of my junkers that I experiment with.
In this scenario I kind of liken the Windows box to a good old gaming console (which, coincidently is my first overall choice for gaming, period), it works (for the most part) and you don't really have to fiddle with it if you do normal system cleanup and maintenance. The reason the XP box wins in this case is because I really don't have the desire to try to get Sim City 4 and other games I play working properly in Wine. Its fire and forget, just like a Console beats a PC hands down. Insert CD, load, go. That simple.
If Linux can't replicate this effectively, it will never be top dog. But that's secondary to the real problem, as I see it, with Linux: Installing programs..which..no matter how you want to dress it up..whether it be Yum, Apt, whatever..its still a pain in the friggen ass.
About Warren Buffet: Buffett believes that much of the problem with the economies of the United States and other industrialized countries in recent years results from the proliferation of persons and organizations who produce nothing directly but are compensated based on the volume of business which they transact. He feels that most stock trades are recommended and made primarily to benefit the brokers rather than the investors and has stated that he feels that the world would benefit if each person had a lifetime maximum of twenty stock trades. He steadfastly refuses to split Berkshire Hathaway stock because the purpose of this would be to facilitate trading, which he has no desire to do. -Wikipedia entry on Warren Buffett Read that passage, then read it again..and when you're done reading it, read it one more time. Then you'll understand why some knucklehead will pay 160 million clams for absolutely nothing of real hard value.
Corporate_Drone beat me to it, but yeah, not calling them morons would be a great first step forward in the right direction. People, in general, aren't stupid but they will quickly form irrational mobs and defensive groups if they feel threatened by an outside force.
This banding together is a good way to explain why we've seen the rise in fundamentalism and the seemingly standoffish posture of everyone in the very religious, very rural south (not to mention parts of the midwest and west). For years the intelligista in the Northeast and California has looked down upon the 'less savvy' unwashed masses of the heartland.
Well you know what? Now they're making their voices heard, and unfortunately the things that they want (Bibles, guns and prevention of gay marriage) takes up about 1% of the average politico's day. You know what the other 99% is spent doing? Taking phone calls from huge special interests and passing legislation and preserving the status quo so that said special interests (usually corporate) can artificially protect broken and outdated technology and process, not to mention strip you of your rights while you're asleep at the wheel.
So please, taking that 99% percent into account, at least TRY to reach out to the 'morons' and explain to them that we're all in this creaky plywood boat together.
It is up to YOU the people to elect at least half-way savvy human beings who can change the system. Whining about it on /. isn't going to solve shit. For all the complaining that geek types do, I see scant few of us actually organizing and trying to make a difference.
Do I think Microsoft should be able to patent this? Absolutely not, because I don't believe the basic core functions of the computer should be patentable. Now taking those functions and tying them together into a cohesive program should definitely be copyrightable, but patenting a computer adding two numbers together (This will happen eventually, I'll bet a C note on it) is ridiculus.
Fair enough, and good to know. I just don't like screwing with my own brain chemistry for something that has many other options to help deal with. There are a wealth of kick the habit programs out there that don't require the use of pharmies.
I guess it comes down to personal opinion.
It doesn't matter, you're still going to cost us extra money by living longer. So either die, or get off of the tax tip..because we're all going to end up costing more than we put into the system in the long run.
I've lived in New York for most of my life and I've NEVER heard of that happening. I'd like some supporting proof of that.
Actually, I call bullshit on that completely. The only ways to get to NY from Jersey (which has a controllable border and has tax amnesty on various goods you'd want to buy like clothes..CT doesn't count because you can get through to Westchester 100 different ways) are from the Tappan Zee (by way of the GSP or 287), GWB, Lincoln Tun, Holland Tun, the Goethalls Bridge via 278 to the verrazano or the Outerbridge crossing down at the south end of SI. All of those routes are major interstate routes and it'd be nigh impossible to mess with already painfull holiday traffic to shake down people for their Christmas presents.
If the cops did that, you'd see Blue and whites being thrown of the George Washington Bridge by angry commuters.
Dude, I'm in the same boat (but different state). I suggest you NOT go with the Wellbutrin option. Its originally an SSRI and I can tell you having had friends that have gone on and off of the stuff, I really don't think you should fool around with it unless you've suffered from chronic depression for a while.
By going on the SSRI, you artificially raise the amount of serotonin in play in the synapse, elevating your mood. After you go off of it though, it can have unexpected consequences with the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction.
Idealism dies when you actually get put in the big chair.
I would suppose that has more to do with mass psychology rather than the info not being out there. It's been proven time and time again (with some spectacular failures that took a whole lot of life with them) through the history of time that humans will believe whoever believes in their purpose the most.
I think it has something to do with people basically being terrified of the unknown and the uncertainty in life. This is why we have constructs like Religion, its all just coping mechanisms.
The danger is when someone with the wrong idea gets enough steam behind him/her to gather a following that then turns into a legion of people all saying the same thing and believing the same thing even in cases where contrary evidence is right in their faces. They almost HAVE to believe because the chaotic truth proves much to scary for them to cope with.
or something to that effect..
China cannot embrace a completely 'open' western style of democracy as trumpeted by the United States, it's an impossibility with their current population numbers and the land predicament that they're in.
China has around 70% the arable land that the United States does yet it has around 4 times the population (give or take). With numbers of people like that and the sheer logistics of feeding them all, a more heavy handed form of 'population control' is needed above and beyond lightly recommending how people do things. This is why you've seen policies such as the 1 child rule and a general aversion to completely opening up internet access to the public. Some would say that this keeps them in a state of ignorance, but honestly we as Americans have absolutely no idea what it would be like to have that many Americans running around.
Imagine this country with say.. 2.4 billion people walking around. It'd be a nightmare and if you think that the government of the US, if faced with the task of controlling and moving society along with that many people around, wouldn't impelement hard core big brother control, you have another thing coming. Free is a great idea when you have sea to shining sea and amber waves of grain, things get a bit hairer when famines could potentially kill HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS people and cause unrest on a scale never seen before by man if the dinner plate isn't filled. Also keep in mind that people are generally stupid and impulsive when they get into large groups (regardless of beliefs). This fact about human behavior has the potential to produce some pretty disasterous results.
People like to point out that India is the world's largest democracy. What they fail to mention is that India also has one of the longest lived and highly adhered to caste structures ingrained into the very fabric of their society. So yeah, they're democratic but at the same time everyone is 'assigned' a place that they cannot move from, so you're back to rigid control of thoughts and ideas in one form or another. The benefit that India has is that their generally effective use of education still bolsters innovation.
China does what it has to do to get the job done. No more, no less. I don't like the fact that they're communist. I don't like that fact that they censor and propogandize everything, but looking at it objectively, I can understand the effectiveness of the method.
BSD would be easier to use if the entirety of the BSD community wasn't a bunch of fucking assholes..but I digress...
(Again..this crap with me arguing with AC's..ugh..)
I was using that as an example of off topic things coming up, I didn't have any intent of starting some kind of moral argument against porn.
Hell, I probably have more porn than you do.
Why in the hell am I arguing with someone who won't even sign their name to their posts!!
!!
..Is a revenue stream. The galleries in question probably pay for dominance. Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.
The real task, it would seem, would be to find a way to have the engine return the proper pictures for the proper searches (so typing in Daddy's birthday doesn't result in pictures of some 50 something dude banging some barely legal chick with a party hat on.)
Stuff like that.
That was a wonderfully luke warm attempt at trolling..Now if you had concentrated on a typical install process for programs, that'd be comedy.
Why do we want to go to the cineplex, you ask? Because there's something pretty cosmic about watching a movie projected onto a big screen. That grain, that sound, all of it. Going to the movies is a pastime experience and its a good communal thing (except when members of the community refuse to shut the fuck up). I do agree about the expense of it though, but that's to be expected when you have 20 screens in one building. That's alot of juice to buy from Con-Ed.
The GIMP is a poor product. The user interface is not intuitive at all and the help files AS WELL AS the tutorials you can find online are pretty lacking.
Its a shame too, because it could soo whoop PS if they really put their backs into it.
...you're basically asking what we think of tuning a machine for favorable benchmarking results.. ..Did I read that right?..
You're a Mac user aren't you? If you consider hedging all your bets on a personal music player that is driven by marketing hype alone (more feature rich, higher storage models can be bought from other manufacturers at a lower price, with the same quality) as 'on the rise' then you deserve what the guys who ran the bubbl-era bombs got.