But the main question I wanted to ask - THE VERY ONE SLASHDOT EDITORS LEFT OUT - was why in the world must I wait for them to repair their machines to apply for a job WHEN MY HOUSE IS ON THE LINE?
How are they responsible for your house being on the line?
They see their machine isn't in proper working order and they wouldn't give me a paper application so I could at least fill apply for the job - that's rather non-equal opportunity there - I try to apply, their machine is broken, and I cannot obtain a paper application so I may have a fair chance at gaining employment. That's the issue.
There's still nothing about your case that has anything to do with equal oportunities. You just had the bad luck of applying with a company that has a broken terminal and is slow to repair it. If you don't like it, apply at a company that's a bit better organised and is able to maintain their equipment. You'll probably be happier there anyway.
That was all he really wanted to know, did I want the job enough to jump some simple hoops? or was I a QUITTER?
More like, did you want the job badly enough to let him fuck you
around, or would you maintain your self-respect and walk out? Because obviously he wanted someone he could crap on that would smile about it if he kept you waiting for 45 minutes when there was no need for
it.
I always have a book or some other reading material with me. I don't mind doing some 45 minutes of reading. Does this mean I'm not a quitter? Does it mean I have no self respect? All it means is that I like to read.
Their test, like yours, sounds nice at first sight, but is totally meaningless if you think about it a bit more. Well, I suppose they get people who have patience, which can be useful for some jobs. You select for people who have no patience, which may be useful for other jobs. Other than that, the test says more about the employer than about the employee.
b. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
What about b? By the letter, it seems to deny at least some people the use of ad-blocking software. Or maybe it just says that users can't "use the service to employ" ad-blocking. What's that mean?
Do visitors have to agree with the TOS before they can see the pages? I don't think so. It can only be about messing with the page, not about what plugins a visitor is allowed to use in his browser.
If you don't pay, you get the ads, if you don't get the ads, you're basically stealing their bandwidth.
Bullshit. I've paid my ISP for my access. It isn't your bandwidth, and I can't steal what you're handing out for free anyway. Am I stealing "your bandwidth" if I use Lynx? Mentality like this drives me nuts. I loathe ads, they get blocked. I'll never understand how anyone would expect to earn money by using something that myself and most people I know routinely ignore or block. In any format.
Are your LJ pages running on your PC? I don't think so. LJ has a server and needs to pay for it. I know the Google vs. Versatel case can be confusing, but this is definitely not the same.
2. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
This can't possibly be about users, for the simple fact that that would be completely unenforcable. As far as I know, LJ pages are normal, publicly accessible webpages not hidden behind passwords or anything (isn't that the whole point?), so visitors don't have to agree with the TOS. And besides, what are they going to do if they catch a visitor downloading the html but not the ad? Remember his ip and block him forever? How quickly will LiveJournal die if they block innocent visitors? This can only be about using CSS or javascript tricks to hide the ads.
In all seriousness, I don't want to deal with homosexuality in an online game./ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your gay agenda on the rest of us.
You do realise that this argument works just as much against you, don't you? You too can ignore users that say things you don't want to hear, without having to force an anti-gay agenda on anyone.
Why the hell is the military storing sensitive data on USB drives, which are prone to both theft and failure?
More importantly, why is the sensitive data not encrypted? You'd expect that people handling sensitive information receive some sort of training in how to handle that inofmration.
Alas, similar things have been happening in the Netherlands during the last couple of years: a public prosecutor throwing his PC with unencrypted info about criminal cases in the trash, a USB stick with sensitive military info left in a taxi, that sort of thing. And what I'm mainly upset about isn't even that people are sloppy with the hardware; that sort of thing can always happen (even if it shouldn't), but that they're not forced to use software that can only store their data in encrypted format.
I think the issue here is that ISPs and telco's are going to make your access to google slower if google doesn't pay them. They're confused about who their customers are, and seem to think google should pay them for access to me, while I'm already paying them for access to google.
It's a bit like commercial TV, where advertisers are the customers and viewers are the product.
Balance is a very complex issue. These guys are just focusing on the walking motion itself, and they've found a simpler and more effective way to do that.
And that's good, because let's face it: that big, shuffling, passive balance robot from Sony looks like crap.
Interesting column, but that's not what the problem is in Zimbabwe. The problem there is that Mugabe disowned the white farm owners and gave the farms to his own cronies, who didn't know a thing about running a big farm. General mismanagement, cronyism, and hunger for short term prestige are the real problems in Africa. They're problems everywhere in politics, but much, much more so in Africa.
But to get back to the subject at hand, I think cheap mass communication (controlled by the masses themselves in stead of national media companies) can help the people identify these problems and deal with them. And isn't that what a cheap laptop with wireless connection really is?
Many believe that the left-right, linear model of political ideology should be more of a ring - although this could mean people could become so far to the left in their ideology they suddenly become totalitarian dictators;
A ring would be even more simplistic than the linear model. Being very far to the left doesn't make you authoritarian, being authoritarian does. A much more useful model is a 2-dimensional one, with socialist-capitalist on one axis and libertarian-authoritarian on the other. Stalin (and most leaders of state-communism) was extremely authoritarian-socialist, Hitler was extremely authoritarian, but pretty much in the middle of the socialist-capitalist scale, while Pinochet (and to a lesser extent, Bush) was extremely autoriitarian-capitalist.
Most European leaders are moderately authoritarian-capitalist, pope John Paul II was probably moderate autoritarian-socialist, while people like the Dalai Lama, Ghandi and Nelson Mandela tend to be moderately libertarian-socialist (which is kinda where I like to be too). The American-style capitalist libertarians (Ayn Rand) are obviously in the libertarian-capitalist quarter.
Which is exactly why I like the US system so much, even though it is fashionable to pan it: Parlimentary systems increase the power of fringe minority groups. Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
I wouldn't exactly call the current US government a good example of moderation. And proportional representation systems only increase the power of fringe parties if the system is highly polarised and the big parties each have 40-49% of the seats. In contrast, Netherland usually has 3 big parties each with 20-33% of the seats, which means that almost all our governments are a coalition of two of those same three parties. This way you get a much more moderate system than with a US/UK style district system, without taking away the voice of the minority groups.
Basically the point is simply that you should have more than two big parties.
I agree. Apple's customer service is nothing special, and in many cases almost absent. Support for old products, for example, just isn't there.
My old iPod was 2nd generation, and after a while, the remote broke. So I went to buy a new remote, but since the introduction of a new connector plug for the remote (3rd gen, I think), the old remote had completely disappeared. I had to buy a new iPod if I wanted a new remote.
Years later, the earphone socket broke. Sounded like it should be easy to repair, but Apple simply doesn't repair old iPods. You can buy a new one at cost price if you like, but that's it. And it was just a bit too small for me to repair, so I ended up just buying a new iPod. Because you've got to hand it to them: their products are good.
Haggling is way better than in Morrowind where you had to haggle over every single item. Here you set "haggle level" per shopkeeper.
You don't have to haggle for every item in Morrowind. You can select a ton of different items to buy and sell, and then haggle over the entire deal in one go. I just started playing Morrowing and this was the first thing I figured out.
The grandparent was exactly right, and you are completely wrong. This is the socialist line of thinking that keeps people in poverty, keeps people dying, and is actively destroying hope where it exists.
I'm afraid you're the one who's completely wrong. Africa is not the result of governments taking care of their people. Sweden is. Western Europe is. Africa is the result of colonial powers serving only their own interests, followed by African leaders serving only their own interests, and the WTO serving western interests.
Infrastructure is not the problem. Education is not the problem. And most of all, money is not the problem. It is when we understand this that there is real hope.
Ignorance certainly is a problem. Could you expand on why Africa doesn't need education, infrastructure or money? Money (especially in the form of microcredits) is certainly already doing a lot of good there, and I find it hard to believe that illiteracy is not an obstacle to finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.
Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future.
"Africa's problem is that its leaders take care of their people"? If only that were true. The problem is that they don't. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, and economy, many African leaders invest mostly in a comfy life for themselves. If your line of reasoning were correct, Africa would have been a reasonably wealthy continent by now.
Well, you're partially right. One of the biggest reasons the African economy is struggling, is because Europe and the US are subsidising farmers to produce more food that we'll ever eat, and dumping the surplus below cost on the African market.
And free or cheap food from abroad means that the local farmers can't sell their products and go bankrupt. So in this case, we're paying money to keep them poor.
(And before you ask why African countries don't raise tariffs on imported food: they'd get in trouble with IMF, WTO or similar institutions if they did.)
As for the cheap laptops for developing countries, I support it exactly because it does provide opportunities and helps education.
Instead of a pirated version, get the version with the latest patch. Instead of using copy-protection, Stardock uses frequent patches and new features to reward paying customers. Chances are the pirated version is the release version, so you'll be missing out on lots of new features, including improved AI.
People should really look at what all this SF fuss is about: read what they ACTUALLY did and judge for yourself whether it's worthy of all this media attention. Hint: It's not.
He posted a link to illegal copies of a game that didn't use their protection, suggesting that this proved that lack of protection meant more piracy. Then someone else pointed out that he could just as easily post a link to pirated copies of games that do use StarForce. Then another employee of StarForce pointed out that doing so would be illegal and would get him banned from the forum.
Can you say "double standard"? Or, for that matter, "protection racket"?
Slashdot Mirror
How are they responsible for your house being on the line?
There's still nothing about your case that has anything to do with equal oportunities. You just had the bad luck of applying with a company that has a broken terminal and is slow to repair it. If you don't like it, apply at a company that's a bit better organised and is able to maintain their equipment. You'll probably be happier there anyway.
If Oracle bought SuSE, couldn't the SuSE team just start another distribution with the same underlaying content, but a different name?
Ofcourse they can, but to Oracle, the name is probably worth something too.
I always have a book or some other reading material with me. I don't mind doing some 45 minutes of reading. Does this mean I'm not a quitter? Does it mean I have no self respect? All it means is that I like to read.
Their test, like yours, sounds nice at first sight, but is totally meaningless if you think about it a bit more. Well, I suppose they get people who have patience, which can be useful for some jobs. You select for people who have no patience, which may be useful for other jobs. Other than that, the test says more about the employer than about the employee.
Are your LJ pages running on your PC? I don't think so. LJ has a server and needs to pay for it. I know the Google vs. Versatel case can be confusing, but this is definitely not the same.
The relevant clause:
2. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
This can't possibly be about users, for the simple fact that that would be completely unenforcable. As far as I know, LJ pages are normal, publicly accessible webpages not hidden behind passwords or anything (isn't that the whole point?), so visitors don't have to agree with the TOS. And besides, what are they going to do if they catch a visitor downloading the html but not the ad? Remember his ip and block him forever? How quickly will LiveJournal die if they block innocent visitors? This can only be about using CSS or javascript tricks to hide the ads.
Simple games can be hard. Complex games can be easy.
WHOA! You mean, that's ... that's ... a ...
Well, hell. I don't know if I should feel dirty or conned.
Why feel conned? She's a girl. She just can't get pregnant, but some people would consider that an advantage.
It IS a sci-fi based game, rather than a Tolkein-esque fantasy game, so the skins used asre different, but it's good fun.
I've got no problem with that. I think there are way too many fantasy CRPGs and way too few SF ones.
Check out the Nanomage Liberation Front for a good RP-only guild.
Thanks. I will.
The homophobic tendencies of WoW surely pale in comparison to Runescape.
That's good to know. I was actually considering to check out Runescape some time.
Are there any well behaved, preferably roleplay-oriented MMORPGs?
It's only a problem if you were hoping to have kids.
In all seriousness, I don't want to deal with homosexuality in an online game. /ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your gay agenda on the rest of us.
You do realise that this argument works just as much against you, don't you? You too can ignore users that say things you don't want to hear, without having to force an anti-gay agenda on anyone.
Why the hell is the military storing sensitive data on USB drives, which are prone to both theft and failure?
More importantly, why is the sensitive data not encrypted? You'd expect that people handling sensitive information receive some sort of training in how to handle that inofmration.
Alas, similar things have been happening in the Netherlands during the last couple of years: a public prosecutor throwing his PC with unencrypted info about criminal cases in the trash, a USB stick with sensitive military info left in a taxi, that sort of thing. And what I'm mainly upset about isn't even that people are sloppy with the hardware; that sort of thing can always happen (even if it shouldn't), but that they're not forced to use software that can only store their data in encrypted format.
I think the issue here is that ISPs and telco's are going to make your access to google slower if google doesn't pay them. They're confused about who their customers are, and seem to think google should pay them for access to me, while I'm already paying them for access to google.
It's a bit like commercial TV, where advertisers are the customers and viewers are the product.
Balance is a very complex issue. These guys are just focusing on the walking motion itself, and they've found a simpler and more effective way to do that.
And that's good, because let's face it: that big, shuffling, passive balance robot from Sony looks like crap.
Interesting column, but that's not what the problem is in Zimbabwe. The problem there is that Mugabe disowned the white farm owners and gave the farms to his own cronies, who didn't know a thing about running a big farm. General mismanagement, cronyism, and hunger for short term prestige are the real problems in Africa. They're problems everywhere in politics, but much, much more so in Africa.
But to get back to the subject at hand, I think cheap mass communication (controlled by the masses themselves in stead of national media companies) can help the people identify these problems and deal with them. And isn't that what a cheap laptop with wireless connection really is?
Looks like Segoe is Frutiger bold.
Many believe that the left-right, linear model of political ideology should be more of a ring - although this could mean people could become so far to the left in their ideology they suddenly become totalitarian dictators;
A ring would be even more simplistic than the linear model. Being very far to the left doesn't make you authoritarian, being authoritarian does. A much more useful model is a 2-dimensional one, with socialist-capitalist on one axis and libertarian-authoritarian on the other. Stalin (and most leaders of state-communism) was extremely authoritarian-socialist, Hitler was extremely authoritarian, but pretty much in the middle of the socialist-capitalist scale, while Pinochet (and to a lesser extent, Bush) was extremely autoriitarian-capitalist.
Most European leaders are moderately authoritarian-capitalist, pope John Paul II was probably moderate autoritarian-socialist, while people like the Dalai Lama, Ghandi and Nelson Mandela tend to be moderately libertarian-socialist (which is kinda where I like to be too). The American-style capitalist libertarians (Ayn Rand) are obviously in the libertarian-capitalist quarter.
Which is exactly why I like the US system so much, even though it is fashionable to pan it: Parlimentary systems increase the power of fringe minority groups. Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
I wouldn't exactly call the current US government a good example of moderation. And proportional representation systems only increase the power of fringe parties if the system is highly polarised and the big parties each have 40-49% of the seats. In contrast, Netherland usually has 3 big parties each with 20-33% of the seats, which means that almost all our governments are a coalition of two of those same three parties. This way you get a much more moderate system than with a US/UK style district system, without taking away the voice of the minority groups.
Basically the point is simply that you should have more than two big parties.
I agree. Apple's customer service is nothing special, and in many cases almost absent. Support for old products, for example, just isn't there. My old iPod was 2nd generation, and after a while, the remote broke. So I went to buy a new remote, but since the introduction of a new connector plug for the remote (3rd gen, I think), the old remote had completely disappeared. I had to buy a new iPod if I wanted a new remote. Years later, the earphone socket broke. Sounded like it should be easy to repair, but Apple simply doesn't repair old iPods. You can buy a new one at cost price if you like, but that's it. And it was just a bit too small for me to repair, so I ended up just buying a new iPod. Because you've got to hand it to them: their products are good.
Haggling is way better than in Morrowind where you had to haggle over every single item. Here you set "haggle level" per shopkeeper.
You don't have to haggle for every item in Morrowind. You can select a ton of different items to buy and sell, and then haggle over the entire deal in one go. I just started playing Morrowing and this was the first thing I figured out.
The grandparent was exactly right, and you are completely wrong. This is the socialist line of thinking that keeps people in poverty, keeps people dying, and is actively destroying hope where it exists.
I'm afraid you're the one who's completely wrong. Africa is not the result of governments taking care of their people. Sweden is. Western Europe is. Africa is the result of colonial powers serving only their own interests, followed by African leaders serving only their own interests, and the WTO serving western interests.
Infrastructure is not the problem. Education is not the problem. And most of all, money is not the problem. It is when we understand this that there is real hope.
Ignorance certainly is a problem. Could you expand on why Africa doesn't need education, infrastructure or money? Money (especially in the form of microcredits) is certainly already doing a lot of good there, and I find it hard to believe that illiteracy is not an obstacle to finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.
Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future.
"Africa's problem is that its leaders take care of their people"? If only that were true. The problem is that they don't. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, and economy, many African leaders invest mostly in a comfy life for themselves. If your line of reasoning were correct, Africa would have been a reasonably wealthy continent by now.
Well, you're partially right. One of the biggest reasons the African economy is struggling, is because Europe and the US are subsidising farmers to produce more food that we'll ever eat, and dumping the surplus below cost on the African market. And free or cheap food from abroad means that the local farmers can't sell their products and go bankrupt. So in this case, we're paying money to keep them poor. (And before you ask why African countries don't raise tariffs on imported food: they'd get in trouble with IMF, WTO or similar institutions if they did.)
As for the cheap laptops for developing countries, I support it exactly because it does provide opportunities and helps education.
Instead of a pirated version, get the version with the latest patch. Instead of using copy-protection, Stardock uses frequent patches and new features to reward paying customers. Chances are the pirated version is the release version, so you'll be missing out on lots of new features, including improved AI.
People should really look at what all this SF fuss is about: read what they ACTUALLY did and judge for yourself whether it's worthy of all this media attention. Hint: It's not.
He posted a link to illegal copies of a game that didn't use their protection, suggesting that this proved that lack of protection meant more piracy. Then someone else pointed out that he could just as easily post a link to pirated copies of games that do use StarForce. Then another employee of StarForce pointed out that doing so would be illegal and would get him banned from the forum.
Can you say "double standard"? Or, for that matter, "protection racket"?