Heh. No offense intended there. I love the English major friends I made in college. They're some of the most awesome geeks I know, and I happened to keep in touch with more of them than the CompSci crowd to which I belonged.
So while I'm sure they're capable, none of them cared to move into technology. That makes the intentional hiring of your rare breed an exercise in futility. An expensive one too, if you need a PhD to get the desired quality.
so unless someone much better than myself, and much braver than myself, will step up... out of the woodwork to fix the broken system,
Check out Buddy Roemer- he's running in the Republican* primary and limiting the contributions he accepts to $100 per human. Brave enough for you?
Then join Rootstrikers(.org), started by Lawrence Lessig, and read his recently released "Republic Lost" which address this issue with the goal of fixing the problem.
As for "millions of others", You have a solution now. Grok it and pass it along., or give me a better one.
(*don't worry- he's not a fanatical old fart who misses the days before toilet paper. He's quite moderate and reasonable. If Republican party members weren't psychotic and corrupt politicians and truly wanted to replace Obama, this would be the guy they'd send.)
That may be good criteria in a writing a professional review for a magazine. I don't particularly care for those. "Real" critics tend to overcompensate- either being too nice to maintain access, or being a dick to make people think they're superior and deserve the attention.
Since I'm actually going to use the product/service, I'm more interested in the personal experiences of true peers. If many other people think your product is worthless, that can potentially be an invaluable piece of information to consider before I spend my money ("real" critics aren't actually making a cost-benefit decision).
You don't deserve praise. You earn it. Want to avoid bad reviews? Don't give people serious issues to complain about. That way it's evident they aren't worth listening to because they are only posting negatively to vent after a bad day. That little hyperbole you provided? Yeah, that's very obvious and I ignore it. You should too. If you find that kind of "bad mouthing" disturbing you're not equipped for business, or for that matter an adult in modern society.
Completely agree. Opt-out was your choice as a business, and your fault if it has negative consequences. Don't blame us "abusive" customers who really don't understand or care if your server or feelings are hurt. We've got our own interests to look after and we can throw around the word "abusive" just as easily.
Fact of the matter is that from a technical standpoint hitting the "Spam" button is far easier than unsubscribing. Safer too if I don't trust you'll actually unsubscribe me, or if someone's the type who is paranoid about the data you collect on them. Example? NewEgg unsubscribe links contain something like this: "?gLmkQSSTfd6rgbv%1DvG4GEE14GGy1xEf6beF3wfVaVUCVGf6be552W0G11Vfd6zdbv%5BvG4BOO14GGy1xEf63fQ8wfVXLX" - that's way more data than just the required email address and confirmation code.
Gmail implemented a useful unsubscription feature over two years ago. Sadly, not many businesses take advantage of it. Another option - use a professional mail service so you don't have to worry about a handful of people who find the "spam" button more convenient than searching for a URL in your message.
The AOL mention was interesting, but that's where the informative aspect of the post stopped. If nothing else, how's the division between paying/non-paying when it comes to population segmentation? Wealthy vs. poor nations? Parents vs. Grandparents? Male/female? That's what marketing does- it helps you determine who your paying customers will be so that you can best attract them. If you want to dissuade others, that's a perfectly-good calculated risk to take as well.
Batshit crazy would be launching a nuclear attack just across your border. Those things are not designed to be used on small neighboring countries. If they hit Seoul, Pyonyang will suffer the effects. Launch anywhere near the coast (remember- it's called the "Korean peninsula" because it's all coastal) and you're poisoning a major aspect of your own food supply. Even if they had launch capability (they still don't), those things might be nice for negotiating or political posturing (mostly by US Republican presidential candidates), but strategically they're worse than useless- they've been a huge liability.
The more pressing issue is that NK is far more militarized from a conventional standpoint, with nearly as many active military personnel as the US. There's a reason the US needs to back SK- they couldn't survive an invasion by NK on their own. And the NK regime hasn't yet been crazy enough to play chicken with the US.
It does mean stop. You always have to stop. As do the people in lanes going straight or turning left who are the primary target for red lights.
But the people of a good number of states think it's silly to force you and another few cars behind you to wait for green if it's perfectly safe for you to make a right-hand turn. (perhaps assuming obedience to "perfectly safe" is a flaw, but that's what the law requires and you will be stopped by the police when caught). Other states (and New York City) agree with you and forbid the right on red. And even in states permitting it, many intersections will be designated as exceptions, which is determined on a case-by-case basis.
As for flashing red/amber- those confuse the hell out of people here and are not as effective as red/green in our busy intersections. We'd sooner not put any light and stick to Stop signs.
What on Earth are you talking about? The Khans built a very impressive civilization with those taxes. They may not have been what we today call "civil", but neither were the Romans who couldn't manage the empire we modeled our nation after without their gladiators and slaves.
Besides the civil/civilization mix-up, you're also confused about the difference between taxation in general and the income tax as one of the many methods of collecting taxes. We've always had taxes. Remember that little Tea Party thing? That was about taxes collected to fund the British Empire. Now if you have a better way of building a civilization without the use of funds collected from private citizens or organizations, by all means, we're waiting.
Didn't we just have a story about how Ron Paul's supporters were the same kind of blind followers as Republicans and Democrats? Thanks for the wonderful example.
PS- be careful throwing that 'meme' word around as an insult when that's all you have to bring to a conversation.
Perhaps, but reality necessitates that you'd have to deploy them everywhere before the psychological effect widely sunk in yielded results.
It's hard enough to teach your local population on which day to take out their trash during a holiday week. It's damn near impossible to train out-of-staters and tourists that they can or can't turn on red.
And we haven't even gotten to the matter of this being pretty obvious case of 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Hell, the danger to bystanders and the traffic created by these could qualify as collective punishment under the Geneva convention. It might be of interest to some folks to see on the evening news, but I wouldn't want to be within ten miles of one of these things going off.
Nah. That'd cause a car to stop dead in the middle of the intersection and make a bloody mess of traffic.
Instead, you want a smart deployment of spikes which puncture only a single tire. More than enough to seriously piss off a guy running the light, while still letting him limp out of the way to the shoulder.
Whose duty was it to correctly classify documents?
Simple answer: nobody's. There isn't a guy in every military office going over every piece of paper and marking it with the absolute minimally-necessary classification. That would be s a terrible waste of time and money.
Documents are classified based on their pedigree, as well as their content. Was it generated on SIPR? Automatically secret. A memo written by a diplomat intended for use internally within the State department? Also secret. Plus, it's cheaper to err on the side of caution- you can always declassify a document later.
This isn't to say that's the way it should be in the future, but that's how processes work. The same thing happens in businesses. If you want to change the current status quo, and pay higher taxes so that government can waste money to share more generally useless information with a public which has no interest in that information when it's not related to a scandal, go right ahead.
It seems you simply can't understand and accept how fortunate you are compared to others, insisting instead that you're just better than them. Typical aristocratic attitude. Have a nice life, try not to step on too many people while enjoying that ignorance.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand and my argument against the libertarian fantasy? You're not the topic at hand. Neither am I- I'm just an example of one less fortunate than you.
Can't handle the truth so you change the subject instead?
And nice misdirect/delusion there, claiming all credit for your education on "your investment" and ignoring the aid you got from your fellow taxpayers. Oh- but that's what everyone gets? You'd never have gotten your education either if Ron Paul ran things.
Government can not create wealth, the only thing government can do is distribute the wealth of others. It would be better that the money was not taken from the original earner in the first place.
I couldn't afford college. I'd never get a private loan - not at a reasonable rate I would go for. So the federal government did two things for me. First, it guaranteed my student loans, even paid the interest on half for a few years. Second, it gave me Pell grants, this "free money" you're bitching about. My state also contributed by letting me attend at half tuition first my local community college at then at the public University.
In the years since I graduated*, I've been bringing in multiple times my non-degree income, and paying orders of magnitude more in federal and state taxes. In five years I've more than paid back in federal and state taxes the above amounts of "free money", and I've never missed a loan payment. That wealth was not created by private business - it was created by government, despite Dr. Paul's protestations. And I've got decades more to work, contribute back, and lessen the "burden" on you. You're welcome!
So that's why the government needs to help people who can't afford college. Because people way smarter than privileged pricks like you have a LOT to contribute to society if only given a chance. But hey, don't let reality shatter that pink fantasy world you Ron Paul cultists live in. "Taken by force"- ha! What a bunch of smug, selfish sods you lot are.
* in three years while working during all but one semester, so go fuck yourself if you want to complain about "your" money being "wasted". Your problem isn't with us poor kids- it's the rich kids who don't appreciate daddy's money who are inflating demand for education without producing value for society.
Yawn. Got any proof to all these wild accusations? No, of course not. Because it's "hidden better now..."
I think I see the problem. You watch television all day in your mother's basement and don't have friends to help you learn about the way the world actually works.
PS- you kept that rant pretty short. That'll never get you cred with fellow conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, it does look like it. Regardless, it's accurate.
Feel free to try to prove the statement wrong. Show some analyst projections where higher adoption rates were expected, or present some reports where user sentiment is negative overall.
Google Plus users have plenty of evidence suggesting you won't find either. And we don't about all you cynical bastards hanging out here making silly accusations.
Slashdot Mirror
In IT we can have bulletproof defences, but IRL sadly we can't.
You don't sound like you're in IT.
All software is vulnerable- "secure" is just a way of saying "has not been proven insecure yet".
Bravo, Sir!
Heh. No offense intended there. I love the English major friends I made in college. They're some of the most awesome geeks I know, and I happened to keep in touch with more of them than the CompSci crowd to which I belonged.
So while I'm sure they're capable, none of them cared to move into technology. That makes the intentional hiring of your rare breed an exercise in futility. An expensive one too, if you need a PhD to get the desired quality.
Trained them to program? English majors? I'm having flashbacks to yesterday's CodeAcademy story.
so unless someone much better than myself, and much braver than myself, will step up ... out of the woodwork to fix the broken system,
Check out Buddy Roemer- he's running in the Republican* primary and limiting the contributions he accepts to $100 per human. Brave enough for you?
Then join Rootstrikers(.org), started by Lawrence Lessig, and read his recently released "Republic Lost" which address this issue with the goal of fixing the problem.
As for "millions of others", You have a solution now. Grok it and pass it along., or give me a better one.
(*don't worry- he's not a fanatical old fart who misses the days before toilet paper. He's quite moderate and reasonable. If Republican party members weren't psychotic and corrupt politicians and truly wanted to replace Obama, this would be the guy they'd send.)
Comments? What are those?
It's the random fluff you put in your code so you can increase the linecount and show your eight bosses how productive you've been.
That may be good criteria in a writing a professional review for a magazine. I don't particularly care for those. "Real" critics tend to overcompensate- either being too nice to maintain access, or being a dick to make people think they're superior and deserve the attention.
Since I'm actually going to use the product/service, I'm more interested in the personal experiences of true peers. If many other people think your product is worthless, that can potentially be an invaluable piece of information to consider before I spend my money ("real" critics aren't actually making a cost-benefit decision).
You don't deserve praise. You earn it. Want to avoid bad reviews? Don't give people serious issues to complain about. That way it's evident they aren't worth listening to because they are only posting negatively to vent after a bad day. That little hyperbole you provided? Yeah, that's very obvious and I ignore it. You should too. If you find that kind of "bad mouthing" disturbing you're not equipped for business, or for that matter an adult in modern society.
Completely agree. Opt-out was your choice as a business, and your fault if it has negative consequences. Don't blame us "abusive" customers who really don't understand or care if your server or feelings are hurt. We've got our own interests to look after and we can throw around the word "abusive" just as easily.
Fact of the matter is that from a technical standpoint hitting the "Spam" button is far easier than unsubscribing. Safer too if I don't trust you'll actually unsubscribe me, or if someone's the type who is paranoid about the data you collect on them. Example? NewEgg unsubscribe links contain something like this: "?gLmkQSSTfd6rgbv%1DvG4GEE14GGy1xEf6beF3wfVaVUCVGf6be552W0G11Vfd6zdbv%5BvG4BOO14GGy1xEf63fQ8wfVXLX" - that's way more data than just the required email address and confirmation code.
Gmail implemented a useful unsubscription feature over two years ago. Sadly, not many businesses take advantage of it. Another option - use a professional mail service so you don't have to worry about a handful of people who find the "spam" button more convenient than searching for a URL in your message.
Not only do the freeloaders ask for more support than do customers, they bad mouth your product more as well.
Why are you expecting a paying customer to "bad mouth" your product as much or more than someone who properly realizes its lack of value to them?
If you filter out enough potential customers, you'll be left with only the die-hard fans who are easy to please. That seems entirely intuitive to me.
Thank you. Wish I had points, etc...
The AOL mention was interesting, but that's where the informative aspect of the post stopped. If nothing else, how's the division between paying/non-paying when it comes to population segmentation? Wealthy vs. poor nations? Parents vs. Grandparents? Male/female? That's what marketing does- it helps you determine who your paying customers will be so that you can best attract them. If you want to dissuade others, that's a perfectly-good calculated risk to take as well.
Batshit crazy would be launching a nuclear attack just across your border. Those things are not designed to be used on small neighboring countries. If they hit Seoul, Pyonyang will suffer the effects. Launch anywhere near the coast (remember- it's called the "Korean peninsula" because it's all coastal) and you're poisoning a major aspect of your own food supply. Even if they had launch capability (they still don't), those things might be nice for negotiating or political posturing (mostly by US Republican presidential candidates), but strategically they're worse than useless- they've been a huge liability.
The more pressing issue is that NK is far more militarized from a conventional standpoint, with nearly as many active military personnel as the US. There's a reason the US needs to back SK- they couldn't survive an invasion by NK on their own. And the NK regime hasn't yet been crazy enough to play chicken with the US.
With disastrous consequences: Netscape, KDE4, etc. Throwing away a large codebase is stupid.
That depends very much on the quality of the codebase. They don't age nicely like fine wine, you know.
It does mean stop. You always have to stop. As do the people in lanes going straight or turning left who are the primary target for red lights.
But the people of a good number of states think it's silly to force you and another few cars behind you to wait for green if it's perfectly safe for you to make a right-hand turn. (perhaps assuming obedience to "perfectly safe" is a flaw, but that's what the law requires and you will be stopped by the police when caught). Other states (and New York City) agree with you and forbid the right on red. And even in states permitting it, many intersections will be designated as exceptions, which is determined on a case-by-case basis.
As for flashing red/amber- those confuse the hell out of people here and are not as effective as red/green in our busy intersections. We'd sooner not put any light and stick to Stop signs.
What on Earth are you talking about? The Khans built a very impressive civilization with those taxes. They may not have been what we today call "civil", but neither were the Romans who couldn't manage the empire we modeled our nation after without their gladiators and slaves.
Besides the civil/civilization mix-up, you're also confused about the difference between taxation in general and the income tax as one of the many methods of collecting taxes. We've always had taxes. Remember that little Tea Party thing? That was about taxes collected to fund the British Empire. Now if you have a better way of building a civilization without the use of funds collected from private citizens or organizations, by all means, we're waiting.
Didn't we just have a story about how Ron Paul's supporters were the same kind of blind followers as Republicans and Democrats? Thanks for the wonderful example.
PS- be careful throwing that 'meme' word around as an insult when that's all you have to bring to a conversation.
Perhaps, but reality necessitates that you'd have to deploy them everywhere before the psychological effect widely sunk in yielded results.
It's hard enough to teach your local population on which day to take out their trash during a holiday week. It's damn near impossible to train out-of-staters and tourists that they can or can't turn on red.
And we haven't even gotten to the matter of this being pretty obvious case of 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Hell, the danger to bystanders and the traffic created by these could qualify as collective punishment under the Geneva convention. It might be of interest to some folks to see on the evening news, but I wouldn't want to be within ten miles of one of these things going off.
Nah. That'd cause a car to stop dead in the middle of the intersection and make a bloody mess of traffic.
Instead, you want a smart deployment of spikes which puncture only a single tire. More than enough to seriously piss off a guy running the light, while still letting him limp out of the way to the shoulder.
Does the FCC actually allow this?
It doesn't have to. Tracking cellphones can be done passively. FCC lacks jurisdiction when you don't generate "communications".
What you may be looking for is a consumer protection bureau.
Whose duty was it to correctly classify documents?
Simple answer: nobody's. There isn't a guy in every military office going over every piece of paper and marking it with the absolute minimally-necessary classification. That would be s a terrible waste of time and money.
Documents are classified based on their pedigree, as well as their content. Was it generated on SIPR? Automatically secret. A memo written by a diplomat intended for use internally within the State department? Also secret. Plus, it's cheaper to err on the side of caution- you can always declassify a document later.
This isn't to say that's the way it should be in the future, but that's how processes work. The same thing happens in businesses. If you want to change the current status quo, and pay higher taxes so that government can waste money to share more generally useless information with a public which has no interest in that information when it's not related to a scandal, go right ahead.
I think that line is fair game. It is said during a pre-walkout scene.
On November 9th national communications will be disrupted...
A communications disruption can mean only one thing...
This is pointless.
It seems you simply can't understand and accept how fortunate you are compared to others, insisting instead that you're just better than them. Typical aristocratic attitude. Have a nice life, try not to step on too many people while enjoying that ignorance.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand and my argument against the libertarian fantasy? You're not the topic at hand. Neither am I- I'm just an example of one less fortunate than you.
Can't handle the truth so you change the subject instead?
And nice misdirect/delusion there, claiming all credit for your education on "your investment" and ignoring the aid you got from your fellow taxpayers. Oh- but that's what everyone gets? You'd never have gotten your education either if Ron Paul ran things.
Government can not create wealth, the only thing government can do is distribute the wealth of others. It would be better that the money was not taken from the original earner in the first place.
I couldn't afford college. I'd never get a private loan - not at a reasonable rate I would go for. So the federal government did two things for me. First, it guaranteed my student loans, even paid the interest on half for a few years. Second, it gave me Pell grants, this "free money" you're bitching about. My state also contributed by letting me attend at half tuition first my local community college at then at the public University.
In the years since I graduated*, I've been bringing in multiple times my non-degree income, and paying orders of magnitude more in federal and state taxes. In five years I've more than paid back in federal and state taxes the above amounts of "free money", and I've never missed a loan payment. That wealth was not created by private business - it was created by government, despite Dr. Paul's protestations. And I've got decades more to work, contribute back, and lessen the "burden" on you. You're welcome!
So that's why the government needs to help people who can't afford college. Because people way smarter than privileged pricks like you have a LOT to contribute to society if only given a chance. But hey, don't let reality shatter that pink fantasy world you Ron Paul cultists live in. "Taken by force"- ha! What a bunch of smug, selfish sods you lot are.
* in three years while working during all but one semester, so go fuck yourself if you want to complain about "your" money being "wasted". Your problem isn't with us poor kids- it's the rich kids who don't appreciate daddy's money who are inflating demand for education without producing value for society.
Yawn. Got any proof to all these wild accusations? No, of course not. Because it's "hidden better now..."
I think I see the problem. You watch television all day in your mother's basement and don't have friends to help you learn about the way the world actually works.
PS- you kept that rant pretty short. That'll never get you cred with fellow conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, it does look like it. Regardless, it's accurate.
Feel free to try to prove the statement wrong. Show some analyst projections where higher adoption rates were expected, or present some reports where user sentiment is negative overall.
Google Plus users have plenty of evidence suggesting you won't find either. And we don't about all you cynical bastards hanging out here making silly accusations.