Yes, even a skeptic like myself will admit that there have been, and no doubt still are cover-ups, even though they usually relate to government/military actions, NOT aliens...
Government cover-ups are typically perpetrated to hide misfeasance. In other words, somebody screws up and hides the evidence.
The Lee Harvey Oswald story was such a cover-up. It's complicated by the fact that the cover-up occurred at two levels.
Kennedy got shot. Those who should have been protecting him screwed up. That was the first issue. The second theory was that when they finally realized what had happened, the higher-ups thought that telling the American public that Castro had put out a hit contract on Kennedy would cause everyone to demand a war with Cuba. This would likely draw in the USSR and lead to WW-III. But I think their real fear was that the public would demand their regignations because they couldn't control "the Mob". So they went along with the Oswald lie. Now the top levels of government have lied to the people and they have to cover that up, as well.
It was all a basic cover-your-ass operation. They found one simplistic cover story with only a few holes in it and tried their best to make it stick. Anyone who questioned it was dismissed as unpatriotic, a tactic that still works today.
As the parent post states, Roswell was probably not about aliens any more than Oswald was really about WW-III. It was more likely about somebody mis-reporting a weather balloon downing as a UFO crash and his C.O. didn't want to look like a fool to his superiors.
Re:what's a gal to do?
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 1
In short, ya gotta pay yer dues. Everyone starts off as a newbie with zero experience. Newbies with zero experience hire in cheap and work long hours. Thirty-year-old newbies are no exception.
A 35-year-old with five years experience can usually command a better position (with the right company) than a 25-year-old with five years experience, though.
It's a little different for a woman of course. There are all those carreer vs. family issues. (Are HR people still allowed to ask a woman if she's been "fixed"? I know it sounds crude, but they used to do that.)
Depends on your skill set
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I recently was laid off and found another job with ease. Having 30 years experience in mainframe systems work was a huge plus. (Even an HR person can do the math here: 30 + college = over 50, so they don't really have to ask for your age on the application.)
My previous company had me cross-train as a Windows NT MCSE just before they riffed me. A 50-something MCSE with one year of experience is a bit of a joke, I found. (Not just in Slashdot-land, but in the real world, too!)
All of the web developers here are well under thirty, so your skill set seems to determine how your age is perceived. Java seems to be a "young person's" language.
I tried to post a comment to a cnn.com story using my Slashdot ID, but they said I was too old.
And if you wanna submit a story there, you have to belong to some special Java class called "reporter", or something, and you have to submit it in some special programming language called Journalism.
Why? Sure, I could make a 40 mile scale model of the solar system, but I have to ask, why?
Actually, you can't. At least you couldn't up until now.
You have access to the materials, you have the know-how and you could likely find the space. What's holding you back? You don't have the motivation. Without the desire to do it, you can't.
Not "can but don't want to." "Can't."
It's a safe bet that my post is not going to make you say, "Well I'll show him!" so even after reading this, you still can't.
No offense intended. I can't do it either. Just pointing out that drive or ambition is a necessary part of the equation for actually doing things.
Back in the 1960s an eighth grade science teacher led a class project whereby they built a 4-bit CPU using 24-volt relays for logic, light bulbs for output and contact switches for input. He wrote a small book about it with complete plans, which I borrowed from the local library in the 1970s.
A Google search turned up a 1936 Bell Relay Computer and 3 gazillion "frame relay" or "relay board" hits, but not this book. Sigh.
you know, cutting out pictures of chips and gluing them onto a piece of paper really isnt the same thing.
Maybe not in your little corner of the universe, but here in Paperville, the kids at the local collage use this technique for all their class projects.
We think that a strong background in the paste-and-paper culture gives our youth a healthy respect for those ideals that make our society strong. Our crime rate is the lowest in the nation and we haven't had a running-with-scissors incident in years, thankyewverymuch.
"The SCO trademark is clearly a depiction of a planet with a single red continent and a blue Mickey-Mouse-shaped ocean," charged Jimminy Cricket at a press conference late Friday.
"Uuuuhhh, yup! Looks like Mickey t' me," added Goofey. "At least ya caught his good side, hyuck."
Mickey, the ever-cheerful Mouse was not offended, however, and offered a concilliatory, "Ah shucks, guys, why can't we all just get along?"
See, that's where that whole sticky issue of "fair use" comes in.
If I recite the words to a song to you (the whole song), is that fair use? I'd say so. If your ISP recites your copyrighted name/address to someone, is that fair use?
If so many people insist on their right to freely copy/trade music, maybe it's time that Congress should re-think the entire situation. We tried prohibition, but people wanted their alcohol back and they got it. We tried locking up music and now people want free music. Maybe Congress should give it to them.
Stop laughing. Yes, you! I'm serious.
What was music like before recordings? People wrote songs, to be sure. Other people published the sheet music under copyright. People played the music and sang the music. Some bought the sheet music, others played by ear and remembered the words. The people who wrote the music didn't get rich, but some of the publishers did. (Sound familiar?)
So if Congress says, "Copy away!" and the recording industry dries up and blows away: Will there still be music? Yes. Recorded music? Maybe. Will the people who write the music starve? No. (They'll keep their day jobs.) Will the publishers starve? Not if they can be retrained as burger flippers. [Joke!] Will there still be professional performers? Yes. Will you or your kids learn to play an instrument and sing? Quite likely. Will you enjoy getting together with friends and neighbors for a "Music Night" every week? Probably more than you enjoy sitting alone in your room wearing headphones.
How is this a bad thing? Think about it with an open mind and see where it leads.
Uh, yeah. So, how does the student have the calc book, university physics book, CRC Handbook, and lab manual open on their desk at the same time, available for *instant* cross referencing?
I sit in front on one screen all day with many windows open - email, several technical manuals, two or three TN3270 sessions, UltraEdit (with several files open) and of course, Slashdot. I bounce back and forth without losing my train of thought. I don't see how this would be a problem for a mind that's much younger and more nimble than mine.
Yeah, not being able to keep the ebooks for reference would be a show-stopper for college students, but for high school, who cares?
I personally won't buy ebooks as long as DRM is involved, but if my high school texts had been issued as ebooks, that would have been great.
There are different kinds of books. They have different requirements.
Fiction -.txt or.rtf is fine. Many of the people who refuse to consider ebooks are referring to reading fiction titles. The technical aspects of an ebook interfere with their aesthetic enjoyment of the story. As my wife would say, "It's not what I'm used to." To make fiction viable as an ebook you'd have to get the device down to a bare minimun of size and complexity.
Textbooks - having only one physical ebook with all your textbooks loaded would be very handy. Pictures and graphics are required. Some net-content linking might be helpful if you include wireless support. Students would tolerate a larger device and more complex operation than fiction readers.
Reference books - sound and video would be appropriate, as well as linking to other content.
A Slashdot post is not the place to do an exhaustive discussion of the subject and I'm no expert, so you can take this idea wherever you wish.
IANAL but in general, if you are on someone's private property and they ask you to leave and you don't, you are trespassing. If they have posted "No Trespassing" signs, then they've already asked you to leave.
I've heard that in Ohio, you have to tell the person to leave in front of a cop before he'll do anything about it, though. And in Ohio it's a criminal thing - third degree misdemeanor, I think, which is just above a speeding ticket.
That's for simple trespass - just being there. If you trespass -and- cause mischief or even slight damage, the property owner can press charges even if you leave when told to do so.
I've heard that throwing unwanted advertising "newspapers" onto private property constitutes "criminal trespass" but that's the only context in which I've heard the phrase used.
And no, she's not that old... in her 50s I believe.
Bless you, my son!
I walked into a sewing store about seven years ago to pick up a light bulb for my wife's machine. There was a group of five or six ladies (in their thirties or forties) sitting around discussing PC software for their sewing machines.
While waiting for the sales person, I listened in. They were discussing the merits of various apps and their ease of use. Surprisingly, there was no PC-vs-Mac talk. It was all PCs.
A couple months ago my neighbor's hard drive died. She called me up, frantic, hoping I could retrieve her cross-stitch patterns. I could not, but now I'll have to tell her about this cool file-sharing Internet thingy. Maybe she can get them back, after all.;)
Don't think of P2P as piracy - it's just off-site distributed data backup.
If you look in a cupboard in the U.S. you are likely to find... CUPS! Cupboards are found in kitchens. Those same structures, when installed in other rooms, are called cabinets.
I keep my bacon and eggs in the fridge (short for "Fridgidaire" [sp?]) so they stay cold.
Slashdot Mirror
"Squeeky" Fromme's gun went, "Click!" The guy who shot Brady (no, the other one - think "Brady Bill", not the "Brady Bunch") failed to kill the Prez.
Yeah, Sirhan-Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy, but he wasn't officially the Prez at the time.Base Log Entry
Wow! So this guy Anderson invented the blog!
Government cover-ups are typically perpetrated to hide misfeasance. In other words, somebody screws up and hides the evidence.
The Lee Harvey Oswald story was such a cover-up. It's complicated by the fact that the cover-up occurred at two levels. Kennedy got shot. Those who should have been protecting him screwed up. That was the first issue. The second theory was that when they finally realized what had happened, the higher-ups thought that telling the American public that Castro had put out a hit contract on Kennedy would cause everyone to demand a war with Cuba. This would likely draw in the USSR and lead to WW-III. But I think their real fear was that the public would demand their regignations because they couldn't control "the Mob". So they went along with the Oswald lie. Now the top levels of government have lied to the people and they have to cover that up, as well.It was all a basic cover-your-ass operation. They found one simplistic cover story with only a few holes in it and tried their best to make it stick. Anyone who questioned it was dismissed as unpatriotic, a tactic that still works today.
As the parent post states, Roswell was probably not about aliens any more than Oswald was really about WW-III. It was more likely about somebody mis-reporting a weather balloon downing as a UFO crash and his C.O. didn't want to look like a fool to his superiors.A 35-year-old with five years experience can usually command a better position (with the right company) than a 25-year-old with five years experience, though.
It's a little different for a woman of course. There are all those carreer vs. family issues. (Are HR people still allowed to ask a woman if she's been "fixed"? I know it sounds crude, but they used to do that.)My previous company had me cross-train as a Windows NT MCSE just before they riffed me. A 50-something MCSE with one year of experience is a bit of a joke, I found. (Not just in Slashdot-land, but in the real world, too!)
All of the web developers here are well under thirty, so your skill set seems to determine how your age is perceived. Java seems to be a "young person's" language.I tried to post a comment to a cnn.com story using my Slashdot ID, but they said I was too old.
And if you wanna submit a story there, you have to belong to some special Java class called "reporter", or something, and you have to submit it in some special programming language called Journalism.Hello, AARP.com? Are you guys interested in me?
Back in my day I had to watch Beavis and Butthead, on a 19-inch TV with no Cable and a leaky microwave on the other side of the wall.
And I laughed.
Did know that you can actually swap your parents one-for-the-other by XORing them together three times?
God! Was my father pissed!Actually, you can't. At least you couldn't up until now.
You have access to the materials, you have the know-how and you could likely find the space. What's holding you back? You don't have the motivation. Without the desire to do it, you can't.
Not "can but don't want to." "Can't."
It's a safe bet that my post is not going to make you say, "Well I'll show him!" so even after reading this, you still can't.No offense intended. I can't do it either. Just pointing out that drive or ambition is a necessary part of the equation for actually doing things.
At med schools they get a special course in "Look 'em in the eye and tell 'em they're gonna die."
Do physicists get that? Nooo. All they learn is to push the big red button and calculate the effective kill radius.Not that knowing the effective kill radius is unimportant, mind you...
A Google search turned up a 1936 Bell Relay Computer and 3 gazillion "frame relay" or "relay board" hits, but not this book. Sigh.
Maybe not in your little corner of the universe, but here in Paperville, the kids at the local collage use this technique for all their class projects.
We think that a strong background in the paste-and-paper culture gives our youth a healthy respect for those ideals that make our society strong. Our crime rate is the lowest in the nation and we haven't had a running-with-scissors incident in years, thankyewverymuch."The SCO trademark is clearly a depiction of a planet with a single red continent and a blue Mickey-Mouse-shaped ocean," charged Jimminy Cricket at a press conference late Friday.
"Uuuuhhh, yup! Looks like Mickey t' me," added Goofey. "At least ya caught his good side, hyuck."Mickey, the ever-cheerful Mouse was not offended, however, and offered a concilliatory, "Ah shucks, guys, why can't we all just get along?"
What about the 80-year-old widows on fixed incomes whose meager lives revolve around TV?
Yeah, just install a trial copy of SQL-2000, enable port 1434 through your firewall, and the binary version will find you.
If I recite the words to a song to you (the whole song), is that fair use? I'd say so. If your ISP recites your copyrighted name/address to someone, is that fair use?
Stop laughing. Yes, you! I'm serious.
What was music like before recordings? People wrote songs, to be sure. Other people published the sheet music under copyright. People played the music and sang the music. Some bought the sheet music, others played by ear and remembered the words. The people who wrote the music didn't get rich, but some of the publishers did. (Sound familiar?)So if Congress says, "Copy away!" and the recording industry dries up and blows away:
How is this a bad thing? Think about it with an open mind and see where it leads.Will there still be music? Yes.
Recorded music? Maybe.
Will the people who write the music starve? No. (They'll keep their day jobs.)
Will the publishers starve? Not if they can be retrained as burger flippers. [Joke!]
Will there still be professional performers? Yes.
Will you or your kids learn to play an instrument and sing? Quite likely.
Will you enjoy getting together with friends and neighbors for a "Music Night" every week? Probably more than you enjoy sitting alone in your room wearing headphones.
I sit in front on one screen all day with many windows open - email, several technical manuals, two or three TN3270 sessions, UltraEdit (with several files open) and of course, Slashdot. I bounce back and forth without losing my train of thought. I don't see how this would be a problem for a mind that's much younger and more nimble than mine.
Yeah, not being able to keep the ebooks for reference would be a show-stopper for college students, but for high school, who cares?
I personally won't buy ebooks as long as DRM is involved, but if my high school texts had been issued as ebooks, that would have been great.- his lips move.
Fiction - .txt or .rtf is fine. Many of the people who refuse to consider ebooks are referring to reading fiction titles. The technical aspects of an ebook interfere with their aesthetic enjoyment of the story. As my wife would say, "It's not what I'm used to." To make fiction viable as an ebook you'd have to get the device down to a bare minimun of size and complexity.
Textbooks - having only one physical ebook with all your textbooks loaded would be very handy. Pictures and graphics are required. Some net-content linking might be helpful if you include wireless support. Students would tolerate a larger device and more complex operation than fiction readers.Reference books - sound and video would be appropriate, as well as linking to other content.
A Slashdot post is not the place to do an exhaustive discussion of the subject and I'm no expert, so you can take this idea wherever you wish.I've heard that in Ohio, you have to tell the person to leave in front of a cop before he'll do anything about it, though. And in Ohio it's a criminal thing - third degree misdemeanor, I think, which is just above a speeding ticket.
That's for simple trespass - just being there. If you trespass -and- cause mischief or even slight damage, the property owner can press charges even if you leave when told to do so.I've heard that throwing unwanted advertising "newspapers" onto private property constitutes "criminal trespass" but that's the only context in which I've heard the phrase used.
Bless you, my son!
I walked into a sewing store about seven years ago to pick up a light bulb for my wife's machine. There was a group of five or six ladies (in their thirties or forties) sitting around discussing PC software for their sewing machines.While waiting for the sales person, I listened in. They were discussing the merits of various apps and their ease of use. Surprisingly, there was no PC-vs-Mac talk. It was all PCs.
A couple months ago my neighbor's hard drive died. She called me up, frantic, hoping I could retrieve her cross-stitch patterns. I could not, but now I'll have to tell her about this cool file-sharing Internet thingy. Maybe she can get them back, after all.Don't think of P2P as piracy - it's just off-site distributed data backup.
Yes, but that will require some optional hardware: eye-tracking camera and moisture-sensing drool-cup attachment.
"Reports" would have been soooo misleading.
I keep my bacon and eggs in the fridge (short for "Fridgidaire" [sp?]) so they stay cold.