I laways laugh at stuff like this. If a civilization was advanced enough to move betwen the stars it most certianly would have found a faster mode of communication between the stars first. Think about it, you could always communicate faster betwen two distances than you could walk (even if it meant setting up a set of twoers and hollering between them or looking at flags.) Does it not also follow that long before we ar ever able to travel faster than the speed of light, we will have found a way to coommincate faster than the speed of light? And judging how fast science is accelerating, how long before we find such a way to communicate. We are all listeninging to the universe and thinking its lifeless cause we can't hear any radio signals, a mode of communication that any given civilization might only use for say 500 years or so in its existance. Thinking the universe is lifeless cause we aren't hearing radio signals is like thinking we are the only ones left alive on earth cause we aren't recieving telegraphs anymore.
How about the money they waste on:
1. Scare Tactics - what the hell does this have to do with sci-fi?
2. Tremors - the first movie rocked, the second movie was alright, the third movie blew, and the series just plain sucks.
3. John Edward - the cheesiest con artist I have seen since... I can't remember the last time I have seen a cheesier con artist.
4. The Incredible Hulk - Get a clue, this show is 99% bruce banner acting like a moronic ashat and 1% turning green and beating the shit out of people in slow motion. This is some of the worst scifi I have ever seen.
5. Taken - If I have to watch this series again, I'm going to be sick. Okay, a few episodes were alright but most of it explored the deepest relams of utter suckage.
Come on, we all know that if we are exposed to radioactive waste or tocxic substances, it will result in us gaining superhuman powers like spiderman, the fantastic four, or the toxic crusaders (I still remember the theme to it)! Only bad guys like that dude on Robocop or eggs in frying pans get adversly affected by toxic substances. I can't find the web site but someone wanted to set up a superhero camp as a joke where you could become a superhero by being exposed to toxic waste; the logic being you would gain superhuman powers and hence cool names like dying-of-cancer-man and oh-the-burning-pain-man.
Its like what Dave Barry said: The idea of nuclear proliferation scares me. Miami has a habit of firing guns into the air on new years eve. I dread the day one of them goes into his closet, pulls out his nuclear weapons, and announces to his wife "just think of the sound THIS will make when I set this sucker off!"
are not afraid to over clock and overheat thier computers without burning them out, howlong do you think it will be before the good ole' boys in the yukon decide to overclock there nuclear reactor? I can just see it now:
"We're getting power shortages, turn that sucker up."
"Dude, is a rerun of techtv really worth a meltdown?"
And if its the size of a spruce tree, what prevents Al Queda from hijacking to turn it into a dirty bomb? I can see it now: we must stop the evil ones, the christmas tree killers.
I hardly ever install patches. I run Windows ME and it makes more sense for me to just let the thing sit and wait till it gets so screwed over that I need to completely reinstall. Then I do so and repatch and repeat the process. I just keep a firewall andnorton around to make sure I don't get any already know viruses, etc but beyond that patching isn;t going to really help taht much, especially since WinME crashes even quicker with patches than it does if I just leave it alone.
Actually, assuming they are not voting for independents, voting by looking at only one issue is unfortunately just as good as examing all the issues. The reason for this is, in case you haven't looked already, the republicans and democrats largely run completely on party stances on issues. So by picking the stance on one issue, you are pretty much picking the party line. Its like choosing a candiate just by picking a party, though it doesn't work on the local level, on the state and federal level you can pretty much write up a canidates entire viewpoint on a whole slew of issues just by knowing which party they are. Oddly, enough if you support the canidates view on one issue, your extremely likely to support the canidate on the other issues as well, and even if you don't most people still face the problem of republican or democrat, not whose is the best person for the job. You want to see the real scary voters, talk to the people who voted for Clinton just because they thought he was "sexy". When people start voting merely on the looks of a canidate like they would on their favorite pop star, you know a democracy is in trouble.
The way things are going with free trade expanding, I am soon going to get a little hardship now trying to make ends meat on a minimum wage job that requires a masters degree and get a lot of hardship later whee they are forced to repeal the minimum wage law so we can compete against people working for a dime a day. Free trade is good but only a level playing field where everyone plays by the same rules. That isn't the case and so something has to happen to balance it out. I cannot live on $1000 a year and the countries were our jobs are being outsourced to don't allow in forieng workers. The pharoahs have returned: bow down before Emporer Gates!
I remember back in 95 hearing one of my teachers go on and on about how great free trade is going to be,how China would soon be this open and free democracy, how isreal and palestine finally be at peace, and we would live in an age of true world peace. Boy, was he wrong.
Not to mention all those people who increased their skill set to the point where they are now no longer employable. They have masters degrees in a half dozen things and no wants to pay them when they can hire a nameless student who just got out who can do only the job they want.
They'll fall in line eventually to what the people want. The problem is they think it will be the other way around, the public will fall in line with what they say. If the politicians we elect keep on trying to force these policies down our throats, maybe we should just start sending them history books on the french revolution with a note attached to the cover saying: "If you keep it up, this is your future." When the congressional offices start overflowing with copies of them, I think they'll get the message.
Speaking of outsourcing, the ppl who say 'expand your skill set if you want to stay competitive' always amuse/horrify me. They neglect to realize that they are not the only ones adding to their skill set, the corporations are trying to move as much of their workforce oversees to cheap labor as they can so they too are increasing the skill set of their oversees workers. Right now, a few people coming off the relaitive gold rush of the dot coms have enough cash to continue to constantly retrain themsleves to learn more and more but eventually the corporations with their near infinite resources will out pace them. They will drop our pay and increase our hours making the work of learning new skills almost impossible all the time increasing the training of their oversees people. How long do you think you can continue to increase your skill set until it is either no longer enough to stay competitive or the field reaches the point where your job becuase obselete cause there is no more valuable skills in that area to learn (for example, compiler developement.) A lot of people are contenting themsleves with the opium of job security, that certianly there job won't go overseas - they can always retrain or increase their skill set. It isn't going to go on forever; reality is catching up and this treaty and the scenario you depict may just be the wake up call. Unfortunitly, I also agree that in 10-20 years ppl will be jumping ship but it will be too late. I think the proverbially titanic is already doomed and the only thing is to get the hell off the boat while there are still life boats to be had. For those who are still into free trade, this is your wake up call right here.
Some other minor notes, how long before our international business start getting taken over by all the overseas talent we are cultivating while not doing the same abroad? I'm going to laugh my ass off when all these overpayed ceos start getting canned for ceos that will accept a lot less and who are more in tune with their employees who will be all forieng outsourced workers. People are going on about how we are moving to a service economy. They neglected to tell us those services were all fastfood and Janitor services - service jobs we all seem intent on setting up robots to do. We're screwed. The manufacturing jobs disappeared and we didn't miss them cause they weren't our jobs. Our newly graduated students jobs disappeared and we told them to retrain even though they were in hopelessly in debt that not even bankruptcy will avoid. When your job disappears I hope you remmeber that 'increase you skill set' bullshit. And has anyone ever thought about the section of our economy that jsut isn't capable of doing these great new jobs that have replaced all the lower ones. Not everyone can be a manager. Not everyone can be a doctor. How many people can only handle a manufacturing job and are now forced to do a dead end abysmal pay job since the job sector they used to work for is now in mexico and the jobs that free trade promised them are ones they just can't do? It's nice to say increase your skill set and that free trade is only removing the lower end jobs to allow people to do higher ones, but the fact is that there are a lot of people that just cant do those white collar jobs and are now forced to work at even lower jobs cause there manufacturing ones disappeared. And it is quickly becoming apparent that removing low end jobs doesn't mean that we can all now not waste time with them and instead go on to higher jobs and instead means you will lose your job and no upper levels jobs will open for you. Simply put, free trade means an ever increasing section of our population is becoming unemployeed or underemployeed, our standard of living is dropping, and all those people who swore free trade was going to save us all are now abandoing our country for tax shelters while paying off our politicians and screwing over the public.
the modern culture is frighteningly similiar to the culture depicted in Farenheit 451. We have books but not many read them and the ones they do read can't really be called books, they are televsion programs set on paper. The people are empty hollow consumers,deviod of ethics, philosphy, and any connection to the what was really happening around them instead living in a fantasy land blind. I think montag stated it best "You're not really living, you're just killing time!"
It will create one huge Export Processing Zone all the way from Mexico to the Southern tip of Chile
Yep, the US will be exporting everything: our jobs, our brightest minds, our futures. I agree that these big corporations will get a hefty reward for pillaging the entire 3rd world but the avergae american citizen will never see a dime of it.
"only if people actually GET OFF THEIR ASSES"
Ah shit, the movement has already failed before it even began.
"will we stand up and be counted?"
I don't think you understand. This is slashdot. As internet addicted comp sci/engineers We have made it a career to sit on our asses and do nothing, in fact we could make dilbert's Wally look like an ethuisiastic go getter we're so damn lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
I laways laugh at stuff like this. If a civilization was advanced enough to move betwen the stars it most certianly would have found a faster mode of communication between the stars first. Think about it, you could always communicate faster betwen two distances than you could walk (even if it meant setting up a set of twoers and hollering between them or looking at flags.) Does it not also follow that long before we ar ever able to travel faster than the speed of light, we will have found a way to coommincate faster than the speed of light? And judging how fast science is accelerating, how long before we find such a way to communicate. We are all listeninging to the universe and thinking its lifeless cause we can't hear any radio signals, a mode of communication that any given civilization might only use for say 500 years or so in its existance. Thinking the universe is lifeless cause we aren't hearing radio signals is like thinking we are the only ones left alive on earth cause we aren't recieving telegraphs anymore.
What stops the governemnt from just making stuff up? "Sure, we'll release douments to you." "Hey, why are they all dated yesterday?"
How about the money they waste on:
1. Scare Tactics - what the hell does this have to do with sci-fi?
2. Tremors - the first movie rocked, the second movie was alright, the third movie blew, and the series just plain sucks.
3. John Edward - the cheesiest con artist I have seen since... I can't remember the last time I have seen a cheesier con artist.
4. The Incredible Hulk - Get a clue, this show is 99% bruce banner acting like a moronic ashat and 1% turning green and beating the shit out of people in slow motion. This is some of the worst scifi I have ever seen.
5. Taken - If I have to watch this series again, I'm going to be sick. Okay, a few episodes were alright but most of it explored the deepest relams of utter suckage.
They have money to blow on stupid shit like this and yet they didn't have enough to keep Farscape going?
How about doing that with a REAL car?
Come on, we all know that if we are exposed to radioactive waste or tocxic substances, it will result in us gaining superhuman powers like spiderman, the fantastic four, or the toxic crusaders (I still remember the theme to it)! Only bad guys like that dude on Robocop or eggs in frying pans get adversly affected by toxic substances. I can't find the web site but someone wanted to set up a superhero camp as a joke where you could become a superhero by being exposed to toxic waste; the logic being you would gain superhuman powers and hence cool names like dying-of-cancer-man and oh-the-burning-pain-man.
Its like what Dave Barry said: The idea of nuclear proliferation scares me. Miami has a habit of firing guns into the air on new years eve. I dread the day one of them goes into his closet, pulls out his nuclear weapons, and announces to his wife "just think of the sound THIS will make when I set this sucker off!"
are not afraid to over clock and overheat thier computers without burning them out, howlong do you think it will be before the good ole' boys in the yukon decide to overclock there nuclear reactor? I can just see it now:
"We're getting power shortages, turn that sucker up."
"Dude, is a rerun of techtv really worth a meltdown?"
And if its the size of a spruce tree, what prevents Al Queda from hijacking to turn it into a dirty bomb? I can see it now: we must stop the evil ones, the christmas tree killers.
I hardly ever install patches. I run Windows ME and it makes more sense for me to just let the thing sit and wait till it gets so screwed over that I need to completely reinstall. Then I do so and repatch and repeat the process. I just keep a firewall andnorton around to make sure I don't get any already know viruses, etc but beyond that patching isn;t going to really help taht much, especially since WinME crashes even quicker with patches than it does if I just leave it alone.
What about Windows 3.1? I saw that in a bargain bin earlier this year!
Actually, assuming they are not voting for independents, voting by looking at only one issue is unfortunately just as good as examing all the issues. The reason for this is, in case you haven't looked already, the republicans and democrats largely run completely on party stances on issues. So by picking the stance on one issue, you are pretty much picking the party line. Its like choosing a candiate just by picking a party, though it doesn't work on the local level, on the state and federal level you can pretty much write up a canidates entire viewpoint on a whole slew of issues just by knowing which party they are. Oddly, enough if you support the canidates view on one issue, your extremely likely to support the canidate on the other issues as well, and even if you don't most people still face the problem of republican or democrat, not whose is the best person for the job. You want to see the real scary voters, talk to the people who voted for Clinton just because they thought he was "sexy". When people start voting merely on the looks of a canidate like they would on their favorite pop star, you know a democracy is in trouble.
Yet another group owned by the experts!
The way things are going with free trade expanding, I am soon going to get a little hardship now trying to make ends meat on a minimum wage job that requires a masters degree and get a lot of hardship later whee they are forced to repeal the minimum wage law so we can compete against people working for a dime a day. Free trade is good but only a level playing field where everyone plays by the same rules. That isn't the case and so something has to happen to balance it out. I cannot live on $1000 a year and the countries were our jobs are being outsourced to don't allow in forieng workers. The pharoahs have returned: bow down before Emporer Gates!
I remember back in 95 hearing one of my teachers go on and on about how great free trade is going to be,how China would soon be this open and free democracy, how isreal and palestine finally be at peace, and we would live in an age of true world peace. Boy, was he wrong.
Not to mention all those people who increased their skill set to the point where they are now no longer employable. They have masters degrees in a half dozen things and no wants to pay them when they can hire a nameless student who just got out who can do only the job they want.
while not doing the same abroad?
Opps, I mean here. My bad.
They'll fall in line eventually to what the people want. The problem is they think it will be the other way around, the public will fall in line with what they say. If the politicians we elect keep on trying to force these policies down our throats, maybe we should just start sending them history books on the french revolution with a note attached to the cover saying: "If you keep it up, this is your future." When the congressional offices start overflowing with copies of them, I think they'll get the message.
Speaking of outsourcing, the ppl who say 'expand your skill set if you want to stay competitive' always amuse/horrify me. They neglect to realize that they are not the only ones adding to their skill set, the corporations are trying to move as much of their workforce oversees to cheap labor as they can so they too are increasing the skill set of their oversees workers. Right now, a few people coming off the relaitive gold rush of the dot coms have enough cash to continue to constantly retrain themsleves to learn more and more but eventually the corporations with their near infinite resources will out pace them. They will drop our pay and increase our hours making the work of learning new skills almost impossible all the time increasing the training of their oversees people. How long do you think you can continue to increase your skill set until it is either no longer enough to stay competitive or the field reaches the point where your job becuase obselete cause there is no more valuable skills in that area to learn (for example, compiler developement.) A lot of people are contenting themsleves with the opium of job security, that certianly there job won't go overseas - they can always retrain or increase their skill set. It isn't going to go on forever; reality is catching up and this treaty and the scenario you depict may just be the wake up call. Unfortunitly, I also agree that in 10-20 years ppl will be jumping ship but it will be too late. I think the proverbially titanic is already doomed and the only thing is to get the hell off the boat while there are still life boats to be had. For those who are still into free trade, this is your wake up call right here.
Some other minor notes, how long before our international business start getting taken over by all the overseas talent we are cultivating while not doing the same abroad? I'm going to laugh my ass off when all these overpayed ceos start getting canned for ceos that will accept a lot less and who are more in tune with their employees who will be all forieng outsourced workers. People are going on about how we are moving to a service economy. They neglected to tell us those services were all fastfood and Janitor services - service jobs we all seem intent on setting up robots to do. We're screwed. The manufacturing jobs disappeared and we didn't miss them cause they weren't our jobs. Our newly graduated students jobs disappeared and we told them to retrain even though they were in hopelessly in debt that not even bankruptcy will avoid. When your job disappears I hope you remmeber that 'increase you skill set' bullshit. And has anyone ever thought about the section of our economy that jsut isn't capable of doing these great new jobs that have replaced all the lower ones. Not everyone can be a manager. Not everyone can be a doctor. How many people can only handle a manufacturing job and are now forced to do a dead end abysmal pay job since the job sector they used to work for is now in mexico and the jobs that free trade promised them are ones they just can't do? It's nice to say increase your skill set and that free trade is only removing the lower end jobs to allow people to do higher ones, but the fact is that there are a lot of people that just cant do those white collar jobs and are now forced to work at even lower jobs cause there manufacturing ones disappeared. And it is quickly becoming apparent that removing low end jobs doesn't mean that we can all now not waste time with them and instead go on to higher jobs and instead means you will lose your job and no upper levels jobs will open for you. Simply put, free trade means an ever increasing section of our population is becoming unemployeed or underemployeed, our standard of living is dropping, and all those people who swore free trade was going to save us all are now abandoing our country for tax shelters while paying off our politicians and screwing over the public.
the modern culture is frighteningly similiar to the culture depicted in Farenheit 451. We have books but not many read them and the ones they do read can't really be called books, they are televsion programs set on paper. The people are empty hollow consumers,deviod of ethics, philosphy, and any connection to the what was really happening around them instead living in a fantasy land blind. I think montag stated it best "You're not really living, you're just killing time!"
It will create one huge Export Processing Zone all the way from Mexico to the Southern tip of Chile
Yep, the US will be exporting everything: our jobs, our brightest minds, our futures. I agree that these big corporations will get a hefty reward for pillaging the entire 3rd world but the avergae american citizen will never see a dime of it.
"only if people actually GET OFF THEIR ASSES"
Ah shit, the movement has already failed before it even began.
"will we stand up and be counted?"
I don't think you understand. This is slashdot. As internet addicted comp sci/engineers We have made it a career to sit on our asses and do nothing, in fact we could make dilbert's Wally look like an ethuisiastic go getter we're so damn lazy.
"Support non-violence or we'll kill ya!"
It's prohabition all over again.
Which following the administrations current policies will be carried out as "Take a muslim out (as in eliminate) every week."
No, send it the people pulling the president's strings. But then again, he doesn't care and neither will they.
Damn Insert button.