That's ridiculous. What about "physical education"? Isn't that what gyms and playgrounds are for? What about "reading" classes? Isn't that what libraries are for? According to that argument, there shouldn't even BE compulsory education because the various activities that occur in a public run educational system can each not only be done elsewhere, but done elsewhere better to top it off.
Whether you like it or not, unless somebody is doing something in public that actively interferes with your normal day to day activities, they're not "hurting" you in any way. If someone utters a prayer under their breath, it doesn't interfere with you unless you choose for it to. If someone is wearing a cross, headscarf, or yalmuka, it can only interfere with you IF YOU CONSCIOUSLY DECIDE FOR IT TO DO SO.
If religious symbolism can be banned in public, then so too should every display of nationalism, politicism, sexual preference (including holding hands, arms around shoulders, etc.), etc. Any activity that a person engages in which is by choice must be banned from public display.
It amazes me that people can argue points that involve dissenting beliefs solely on their own personal dissenting belief. Let me say this to you overly brittle morons out there who think every time the wind blows it's something new to be offended about:
Grow the fuck up. You're not the only person on earth, you're just among the whiniest and least mature.
Typical commercialist bullshit is being forced down our throats everywhere we go. It's just more prevelant at "christmas time".
I was driving through some backroads to go eat dinner with my girlfriend last night. There was a guy that had up what must have been at least 10,000 Christmas lights, and all the nieghbors were apparently trying to outdo him. I had a sudden, strong urge to find the outlets for each of them, snip the wires, and leave little notes that said "Get a life".
Fortunately for my continued freedom away from barred doors, I resisted the urge.
I was going to respond point by point, but it occurred to me as I thought through each of your statements that, in effect, you simply want to see a semi-communist state put in place and I'm arguing for freedom of the people to do as they please as long as they're not hurting anyone. We're at odds over values here, and, frankly, to argue the point would be a waste of time in this medium.
Public school has no business in moral education...
No kidding? Too bad students aren't employed by the compulsory public school system and, therefore, the government has no place interfering with them as long as they're not disruptive. Sorry bud, but if people practicing religion in a public place is not allowable, again, barring dangerous or excessively disruptive behavior, then nobody has a right to do anything that might "offend" anyone in any way in any public area. No protesting, sorry. You have a bare midriff? Nope, sorry, not allowed. You're wearing a T-Shirt that has an alcoholic theme? Cover it up in public! You might OFFEND somebody! The horrors!
Reading your last paragraphe, I'm counting on you to help me get my rights back in your country.
That would make a whole lot of sense if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't. Of course, if you can prove to me that the open bottle laws were instituted as a result of religious opression, I'd be more than happy to help you in your fight. Seeing as how banning head scarfs and other religious imagery is, in fact, a ban BECAUSE OF religion, there's a serious problem there. I seriously doubt open bottle laws are a result of an attempt to ban any particular religious imagery.
Great Magnificent Beer Heaven.. heh... I played this great game from Epic Megagames years and years ago called "Tyrian" and there was something eerily similar in the game to that effect... a whole religion based on beer.
People can believe what they like but I don't want it forced on me.
Soooo... you believe that it's wrong to passively "force" religious beliefs on someone, but it's acceptable to agressively enforce secularism?
I hate to tell you "babe", but seeing a head scarf, cross, etc. doesn't force you to believe anything. If you're mind is so pathetically weak that you can be "forcibly" converted to a religion simply by viewing it's symbolic imagery, chances are pretty good that you're so fucked up right now by everday advertising that it's not really going to matter anyway.
There's a difference between not letting the school engage in or push any particular religious viewpoint on the class as a whole. It's a wholly different story when individual students decide that they wish to make their religious beliefs known or wish to engage in a religious activity at school. Barring disruptive behavior that interferes with other students, the school/government has no business telling individuals what they can and can't do regarding the subject.
There is no difference between a government that forces a religious belief on its people and one that forces it's people not to have a religion. I will actively fight any government official that would suggest EITHER or those paths was a good one.
It's not a troll or flamebait - it's just not a sound argument.
Sounds like a real purty argument you got there at the start, but I'd like to take one gleefully "evil" moment here before I wreck it........ okay.... now I'm going to destroy your entire proposition with one quote:
If we assume that all people are greedy bastards, everyone will do the math and decide not to have children.
Oops. I'm going to ASSUME that anybody with an IQ less than me is an incompetent dolt. Therefore, anybody with an IQ under the minimum of my "official" tested range should be constitutionally BANNED from making decisions in the government. Since these imbeciles are obviously less-capable than me of making a sound decision given equal resources and information, it would benefit society not to let them vote or have any input into politics or law. Not to brag.. but that means that less than.8% of the population is allowed to vote under my plan.
You can't argue the child angle because the propogation of the species is a natural, inborn drive that the majority of people experience at some point in their lives. It has nothing to do with greed at all, and there's no way in Hell you'll ever prove it does. This includes people who are fit to be parents, people who are totally unfit to even care for pet rocks, and people who are so monumentally stupid that you might occasionally wonder why they don't forget to breathe. In fact, your argument fails on an even more significant point. If non-adopting gay couples are afforded secular benefits of marriage but don't propogate, then they'll suck SIGNIFICANTLY LESS resources than those folks who DO have children. Given that the world is currently overpopulated in some places, I would argue that under your mistaken assumptions we ought to ban heterosexual marriages so as to discriminate further propogation, then focus on more evenly dispersing the world populace. That, if executed properly, would be IMMENSELY beneficial to society.
As for the "right to marry" - there is no "right to marry". The point is that you can't arbitrarily ban specific groups of people from doing something with a good reason. Take the stupid "slipperly slope" that idiots like my 'representative' (he sure as hell doesn't represent me, the dumbass) come up with regarding this debate: "well then shouldn't it be okay to screw children or relatives". No, absolutely not. Reason? There are sound scientific reasons for disallowing these acts. Children are NOT capable of making informed decisions on their own regarding issues as important as sex and thus are easy to prey upon. People who DO prey upon them must, therefore, be punished. Incest is even more scientifically sound: genetic mutations cause serious problems. Therefore, brother/sister/father/mother/etc. should not be allowed for the sake of genetic consistency and medical sense. Granted.. this latter point only applies to intercourse, but I prefer not to think about what goes on in remote trailers in the backwoods of Virginia if I can help it.
The problem with this whole "debate" is that there is no logical or scientific reason for discriminating against homosexual people. You tried to play the "social consequence" card like so many before you, but, like so many before you, you have no evidence and you never will because until you try it, you can't get any.
No a/s/l check? No, this is no AOLer. Besides... if you think a hardcore AOLer could figure out how to get to "h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot org " without a big funny button to push, you're kidding yourself.
(I would like to apologize to all the AOLers out there who may have been offended by my insensitive comment: I truly am sorry that you choose to use AOL.)
That happens now. It's called a "marriage of convenience". Maybe we should mandate that people can only get married if they "love" each other, hmmm? Maybe you'd like to build the "love" detector to enforce this? Get the fuck out with this "life partners" bullshit. Either everyone has a right to marry, or nobody does OR marriage is for love / godliness / what-the-fuck-ever only and NOBODY gets any special secular benefits like lower insurance, healthcare, etc.
I know you haven't said anything about it so I'm not laying into you personally on this next point, but this goes hand in hand: the idea that we should amend the constitution to ban gay marriages.
What the fuck? We should amend the CONSTITUTION to DISCRIMINATE against people? How convenient! While we're at it, I'd like to amend it so that anybody with an IQ of less than 130 can't vote. I'd also like to see an amendment that anybody who has a religious affiliation can't be part of the government or have any say in it. I'm sure the backers of this amendment idea are all going to jump right up and support me, right? What's that? It wouldn't be fair to discriminate against people based on their choices or on the way they were born? Oops.
Congratulations to all the people who support this ridiulous amendment notion: you're all idiots.
I don't think that the point of the original poster's message was that the jobs deserve to be lost or it's the coder's fault or anything like that. I think the point is that a lot of the coding positions out there now, BECAUSE they're soul-draining, mind-numbing corporate idiocy (like mine), don't inspire people to do anything great in them which stagnates the field and causes this sort of thing to happen. I routinely cut projects low on purpose just to get them done early. Could I implement a new, kickass, truly useful feature that wasn't requested, but would still be a huge boost? Yea, but why? I take shit from a bunch of manadrones that know about as much about coding as I know about molecular biology (I got a D in the only biology class I ever took and never looked back). Why should I innovate for those idiots when they won't have the slightest clue what I did and the most recognition I'm likely to get is a "oh, ok, well we didn't ask for that"?
As a result, people don't want to go above and beyond and do the next big thing with business, and anyone with a bit of dedication and an IQ of at least 100 can swoop in and take the mind-numbingly boring job away by doing the same crap grunt-work for less.
OTOH, when I code at home in my spare time, I strive to produce something that works really well. I want something I can be proud of. If I build a system and run into a problem, I don't look for half-assed hacks to get around it. For example, I code mostly Perl at work, and rather than think a little to fix strict-related problems, I just wrap trouble code in 'no strict' and never look again as long as it just works. At home, I'd strive to avoid that sort of thing and make it work RIGHT.
THAT'S the point, I believe. I think it's caused by clueless sods making decisions on things they've never been trained on and don't want explained to them. I'm frequently "corrected" in my coding at work by a person who thinks I coded our internal search engine in Frontpage! Maybe if I wasn't constantly beset by idiotic things from those types of people, I'd actually strive to make something new, interesting and useful. But, no. It's not in my best interest and, some day, I may very well lose my job to a cheaper source as a result.
If he wants to get it in $100 bills and have a bonfire, that's his right. If he wants to spend it on expensive cars which he then crushes with a wrecking ball, that's his right. If he wants to fund a dot-com startup with no business plan, that's his right. If he wants to go to the space station for a week, and somebody's willing to take him there, that's his right.
If some guy on Slashdot wants to critisize him for wasting his money, that's his right.
Oh, sorry. I forgot where I was for a moment. Here on Slashdot we only talk about the side of the issue that we personally benefit from or believe in.
And, incidentally, no, he can NOT have a bonfire of still circulating $100 bills. He could buy 20 million dollars worth of destroyed money and burn THAT if he wanted, however.
I think it would be great to go into orbit around earth... but...
What I REALLY want to do is go visit a different star or see an incoming galaxy rise in the sky over a planet as two galaxies verge on collision. I want to visit a black hole and see what's inside one. I want to go to Europa or fly into the interior of Jupiter. I want to visit a quasar and a pulsar and I want to be IN a galactic collision while it's happening. I want to fly PAST the edge of the Universe's expansion.
*sigh*....
I guess I'll just have to settle for beating up snobs in Monaco...
...really good windows software costs at least $100, whereas on linux there are often competitive free alternatives.
Ground control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong...
Dude... I like Linux and hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but uh...
...when one compares GOOD software on both systems, I think the differences are rather marginal.
Dreamweaver
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Paint Shop Pro
Microsoft Office (for losers with a lot of vba crap)
In house VB-app that would need ported.
These are the programs on my system right now at work that would prevent me from moving the work box to Linux. Crossover Office will run all of them except, perhaps, the crappy VB thing, but that sort of nullifies the whole cost savings point of switching to Linux. The only one I'm willing to abandon is Dreamweaver which I'd replace with Bluefish.
On the point of crummy software, I imagine the dead and poorly built, half-assed Linux projects on Sourceforge and Freshmeat easily match the number of crummy, half-assed, poorly built Windows apps out there.
Hate to tell you chief, but except for bigshots like PostgreSQL, KDE/Gnome, Apache, etc.... much of what litters the GPL/BSD landscape is garbage, just like the Windows world. Until big time, business-friendly developers like Adobe and Macromedia start building their tools for Linux... too bad. That's a pretty scary step for them though. Build for Linux and have Microsoft pull your "rights" to their proprietary interfaces and APIs? Scary thought. Microsoft, I'm sure, has them firmly by the balls.
When someone new comes on the scene and starts creating competitors to these big name business tools, THEN we'll see people considering a full on switch more seriously. See what OOo has accomplished as of late. We need an OOo of Adobe and Macromedia, etc. in order to wrap up the stragglers.
No, you can't stop the people who are actually pirates with lawsuits. The pirates that "drive carts and horses" through the holes in these ridiculous release schedules are the kind that are really pirates. That is, they're really criminals. With guns. Like organized crime.
The MPAA/RIAA has done a good job of brainwashing willfully ignorant people into thinking that "pirate" means some harmless 15 year old kid with pimples that's downloading all the latest releases for their own use. They're not pirates, they're just punks with no money. Pirates really cause problems. There really are pirates and they really are selling bootlegs and they really can be dangerous criminals. They're the ones that are actually pressing illegal copies of games, music, and DVDs and selling them for huge profits. It's like a whole business model and it takes coordinated law-enforcement efforts to bust the operations.
I've always wondered when someone of consequence would wake up and point out that DVD region encoding is a HUGE catalyst for overseas piracy. If they run a profiteering racket by not releasing a DVD for months (or ever) in certain countries (so as to prevent market saturation and allow them to, effectively, sell 5 or 6 "different" copies of the same, often unchanged, movie over a period of years, each at a full price because you have to buy your own special regionalized version) it's just a huge enabler for people who want to sell bootlegs.
Think about it. If the movie has been out for three months in Japan and is selling used for 1/3 of the original price, why should I have to wait for them to release it in the U.S. and have to pay full price only because it's "region encoded". It's a scam, plain and simple, and the pirates are having a field day with it.
And YET, you choose to redefine the word "Access" to mean "bandwidth", even though they are two different words.
It's an incidental side effect of what they advertised, not a redefinition of the term. If I hit a bandwidth limit and get kicked off till the end of the month, that interferes with my "unlimited access", does it not?
Maybe that's not the intent, but when they say unlimited access, that says to me "you can access it as much as you want 24/7". Now, if, for example, they could chop the transfer rate way down on my abusive account, that would be mean, but as long as they didn't bump me, I certainly couldn't argue that they were interfering with "unlimited access". I could whine about my new 28.8k modem connection, but I don't think I'd get a whole lot of sympathy when people realized I was downloading the first two LOTR movies, a Windows XP.iso, and 500 mp3s at the time.
It is reasonable for them to assume that there words will be taken in a reasonable manner.
Yea, that's why when I see "unlimited" I think it means "unlimited" not "unlimited unless it becomes inconvenient for us". If they don't mean unlimited, they need to say something like "150 hours a month for $49.95" or whatever the actual service is. 150 hours or some mysterious, unknown limit is NOT unlimited, plain and simple.
But let's not take "Unlimited" to mean something unreasonable.
I REALLY don't understand where you're coming from or why you think anyone is going to buy this argument. You're arguing this point on quicksand and you're already in up to your neck. Look, whether you're going to admit it or not, unlimited has a clearly defined meaning. It's not ambiguous. They're not saying "lots of access" or "a whole bunch of access", they're saying "unlimited access". Unlimited is a very clearly defined, well understood term. How could I apply an unreasonable meaning to it? Unlimited is unlimited. No limit. None. Zip, nada, zilch. NO LIMIT TO ACCESS.
Would you assume 'unlimited internet access' means I have unlimited access to whitehouse.gov and could change it to fit my needs?
Completely pointless and offtopic. You're arguing the meaning of access, not unlimited. Access to the Internet does not automatically grant write privilege to a small portion of the WWW which is only part of the Internet. When they say "access", it's generally understood that they're talking about the ability to connect to their server in order to use the Internet in some capacity. How you use the Internet is not guaranteed by them in any way.
You ever hear of buyer beware? You didn't read the AUP did you?
IRRELEVANT.
Comcast is, in this current, valid offering which I am currently holding in my left hand saying - quite explicitly, mind you - that I can get "Unlimited Internet Access" by signing up for their cable service. The TOS/AUP/POS/whatever is NOT printed OR referenced ANYWHERE on this advertisement. NO alternative definition for "unlimited" is provided that says they mean anything other than the dictionary term.
The advertisement is, quite obviously, advertising a service THEY DO NOT SELL.
If it's that easy, can I start selling shale through the mail as gold and claim in my convoluted, small print TOS that "gold" really means a "a brittle, grayish-brown stone"? Does my TOS vindicate my false advertising? I think not. That's exactly what Comcast is trying to do here.
They want to cap people? Fine. Then stop advertising something completely different that you're not selling and never have. That's all I ask. Advertise your product or service, don't try to hide your deceptive ads (which are actually flat-out lies) behind convoluted terms and pretend that that justifies your fairy tale advertising.
Of course you can sue someone for breaking into your house. In fact, if you have a good lawyer, you might be able to squeeze a good bit out of them.
Hell, you can sue someone for NOT breaking into your house if you want. You can sue them for LOOKING at your house. Anyone can sue anyone else for anything at all. It's just a matter of how much crap the court is willing to tolerate from you, not whether or not you can actually do it. That's how frivolous lawsuits are born and litigious (read: stupid, talentless hack) attorneys stay in business.
I could, for $65, file a civil suit in small claims court against Taco tomorrow for running Slashdot, if I so desired. The entire thing might last 5 minutes before the judge rips me a new asshole and Taco may well file a counter-suit for wasting his time, but I most certainly COULD do it.
...about what you think "unlimited" should mean...
unlimited - adj 1: lacking any controls 2: BOUNDLESS, INFINTE 3: not bounded by exceptions.
Hmmm... I'm looking at a recent ad copy for high speed access from Comcast that says "unlimited" and provides no alternative defintion.
Guess we cleared that up pretty easily. If they say unlimited, they better damn well mean that I have infinite, boundless bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
If they want to cap downloads to prevent obnoxious abuse like that, that's fine. However, when they're still advertising "unlimited" access knowing full well they have no intention of providing that service there's a problem. It's not really that complicated of a concept, the whole truthful advertising thing.
Accept any assinine patent unless it's RIDICULOUSLY obvious that it's ridiculous.
Take money for patent.
RUN!
Later, when a lawsuit comes up, that's what sorts out whether or not the patent is idiotic or not. I think the patent office should have to refund 110% of the fee if a patent is overturned in court. Might make them actually THINK a little bit before they just grab the damn stamper and give it a stamp of approval.
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"isn't that what churches are for?"
That's ridiculous. What about "physical education"? Isn't that what gyms and playgrounds are for? What about "reading" classes? Isn't that what libraries are for? According to that argument, there shouldn't even BE compulsory education because the various activities that occur in a public run educational system can each not only be done elsewhere, but done elsewhere better to top it off.
Whether you like it or not, unless somebody is doing something in public that actively interferes with your normal day to day activities, they're not "hurting" you in any way. If someone utters a prayer under their breath, it doesn't interfere with you unless you choose for it to. If someone is wearing a cross, headscarf, or yalmuka, it can only interfere with you IF YOU CONSCIOUSLY DECIDE FOR IT TO DO SO.
If religious symbolism can be banned in public, then so too should every display of nationalism, politicism, sexual preference (including holding hands, arms around shoulders, etc.), etc. Any activity that a person engages in which is by choice must be banned from public display.
It amazes me that people can argue points that involve dissenting beliefs solely on their own personal dissenting belief. Let me say this to you overly brittle morons out there who think every time the wind blows it's something new to be offended about:
Grow the fuck up. You're not the only person on earth, you're just among the whiniest and least mature.
Sort of.
Typical commercialist bullshit is being forced down our throats everywhere we go. It's just more prevelant at "christmas time".
I was driving through some backroads to go eat dinner with my girlfriend last night. There was a guy that had up what must have been at least 10,000 Christmas lights, and all the nieghbors were apparently trying to outdo him. I had a sudden, strong urge to find the outlets for each of them, snip the wires, and leave little notes that said "Get a life".
Fortunately for my continued freedom away from barred doors, I resisted the urge.
I was going to respond point by point, but it occurred to me as I thought through each of your statements that, in effect, you simply want to see a semi-communist state put in place and I'm arguing for freedom of the people to do as they please as long as they're not hurting anyone. We're at odds over values here, and, frankly, to argue the point would be a waste of time in this medium.
You sir (or lady), frighten me.
Public school has no business in moral education...
No kidding? Too bad students aren't employed by the compulsory public school system and, therefore, the government has no place interfering with them as long as they're not disruptive. Sorry bud, but if people practicing religion in a public place is not allowable, again, barring dangerous or excessively disruptive behavior, then nobody has a right to do anything that might "offend" anyone in any way in any public area. No protesting, sorry. You have a bare midriff? Nope, sorry, not allowed. You're wearing a T-Shirt that has an alcoholic theme? Cover it up in public! You might OFFEND somebody! The horrors!
Reading your last paragraphe, I'm counting on you to help me get my rights back in your country.
That would make a whole lot of sense if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't. Of course, if you can prove to me that the open bottle laws were instituted as a result of religious opression, I'd be more than happy to help you in your fight. Seeing as how banning head scarfs and other religious imagery is, in fact, a ban BECAUSE OF religion, there's a serious problem there. I seriously doubt open bottle laws are a result of an attempt to ban any particular religious imagery.
Great Magnificent Beer Heaven.. heh... I played this great game from Epic Megagames years and years ago called "Tyrian" and there was something eerily similar in the game to that effect... a whole religion based on beer.
I love the smell of krispy karma in the morning.
People can believe what they like but I don't want it forced on me.
Soooo... you believe that it's wrong to passively "force" religious beliefs on someone, but it's acceptable to agressively enforce secularism?
I hate to tell you "babe", but seeing a head scarf, cross, etc. doesn't force you to believe anything. If you're mind is so pathetically weak that you can be "forcibly" converted to a religion simply by viewing it's symbolic imagery, chances are pretty good that you're so fucked up right now by everday advertising that it's not really going to matter anyway.
There's a difference between not letting the school engage in or push any particular religious viewpoint on the class as a whole. It's a wholly different story when individual students decide that they wish to make their religious beliefs known or wish to engage in a religious activity at school. Barring disruptive behavior that interferes with other students, the school/government has no business telling individuals what they can and can't do regarding the subject.
There is no difference between a government that forces a religious belief on its people and one that forces it's people not to have a religion. I will actively fight any government official that would suggest EITHER or those paths was a good one.
Alright. You're paranoid and you may well be a fool for all I know.
Doesn't mean you're wrong though.
It's not a troll or flamebait - it's just not a sound argument.
Sounds like a real purty argument you got there at the start, but I'd like to take one gleefully "evil" moment here before I wreck it........ okay.... now I'm going to destroy your entire proposition with one quote:
If we assume that all people are greedy bastards, everyone will do the math and decide not to have children.
Oops. I'm going to ASSUME that anybody with an IQ less than me is an incompetent dolt. Therefore, anybody with an IQ under the minimum of my "official" tested range should be constitutionally BANNED from making decisions in the government. Since these imbeciles are obviously less-capable than me of making a sound decision given equal resources and information, it would benefit society not to let them vote or have any input into politics or law. Not to brag.. but that means that less than .8% of the population is allowed to vote under my plan.
You can't argue the child angle because the propogation of the species is a natural, inborn drive that the majority of people experience at some point in their lives. It has nothing to do with greed at all, and there's no way in Hell you'll ever prove it does. This includes people who are fit to be parents, people who are totally unfit to even care for pet rocks, and people who are so monumentally stupid that you might occasionally wonder why they don't forget to breathe. In fact, your argument fails on an even more significant point. If non-adopting gay couples are afforded secular benefits of marriage but don't propogate, then they'll suck SIGNIFICANTLY LESS resources than those folks who DO have children. Given that the world is currently overpopulated in some places, I would argue that under your mistaken assumptions we ought to ban heterosexual marriages so as to discriminate further propogation, then focus on more evenly dispersing the world populace. That, if executed properly, would be IMMENSELY beneficial to society.
As for the "right to marry" - there is no "right to marry". The point is that you can't arbitrarily ban specific groups of people from doing something with a good reason. Take the stupid "slipperly slope" that idiots like my 'representative' (he sure as hell doesn't represent me, the dumbass) come up with regarding this debate: "well then shouldn't it be okay to screw children or relatives". No, absolutely not. Reason? There are sound scientific reasons for disallowing these acts. Children are NOT capable of making informed decisions on their own regarding issues as important as sex and thus are easy to prey upon. People who DO prey upon them must, therefore, be punished. Incest is even more scientifically sound: genetic mutations cause serious problems. Therefore, brother/sister/father/mother/etc. should not be allowed for the sake of genetic consistency and medical sense. Granted.. this latter point only applies to intercourse, but I prefer not to think about what goes on in remote trailers in the backwoods of Virginia if I can help it.
The problem with this whole "debate" is that there is no logical or scientific reason for discriminating against homosexual people. You tried to play the "social consequence" card like so many before you, but, like so many before you, you have no evidence and you never will because until you try it, you can't get any.
No a/s/l check? No, this is no AOLer. Besides... if you think a hardcore AOLer could figure out how to get to "h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot org " without a big funny button to push, you're kidding yourself.
(I would like to apologize to all the AOLers out there who may have been offended by my insensitive comment: I truly am sorry that you choose to use AOL.)
Congratulations: you're clueless.
That happens now. It's called a "marriage of convenience". Maybe we should mandate that people can only get married if they "love" each other, hmmm? Maybe you'd like to build the "love" detector to enforce this? Get the fuck out with this "life partners" bullshit. Either everyone has a right to marry, or nobody does OR marriage is for love / godliness / what-the-fuck-ever only and NOBODY gets any special secular benefits like lower insurance, healthcare, etc.
I know you haven't said anything about it so I'm not laying into you personally on this next point, but this goes hand in hand: the idea that we should amend the constitution to ban gay marriages.
What the fuck? We should amend the CONSTITUTION to DISCRIMINATE against people? How convenient! While we're at it, I'd like to amend it so that anybody with an IQ of less than 130 can't vote. I'd also like to see an amendment that anybody who has a religious affiliation can't be part of the government or have any say in it. I'm sure the backers of this amendment idea are all going to jump right up and support me, right? What's that? It wouldn't be fair to discriminate against people based on their choices or on the way they were born? Oops.
Congratulations to all the people who support this ridiulous amendment notion: you're all idiots.
I don't think that the point of the original poster's message was that the jobs deserve to be lost or it's the coder's fault or anything like that. I think the point is that a lot of the coding positions out there now, BECAUSE they're soul-draining, mind-numbing corporate idiocy (like mine), don't inspire people to do anything great in them which stagnates the field and causes this sort of thing to happen. I routinely cut projects low on purpose just to get them done early. Could I implement a new, kickass, truly useful feature that wasn't requested, but would still be a huge boost? Yea, but why? I take shit from a bunch of manadrones that know about as much about coding as I know about molecular biology (I got a D in the only biology class I ever took and never looked back). Why should I innovate for those idiots when they won't have the slightest clue what I did and the most recognition I'm likely to get is a "oh, ok, well we didn't ask for that"?
As a result, people don't want to go above and beyond and do the next big thing with business, and anyone with a bit of dedication and an IQ of at least 100 can swoop in and take the mind-numbingly boring job away by doing the same crap grunt-work for less.
OTOH, when I code at home in my spare time, I strive to produce something that works really well. I want something I can be proud of. If I build a system and run into a problem, I don't look for half-assed hacks to get around it. For example, I code mostly Perl at work, and rather than think a little to fix strict-related problems, I just wrap trouble code in 'no strict' and never look again as long as it just works. At home, I'd strive to avoid that sort of thing and make it work RIGHT.
THAT'S the point, I believe. I think it's caused by clueless sods making decisions on things they've never been trained on and don't want explained to them. I'm frequently "corrected" in my coding at work by a person who thinks I coded our internal search engine in Frontpage! Maybe if I wasn't constantly beset by idiotic things from those types of people, I'd actually strive to make something new, interesting and useful. But, no. It's not in my best interest and, some day, I may very well lose my job to a cheaper source as a result.
This explains a lot about my company.
You must have some outrageous home owner's insurance by now.
If he wants to get it in $100 bills and have a bonfire, that's his right. If he wants to spend it on expensive cars which he then crushes with a wrecking ball, that's his right. If he wants to fund a dot-com startup with no business plan, that's his right. If he wants to go to the space station for a week, and somebody's willing to take him there, that's his right.
If some guy on Slashdot wants to critisize him for wasting his money, that's his right.
Oh, sorry. I forgot where I was for a moment. Here on Slashdot we only talk about the side of the issue that we personally benefit from or believe in.
And, incidentally, no, he can NOT have a bonfire of still circulating $100 bills. He could buy 20 million dollars worth of destroyed money and burn THAT if he wanted, however.
I think it would be great to go into orbit around earth... but...
What I REALLY want to do is go visit a different star or see an incoming galaxy rise in the sky over a planet as two galaxies verge on collision. I want to visit a black hole and see what's inside one. I want to go to Europa or fly into the interior of Jupiter. I want to visit a quasar and a pulsar and I want to be IN a galactic collision while it's happening. I want to fly PAST the edge of the Universe's expansion.
*sigh* ....
I guess I'll just have to settle for beating up snobs in Monaco...
Ground control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong...
Dude... I like Linux and hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but uh...
- Dreamweaver
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Paint Shop Pro
- Microsoft Office (for losers with a lot of vba crap)
- In house VB-app that would need ported.
These are the programs on my system right now at work that would prevent me from moving the work box to Linux. Crossover Office will run all of them except, perhaps, the crappy VB thing, but that sort of nullifies the whole cost savings point of switching to Linux. The only one I'm willing to abandon is Dreamweaver which I'd replace with Bluefish.On the point of crummy software, I imagine the dead and poorly built, half-assed Linux projects on Sourceforge and Freshmeat easily match the number of crummy, half-assed, poorly built Windows apps out there.
Hate to tell you chief, but except for bigshots like PostgreSQL, KDE/Gnome, Apache, etc.... much of what litters the GPL/BSD landscape is garbage, just like the Windows world. Until big time, business-friendly developers like Adobe and Macromedia start building their tools for Linux... too bad. That's a pretty scary step for them though. Build for Linux and have Microsoft pull your "rights" to their proprietary interfaces and APIs? Scary thought. Microsoft, I'm sure, has them firmly by the balls.
When someone new comes on the scene and starts creating competitors to these big name business tools, THEN we'll see people considering a full on switch more seriously. See what OOo has accomplished as of late. We need an OOo of Adobe and Macromedia, etc. in order to wrap up the stragglers.
Have I been on prophylactic chemotherapy for naught?
I can say with the utmost certainty:
maybe.
No, you can't stop the people who are actually pirates with lawsuits. The pirates that "drive carts and horses" through the holes in these ridiculous release schedules are the kind that are really pirates. That is, they're really criminals. With guns. Like organized crime.
The MPAA/RIAA has done a good job of brainwashing willfully ignorant people into thinking that "pirate" means some harmless 15 year old kid with pimples that's downloading all the latest releases for their own use. They're not pirates, they're just punks with no money. Pirates really cause problems. There really are pirates and they really are selling bootlegs and they really can be dangerous criminals. They're the ones that are actually pressing illegal copies of games, music, and DVDs and selling them for huge profits. It's like a whole business model and it takes coordinated law-enforcement efforts to bust the operations.
I've always wondered when someone of consequence would wake up and point out that DVD region encoding is a HUGE catalyst for overseas piracy. If they run a profiteering racket by not releasing a DVD for months (or ever) in certain countries (so as to prevent market saturation and allow them to, effectively, sell 5 or 6 "different" copies of the same, often unchanged, movie over a period of years, each at a full price because you have to buy your own special regionalized version) it's just a huge enabler for people who want to sell bootlegs.
Think about it. If the movie has been out for three months in Japan and is selling used for 1/3 of the original price, why should I have to wait for them to release it in the U.S. and have to pay full price only because it's "region encoded". It's a scam, plain and simple, and the pirates are having a field day with it.
Somebody else argued this same point just before you did (probably became part of the page right after you posted, actually).
See my response to that poster.
And YET, you choose to redefine the word "Access" to mean "bandwidth", even though they are two different words.
It's an incidental side effect of what they advertised, not a redefinition of the term. If I hit a bandwidth limit and get kicked off till the end of the month, that interferes with my "unlimited access", does it not?
Maybe that's not the intent, but when they say unlimited access, that says to me "you can access it as much as you want 24/7". Now, if, for example, they could chop the transfer rate way down on my abusive account, that would be mean, but as long as they didn't bump me, I certainly couldn't argue that they were interfering with "unlimited access". I could whine about my new 28.8k modem connection, but I don't think I'd get a whole lot of sympathy when people realized I was downloading the first two LOTR movies, a Windows XP .iso, and 500 mp3s at the time.
(BTW: I'm on dial-up... wheeee.)
It is reasonable for them to assume that there words will be taken in a reasonable manner.
Yea, that's why when I see "unlimited" I think it means "unlimited" not "unlimited unless it becomes inconvenient for us". If they don't mean unlimited, they need to say something like "150 hours a month for $49.95" or whatever the actual service is. 150 hours or some mysterious, unknown limit is NOT unlimited, plain and simple.
But let's not take "Unlimited" to mean something unreasonable.
I REALLY don't understand where you're coming from or why you think anyone is going to buy this argument. You're arguing this point on quicksand and you're already in up to your neck. Look, whether you're going to admit it or not, unlimited has a clearly defined meaning. It's not ambiguous. They're not saying "lots of access" or "a whole bunch of access", they're saying "unlimited access". Unlimited is a very clearly defined, well understood term. How could I apply an unreasonable meaning to it? Unlimited is unlimited. No limit. None. Zip, nada, zilch. NO LIMIT TO ACCESS.
Would you assume 'unlimited internet access' means I have unlimited access to whitehouse.gov and could change it to fit my needs?
Completely pointless and offtopic. You're arguing the meaning of access, not unlimited. Access to the Internet does not automatically grant write privilege to a small portion of the WWW which is only part of the Internet. When they say "access", it's generally understood that they're talking about the ability to connect to their server in order to use the Internet in some capacity. How you use the Internet is not guaranteed by them in any way.
You ever hear of buyer beware? You didn't read the AUP did you?
IRRELEVANT.
Comcast is, in this current, valid offering which I am currently holding in my left hand saying - quite explicitly, mind you - that I can get "Unlimited Internet Access" by signing up for their cable service. The TOS/AUP/POS/whatever is NOT printed OR referenced ANYWHERE on this advertisement. NO alternative definition for "unlimited" is provided that says they mean anything other than the dictionary term.
The advertisement is, quite obviously, advertising a service THEY DO NOT SELL.
If it's that easy, can I start selling shale through the mail as gold and claim in my convoluted, small print TOS that "gold" really means a "a brittle, grayish-brown stone"? Does my TOS vindicate my false advertising? I think not. That's exactly what Comcast is trying to do here.
They want to cap people? Fine. Then stop advertising something completely different that you're not selling and never have. That's all I ask. Advertise your product or service, don't try to hide your deceptive ads (which are actually flat-out lies) behind convoluted terms and pretend that that justifies your fairy tale advertising.
Of course you can sue someone for breaking into your house. In fact, if you have a good lawyer, you might be able to squeeze a good bit out of them.
Hell, you can sue someone for NOT breaking into your house if you want. You can sue them for LOOKING at your house. Anyone can sue anyone else for anything at all. It's just a matter of how much crap the court is willing to tolerate from you, not whether or not you can actually do it. That's how frivolous lawsuits are born and litigious (read: stupid, talentless hack) attorneys stay in business.
I could, for $65, file a civil suit in small claims court against Taco tomorrow for running Slashdot, if I so desired. The entire thing might last 5 minutes before the judge rips me a new asshole and Taco may well file a counter-suit for wasting his time, but I most certainly COULD do it.
Who's going to write our kickass score, though?
Come to think of it, can hackers that don't actually kick ass even have a kickass score?
unlimited - adj 1: lacking any controls 2: BOUNDLESS, INFINTE 3: not bounded by exceptions.
Hmmm... I'm looking at a recent ad copy for high speed access from Comcast that says "unlimited" and provides no alternative defintion.
Guess we cleared that up pretty easily. If they say unlimited, they better damn well mean that I have infinite, boundless bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
If they want to cap downloads to prevent obnoxious abuse like that, that's fine. However, when they're still advertising "unlimited" access knowing full well they have no intention of providing that service there's a problem. It's not really that complicated of a concept, the whole truthful advertising thing.
That's EXACTLY what they do.
Later, when a lawsuit comes up, that's what sorts out whether or not the patent is idiotic or not. I think the patent office should have to refund 110% of the fee if a patent is overturned in court. Might make them actually THINK a little bit before they just grab the damn stamper and give it a stamp of approval.