The correct response is for people who disagree with NetBenefit's position to simply not do business with them. Don't waste your time whining to the CEO, write to their other customers. If I were a NetBenefit customer I sure wouldn't be for long. Let the market punish them!
Just start sending complaints against every site they host claiming that something Defamatory might appear there in the future. When they solicit all of their customers for a note from a lawyer assuring them that this won't happen most of their customers will get a new hosting company instead of pay out 5K for the note.
I thought that 'glass flow' was a myth and that the reason that old windows are thicker at the base is a result of imprecise manufacturing processes ~400 years ago. If you made a sheet of glass that was thicker on one side, which side would you put at the bottom of the window?
Anyone know about glass flow that can confirm/deny this?
It's not a COMPLETE myth, but Glass won't flow at room temperature. My father used to do construction and demolition and renovations and such. I was helping him out at the site of a fire in an older house, and the windows were visibly melted, they LOOKED as if they were flowing liquid. So I imagine that's where some of the myths about glass being a liquid comes from. People see older burned out houses with melted glass and don't think about the fire having melted it.
Problem is that sales taxes are regressive, and it's difficult to have tax deductions for things like charitable contributions or mortgage interest. These might not be insurmountable problems, if we taxed the sale of different goods at different rates, kept (or even raised) the capital gains tax when we dropped the taxes on labor income, and issued some sort of tax credit vouchers; but it would be complicated. Of course, so are income taxes.
How about not taxing staples on a national level? Things like Bread, Milk, Flower, Sugar, basic necessities (sp) would be taxed at a maximum 5% rate on the state level, and have no federal sales tax. While items between 100$ and 15,000$ would get a 5% federal and a 5% state, and Items over 15,000% would get a 10% federal and a 10% state? That way the wealthy would pay a higher percentage, but still probably less than they do now. Though I imagine that would encourage the VERY rich to purchase things overseas.... Hrmm.. Then again, the VERY rich don't pay anything in income taxes either after their tax lawyers and accountants get done with it.
Well, how about if the state simply raises business taxes, and then the web retailer jacks their prices up an amount that is exactly proportional to the state sales tax? Because if I'm a state govt, and I see my revenue swimming away out of state, I need to do something about it... Sales tax only works when it can be charged, and states need to pay for things like police/fire/EMT services somehow. You are using the resources of the state, in an indirect fashion - the retailer brings truckloads of widgets down the road to their warehouse, thereby putting wear and tear on the road. They are relying on the state to provide fire/police/EMT services. When you buy widgets from the retailer, you've used up a portion of the road, a portion of the emergency services, a portion of the state regulatory agency's time, etc. All because the state has to interact with the retailer. When you look at sales tax, it's really not that big a deal. -begin rant- Seeing people bitch (and I don't mean to single you out, you're just the one I'm replying to) about a few percent like this makes me sick when there are things like homelessness, hunger, and illeteracy that that small bit of sales tax might resolve. Why is everyone so fscking greedy, hmm? Part with your money, go out and live life instead of worrying. Be nice and generous and happy and you'll find that what goes around comes around.
Ok, I'm looking at my last paycheck, and right here, in two different places, I am being taxed, one is Federal, and one is State. Now, I'm going to go out and buy lunch today with money from my paycheck, and that will get taxed 5% (maryland has a low sales tax), and in about a month the feds are going to be asking for yet another chunk of my paycheck, just in case they missed something. Now, maybe I'll get some money back, and maybe not. But Either way I say get rid of one of those taxes. My personal preference would be to get taxed for what I buy, only. Push the sales tax to a 5% Federal Sales Tax, and then whatever the state sales tax is. Everyone pays the sales tax of their home state when they order something online, and that tax is given to that state. Now get rid of all income taxes. There, everyone will be much happier, and much more prosperous.
This sounds like a troll to me. Paul Verhoeven was in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. He and his family were up against walls.
The movie is a parody of the ridiculous book. Yes, I read it. No, I don't like Heinlein. He was a blowhard.
Verhoeven has much more talent than Heinlein ever did -- but it's harder to see that talent, because you have to actually think when you watch his movies, rather than sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein.
Are you SURE you read it? There's no sex scene in the book you jackass. Heinlen was an excellent writer, that doesn't require that you like him, but at least acknowledge his talent.
I saw it with three friends on the day it opened, at a Sony Theatre in New York. To get to NYC, I we had all taken off our once-in-3-weeks day off from our jobs as camp counselors in Lancaster, PA to drive there. The friend who sat next to me and I started laughing almost from the first minute, and we didn't understand why the people around us weren't also laughing. We met up with the other two friends, who said "Hey, that was pretty good, eh?" Our shock was magnified when we realized those two didn't find anything bothersome about the nutty, nutty plot points which were not incidental but *vital* to the outcome.
You weren't supposed to be paying attention to the plot! you were supposed to be watching the big colored explosions and oohing and aahing at the neat forcefield effect on the alien ships. What are you trying to do? Ruin the movie industry with your nitpicking over whether a Powerbook would be able to interface with the alien mothership and infect the completely incompatible computer with a Mac virus? Yeesh, philistine!
Weird:p I was born Jul 8 1980 in the middle of a summer storm. (kidding it was hot as hades in GA)
I was born in Ga.>:) Athens to be specific. Apparently that was a terrible year for weather, snow storms that winter and drought that summer. Lots of fun!
At work we suffered from the bug in old Sun JDKs (old is JDK 1.2.1 and JDK 1.3Beta which came out just a couple of months ago). Our applications all gave date ParseExceptions and we had to advance the clocks to March 1.
Just for the record, our database here at work has also crashed hard and won't seem to come back up. Though I can't say if it's related to the date or not.
That's all the newspapers need to know. They need to stop cowtowing to corporate sponsors, they need to quit toeing the line for the government. They need to go out, INVESTIGATE, and report. Newspapers will NEVER be able to update as fast as other info sources can, so they need to specialize in reporting the meat and reporting it right the first time. Find out about the corrupt lockheed engineer that took 2 million in bribes from the chinese to screw up the mars lander, etc... etc... That's what we want. We want to know what REALLY happened in Somalia when those 'Peace Keepers' were in there. We want pictures, we want info. If we can't get it from a newspaper we'll get it from the 'net. The 'net has the advantage of a blazing fast response time, so the newspapers will have to overcome that by providing more QUALITY. I don't give a shit which celebrity got caught speeding last week. Tell me who just discovered what 3 identified genes do and how to control them!!
There is actually a fourth way to store it as well, though it's similar to your second option. You can store hydrogen in a steel container that is filled with honeycombed carbon. And it will hold a LOT more than a regular non honeycombed container. I think the difficult part in that instance is how to release the hydrogen when it's needed since it's not under much pressure.
Other jobs which bring the average down include part-time hamburger-flippers at McDonalds (which are considered service sector jobs), the plumber who comes over and fixes your drain (another service sector job), and the woman you hire to sit your pets when you go on vacation.
Where the HELL do you get your plumbers? I need to call that place! Every plummer I'VE ever seen makes like 3 or 4 times what I do. Most plumbers make UNGODLY hourly cash.
By the way, my father's in construction (and non-union, unfortunately), and trust me, his work does *NOT* stay separate from the rest of his life. He recieves faxes and pages at 10:30pm, and has to review plans and price quotes during dinnertime. And furthermore, he has chronic back problems to deal with, along with strong classist attitudes from the people he works for.
My father is also in construction, also deals with chronic back pain, and also has a lot of work to do at home. He started out at 15 or 16 on construction jobs and moved up, by the time he was 25 or so he had his own building crew and was building houses from the ground up including plumbing and electric, now he is a building supervisor for a VERY large construction company. I'm 19 years old, I moved to Baltimore for an entry level tech job. I make as much money as he does and I'm about to get a raise. Even if you adjust for the 20% increase in the cost of living between Georgia and Maryland that's just rediculous. He works harder and more hours than I do, does a more mentally and physically taxing job, and is horribly under paid and under appreciated. Some things are just weird... But BECAUSE of that, I chose not to go into construction, I spent many summers pouring concrete and framing houses with him and learned to hate physical labor with a passion. So here I am in the tech support field about to turn 20 and about to be making more cash than my father....
This oddly coincides with the fact that I have to come in to work at 2am friday/saturday in order to work on a critical production system that can't be shut down at any other time. I'm salaried, so I don't get paid for the 6 hours I'll be here working on the thing. But at least this isn't the weekend I was going to JohnCon... Have fun everybody! I'm going straight from Work, to a magic the gathering tournament, and back to work! >:)
No, I didn't mean you can't speak up, obviously you can do that all you want, in accordance with what I said earlier. I meant two things by that, the first was that I don't want you (in the general sense) trying to take away peoples rights, such as the right to an abortion, the right to have the same rights as everyone else (wrt same sex marriages). The second was just personal, that when people hassle me about this stuff, its agitating. You can talk all you want, but I'm not promising that I'm going to listen to the same stuff over and over again.
And I'm not being hypocritical about rights, the religious right is the group trying to take away liberties, or in some cases fail to grant them in the first place.
The religious right doesn't have the power to take away any liberties or grant any. If you don't belong to a church don't automatically expect that churche to acknowledge you're marriage. If you have a non-religious ceremony don't expect religious people to acknowledge it. Because to them you aren't married. That doesn't affect how YOU act though. They can't stop people from having abortions either (though some of the loony fundamentalists seem to be willing to kill the doctor, the mother, her friends and anyone else in the name of saving the baby, which is just sick and sad.) but they can try to convince the mother that an abortion is a bad choice. I don't understand where you get the idea that any religion can alter your fundamental rights as a human being.... I have the right to kneel down in the middle of the hall in a school and pray out loud to any god I choose, be it Cthulu or the christian God. No one in that hall is forced to listen to me, or pay attention. If someone tries to tell me I CAN'T do that, then my rights are being infringed.
That wouldn't be like believing in god or anything would it?
Maybe for some people. But there are people who have taken great pains to be sure that their faith is grounded solidly in the evidence they see around them. You see, the existence of God can not be conclusively proven or disproven, however the proper placement of a semicolon CAN be verified without ambiguity. As can the actual nature of a computer program.
I would love freedom from religion, but I'm not pushing for it, since it goes against my ideals. You can practice your religion, but keep it the hell away from me. The hypocracy in religion (esp. christinaity) is sickening... We all can probably think of a million examples of it.
I am also quite left wing ( I don't know about extream) and I think that people ought to be able to do pretty much anything they want, as long as it doesn't violate other peoples rights. So be religious if you want to be, I'm not going to commend you for it, I think it's for the weak. But don't push anti-abortion shit on me, don't push prayer in school on me, don't push lame-ass propaganda on me, don't fail to recognize same-sex marriages, etc, etc...
Sooo... What you're saying is that you have the right to express pro-abortion, anti prayer, pro same sex marriage views, but we shouldn't have the right to express any kind of opposing views unless we do so privately?
What if I'm completely non religious and STILL think Abortion is WRONG? What If I think homosexuality is disgusting and wrong, yet have no religious affiliation whatsoever, can I express that view then? What about religious people who agree with you, are they 'ok'?
Don't be such a hypocritical ASS. Either shut your mouth or stop complaining about the rest of us speaking up. It's all or nothing here, you can either listen to us or not, but you can't stop us from speaking.
It is 100% nurture, 0% nature. If you doubt that, then please explain why the religion of the child is so closely related to its upbringing:-)
Therefore I suggest the onus is on religious people to explain the anomaly of having acquired religion, whether christian, buddhist, or atheist.
And there are alternatives to being EITHER religious OR an atheist. I am areligious. I simply have no religion. It is not a part of my life. I don't care what you believe for or against.
If there are no gods, then I have lost nothing.
If there are gods, then they are either good gods or bad gods.
Good gods won't punish me for being as they made me, so it does no harm to not bow down to them.
Actually, it's as much nature as nurture to believe in a power beyond ones self. If it weren't then no one would believe in any kind of God because the concept would never have arisen. To believe blindly in something seems to be the anathema of Geekdom. So why do you blindly believe there is no God? Maybe I'm just a control freak, but I have though about it , researched it, discussed it, spent MANY years of my life trying to figure out whether there is a God or not and if so how God interacts with Earth. My conclusion was that Random Chance was insufficient to create me, hence God must exist. I feel that Gods interaction on Earth is minimal. I don't believe that any organized religion on earth has it exactly right, but I have chosen to go along with a semi baptist christian view because I found that I liked most of their ideas, I like the people I've met who ascribe to those beliefs and I've met people who were able to very effectively demonstrate WHY they believed. I've never met an Atheist who could conclusively prove anything to me, nor to whom I could conclusively prove anything. And since Atheists are always the ones who are crying for proof one would think they had some. But instead it turned out that his religion was called Science and his priests wore lab coats and his gods where named chaos and entropy. He could show me now proof that these things actually existed, but the scientists had told him so, so it must be true.
the appropriateness and inappropriateness of war if you beleive that killing people can ever be 'appropriate', then you have been brainwashed. the most basic tenet of any real moral philosophy is the sanctity of human life. it makes the US look foolish on the world stage when they say to milosevic et al. "don't kill people, killing people is a bad bad thing! hell, we think it's such a bad thing, we are going to send OUR army in and kill YOUR people. basically, they are saying "we will teach you not to kill by killing."... tha's like 'fucking for virginity'... it just makes no sense.
we are the defacto policeman of the world heh, tha's a good one. so basically, the US is hypocritical once again: by this logic, you have completely destroyed the notion of the soveriegn nation-state. so when the US complains about unfair trade practices or illegal immigrants, they are coming from the standpoint of: we can go anywhere in the world and do anything to anyone we want, but if anybody tries to do that to us, well, we'll just have to kill/sanction/brainwash them.
reduce the cost of war (in terms of casulties on both our side and theirs) how is training your army to be more effective at killing going to reduce the number of casualties, you nitwit! it might reduce the financial cost of war for you, but tha's about it.
you are going to have two choices why only two? you mean only two that you can think of... there's things like diplomacy, sanctions, the UN war crimes tribunal, etc. now, i don't have a problem if some highly highly skilled commandos capture these murderers so that they can stand trial in a court of law (what a new-age thought!) but, again, fighting to end some fighting makes you look like an idiot.
But having the biggest and baddest army in the world maximizes the chance that when I go to sleep tonight, death squads won't break into my house and murder my wife as she sleeps next to me. well, this is just wrong again. it is not your army that protects you from domestic deathsquads (i didn't know that was a problem in the states, i guess i'll have to look for them next time i'm down there), it would be your local police dept, as far as i can tell. of course, if you were a little more widely read even of your own citizens' writing, you would know that many of the worst deathsquads in history were armed and trained by the US military. grab some chomsky and re-assess your ideas of the nation-state.
I think you misunderstand some basic tenants of human thought. You can not tell Milosovic, 'Excuse me, we rather disapprove of you slaughtering thousands of people over there, could you please stop?' and expect him to stop. So unless you plan on selectively eliminating every human that has a potential for violence from the gene pool (which must necessarily involve violence and is usually classified as Genocide since it would end the human race) we will have violent people that must be opposed. And as nice as it is to believe that laying down in the street in front of a few dozen tanks is going to make a HUGE difference, if the driver of the tank just runs you down you're screwed.
As for Capturing people like milosovic, how exactly do you expect to do that without violence? The man doesn't just stroll down the street by himself.
I suggest you give up your hopelessly naive world view and whiny apologistic philosophy and go take a look at what REALLY happens when a violent person is given free reign to do what they will.
Microsoft is massive. Compaq is massive. AOL and IBM are massive. VA Linux is not massive. It's got a real pretty stock going, but it's not massive. No offense to VA, because you're right - they are a legit company.
But why would this (now) be a time for them to step in for DeCSS? Are you just suggesting this because they happen to have a lot of money?
They just stepped into a very public position by purchasing one of the major voices of the open source community. They have a lot of liquid cash around from that stock offering I imagine, and they have the resources necessary to help defend DeCSS. Prior to this purchase they were somewhat distanced from the conflict, but now they are pretty much squarely in the middle of it considering that their new acquisition has been named as a defendent in the case.
Now, Andover has been bought out by VA, well great. Now the "leading opensource news site" is owned by $5 billion corporation that has a vested intrest in promoting its services above others. Fantastic.
A couple days ago CmndrTaco said that it was "funny" that Time was reporting on AOL's jacked up AOL 5.0. Will it be 'funny' now when slashdot reports on VA's screwups? Or will VA just never make screwups, is that it?
Ever hear of journalistic independence? I guess not.
I think this is a valid concern, in my mind Slashdot is no longer to be trusted as an actual NEWS site, but only as a Tech site. I'll get my news the way I did before Slashdot, by skimming through all of the mainstream sites here and over seas. I'll still come here for some tech news, but I don't think we can trust any technology reviews anymore. Either they will skew the results in favor of their parent companies when possible or skew the results the OTHER way so as not to look like they are skewing in favor of their parent co. I fully suspect VA to assign a couple of editors to the site to make sure that the stories are approved of, no matter what they say.
Slashdot Mirror
The correct response is for people who disagree with NetBenefit's position to simply not do business with them. Don't waste your time whining to the CEO, write to their other customers. If I were a NetBenefit customer I sure wouldn't be for long. Let the market punish them!
Just start sending complaints against every site they host claiming that something Defamatory might appear there in the future. When they solicit all of their customers for a note from a lawyer assuring them that this won't happen most of their customers will get a new hosting company instead of pay out 5K for the note.
Kintanon
I thought that 'glass flow' was a myth and that the reason that old windows are thicker at the base is a result of imprecise manufacturing processes ~400 years ago. If you made a sheet of glass that was thicker on one side, which side would you put at the bottom of the window?
Anyone know about glass flow that can confirm/deny this?
It's not a COMPLETE myth, but Glass won't flow at room temperature. My father used to do construction and demolition and renovations and such. I was helping him out at the site of a fire in an older house, and the windows were visibly melted, they LOOKED as if they were flowing liquid. So I imagine that's where some of the myths about glass being a liquid comes from. People see older burned out houses with melted glass and don't think about the fire having melted it.
Kintanon
Problem is that sales taxes are regressive, and it's difficult to have tax deductions for things like charitable contributions or mortgage interest.
These might not be insurmountable problems, if we taxed the sale of different goods at different rates, kept (or even raised) the capital gains tax when we dropped the taxes on labor income, and issued some sort of tax credit vouchers; but it would be complicated. Of course, so are income taxes.
How about not taxing staples on a national level? Things like Bread, Milk, Flower, Sugar, basic necessities (sp) would be taxed at a maximum 5% rate on the state level, and have no federal sales tax. While items between 100$ and 15,000$ would get a 5% federal and a 5% state, and Items over 15,000% would get a 10% federal and a 10% state? That way the wealthy would pay a higher percentage, but still probably less than they do now. Though I imagine that would encourage the VERY rich to purchase things overseas.... Hrmm.. Then again, the VERY rich don't pay anything in income taxes either after their tax lawyers and accountants get done with it.
Kintanon
Well, how about if the state simply raises business taxes, and then the web retailer jacks their prices up an amount that is exactly proportional to the state sales tax? Because if I'm a state govt, and I see my revenue swimming away out of state, I need to do something about it... Sales tax only works when it can be charged, and states need to pay for things like police/fire/EMT services somehow. You are using the resources of the state, in an indirect fashion - the retailer brings truckloads of widgets down the road to their warehouse, thereby putting wear and tear on the road. They are relying on the state to provide fire/police/EMT services. When you buy widgets from the retailer, you've used up a portion of the road, a portion of the emergency services, a portion of the state regulatory agency's time, etc. All because the state has to interact with the retailer. When you look at sales tax, it's really not that big a deal. -begin rant- Seeing people bitch (and I don't mean to single you out, you're just the one I'm replying to) about a few percent like this makes me sick when there are things like homelessness, hunger, and illeteracy that that small bit of sales tax might resolve. Why is everyone so fscking greedy, hmm? Part with your money, go out and live life instead of worrying. Be nice and generous and happy and you'll find that what goes around comes around.
Ok, I'm looking at my last paycheck, and right here, in two different places, I am being taxed, one is Federal, and one is State. Now, I'm going to go out and buy lunch today with money from my paycheck, and that will get taxed 5% (maryland has a low sales tax), and in about a month the feds are going to be asking for yet another chunk of my paycheck, just in case they missed something. Now, maybe I'll get some money back, and maybe not. But Either way I say get rid of one of those taxes. My personal preference would be to get taxed for what I buy, only. Push the sales tax to a 5% Federal Sales Tax, and then whatever the state sales tax is. Everyone pays the sales tax of their home state when they order something online, and that tax is given to that state. Now get rid of all income taxes. There, everyone will be much happier, and much more prosperous.
Kintanon
This sounds like a troll to me. Paul Verhoeven was in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. He and his family were up against walls.
The movie is a parody of the ridiculous book. Yes, I read it. No, I don't like Heinlein. He was a blowhard.
Verhoeven has much more talent than Heinlein ever did -- but it's harder to see that talent, because you have to actually think when you watch his movies, rather than sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein.
Are you SURE you read it? There's no sex scene in the book you jackass. Heinlen was an excellent writer, that doesn't require that you like him, but at least acknowledge his talent.
Kintanon
I saw it with three friends on the day it opened, at a Sony Theatre in New York. To get to NYC, I we had all taken off our once-in-3-weeks day off from our jobs as camp counselors in Lancaster, PA to drive there. The friend who sat next to me and I started laughing almost from the first minute, and we didn't understand why the people around us weren't also laughing. We met up with the other two friends, who said "Hey, that was pretty good, eh?" Our shock was magnified when we realized those two didn't find anything bothersome about the nutty, nutty plot points which were not incidental but *vital* to the outcome.
You weren't supposed to be paying attention to the plot! you were supposed to be watching the big colored explosions and oohing and aahing at the neat forcefield effect on the alien ships. What are you trying to do? Ruin the movie industry with your nitpicking over whether a Powerbook would be able to interface with the alien mothership and infect the completely incompatible computer with a Mac virus? Yeesh, philistine!
Kintanon
Weird :p I was born Jul 8 1980 in the middle of a summer storm. (kidding it was hot as hades in GA)
I was born in Ga.>:) Athens to be specific.
Apparently that was a terrible year for weather, snow storms that winter and drought that summer.
Lots of fun!
Kintanon
At work we suffered from the bug in old Sun JDKs (old is JDK 1.2.1 and JDK 1.3Beta which came out just a couple of months ago). Our applications all gave date ParseExceptions and we had to advance the clocks to March 1.
Just for the record, our database here at work has also crashed hard and won't seem to come back up. Though I can't say if it's related to the date or not.
Kintanon
Just for the record, I was born on Feb 29, 1980 in the middle of a massive snowstorm.
So today is my 5th birthday. Everyone send me a present!
Kintanon
TRUTH!
When do we want it?
NOW!
That's all the newspapers need to know. They need to stop cowtowing to corporate sponsors, they need to quit toeing the line for the government. They need to go out, INVESTIGATE, and report. Newspapers will NEVER be able to update as fast as other info sources can, so they need to specialize in reporting the meat and reporting it right the first time. Find out about the corrupt lockheed engineer that took 2 million in bribes from the chinese to screw up the mars lander, etc... etc... That's what we want.
We want to know what REALLY happened in Somalia when those 'Peace Keepers' were in there. We want pictures, we want info. If we can't get it from a newspaper we'll get it from the 'net. The 'net has the advantage of a blazing fast response time, so the newspapers will have to overcome that by providing more QUALITY. I don't give a shit which celebrity got caught speeding last week. Tell me who just discovered what 3 identified genes do and how to control them!!
Kintanon
There is actually a fourth way to store it as well, though it's similar to your second option. You can store hydrogen in a steel container that is filled with honeycombed carbon. And it will hold a LOT more than a regular non honeycombed container. I think the difficult part in that instance is how to release the hydrogen when it's needed since it's not under much pressure.
Kintanon
Other jobs which bring the average down include part-time hamburger-flippers at McDonalds (which are considered service sector jobs), the plumber who comes over and fixes your drain (another service sector job), and the woman you hire to sit your pets when you go on vacation.
Where the HELL do you get your plumbers? I need to call that place! Every plummer I'VE ever seen makes like 3 or 4 times what I do. Most plumbers make UNGODLY hourly cash.
Kintanon
By the way, my father's in construction (and non-union, unfortunately), and trust me, his work does *NOT* stay separate from the rest of his life. He recieves faxes and pages at 10:30pm, and has to review plans and price quotes during dinnertime. And furthermore, he has chronic back problems to deal with, along with strong classist attitudes from the people he works for.
My father is also in construction, also deals with chronic back pain, and also has a lot of work to do at home. He started out at 15 or 16 on construction jobs and moved up, by the time he was 25 or so he had his own building crew and was building houses from the ground up including plumbing and electric, now he is a building supervisor for a VERY large construction company.
I'm 19 years old, I moved to Baltimore for an entry level tech job. I make as much money as he does and I'm about to get a raise. Even if you adjust for the 20% increase in the cost of living between Georgia and Maryland that's just rediculous. He works harder and more hours than I do, does a more mentally and physically taxing job, and is horribly under paid and under appreciated. Some things are just weird...
But BECAUSE of that, I chose not to go into construction, I spent many summers pouring concrete and framing houses with him and learned to hate physical labor with a passion. So here I am in the tech support field about to turn 20 and about to be making more cash than my father....
Kintanon
This oddly coincides with the fact that I have to come in to work at 2am friday/saturday in order to work on a critical production system that can't be shut down at any other time. I'm salaried, so I don't get paid for the 6 hours I'll be here working on the thing. But at least this isn't the weekend I was going to JohnCon...
Have fun everybody! I'm going straight from Work, to a magic the gathering tournament, and back to work! >:)
Kintanon
but I can't understand collecting anything flat that doesn't have a casting cost.
So Taco plays Magic? How excellent, I imagine with his millions he's managed to collect all the nice jewelry and everything. Go Taco! >:)
No, I didn't mean you can't speak up, obviously you can do that all you want, in accordance with what I said earlier. I meant two things by that, the first was that I don't want you (in the general sense) trying to take away peoples rights, such as the right to an abortion, the right to have the same rights as everyone else (wrt same sex marriages). The second was just personal, that when people hassle me about this stuff, its agitating. You can talk all you want, but I'm not promising that I'm going to listen to the same stuff over and over again.
And I'm not being hypocritical about rights, the religious right is the group trying to take away liberties, or in some cases fail to grant them in the first place.
The religious right doesn't have the power to take away any liberties or grant any. If you don't belong to a church don't automatically expect that churche to acknowledge you're marriage. If you have a non-religious ceremony don't expect religious people to acknowledge it. Because to them you aren't married. That doesn't affect how YOU act though. They can't stop people from having abortions either (though some of the loony fundamentalists seem to be willing to kill the doctor, the mother, her friends and anyone else in the name of saving the baby, which is just sick and sad.) but they can try to convince the mother that an abortion is a bad choice. I don't understand where you get the idea that any religion can alter your fundamental rights as a human being.... I have the right to kneel down in the middle of the hall in a school and pray out loud to any god I choose, be it Cthulu or the christian God. No one in that hall is forced to listen to me, or pay attention. If someone tries to tell me I CAN'T do that, then my rights are being infringed.
Kintanon
Edison and Marconi, on the other hand, do not have a unit named after them
Yeah, but Marconi has that pasta named after him, you can't get much more recognition than being the CHEESIEST! >:)
Kintanon
you mean like faith?
That wouldn't be like believing in god or anything would it?
Maybe for some people. But there are people who have taken great pains to be sure that their faith is grounded solidly in the evidence they see around them. You see, the existence of God can not be conclusively proven or disproven, however the proper placement of a semicolon CAN be verified without ambiguity. As can the actual nature of a computer program.
Kintanon
I would love freedom from religion, but I'm not pushing for it, since it goes against my ideals. You can practice your religion, but keep it the hell away from me. The hypocracy in religion (esp. christinaity) is sickening... We all can probably think of a million examples of it.
I am also quite left wing ( I don't know about extream) and I think that people ought to be able to do pretty much anything they want, as long as it doesn't violate other peoples rights. So be religious if you want to be, I'm not going to commend you for it, I think it's for the weak. But don't push anti-abortion shit on me, don't push prayer in school on me, don't push lame-ass propaganda on me, don't fail to recognize same-sex marriages, etc, etc...
Sooo... What you're saying is that you have the right to express pro-abortion, anti prayer, pro same sex marriage views, but we shouldn't have the right to express any kind of opposing views unless we do so privately?
What if I'm completely non religious and STILL think Abortion is WRONG? What If I think homosexuality is disgusting and wrong, yet have no religious affiliation whatsoever, can I express that view then? What about religious people who agree with you, are they 'ok'?
Don't be such a hypocritical ASS. Either shut your mouth or stop complaining about the rest of us speaking up. It's all or nothing here, you can either listen to us or not, but you can't stop us from speaking.
Kintanon
It is 100% nurture, 0% nature. If you doubt that, then please explain why the religion of the child is so closely related to its upbringing :-)
Therefore I suggest the onus is on religious people to explain the anomaly of having acquired religion, whether christian, buddhist, or atheist.
And there are alternatives to being EITHER religious OR an atheist. I am areligious. I simply have no religion. It is not a part of my life. I don't care what you believe for or against.
If there are no gods, then I have lost nothing.
If there are gods, then they are either good gods or bad gods.
Good gods won't punish me for being as they made me, so it does no harm to not bow down to them.
Actually, it's as much nature as nurture to believe in a power beyond ones self. If it weren't then no one would believe in any kind of God because the concept would never have arisen. To believe blindly in something seems to be the anathema of Geekdom. So why do you blindly believe there is no God? Maybe I'm just a control freak, but I have though about it , researched it, discussed it, spent MANY years of my life trying to figure out whether there is a God or not and if so how God interacts with Earth. My conclusion was that Random Chance was insufficient to create me, hence God must exist. I feel that Gods interaction on Earth is minimal.
I don't believe that any organized religion on earth has it exactly right, but I have chosen to go along with a semi baptist christian view because I found that I liked most of their ideas, I like the people I've met who ascribe to those beliefs and I've met people who were able to very effectively demonstrate WHY they believed.
I've never met an Atheist who could conclusively prove anything to me, nor to whom I could conclusively prove anything. And since Atheists are always the ones who are crying for proof one would think they had some. But instead it turned out that his religion was called Science and his priests wore lab coats and his gods where named chaos and entropy. He could show me now proof that these things actually existed, but the scientists had told him so, so it must be true.
Kintanon
Re-evaluate your view of life.
Do you ever bother to verify the technical points in your articles or do you just go with what you believe to be true without any supporting evidence?
Kintanon
For those of you who need to find the Long/Lat of a place in order to use this thing try this site:
http://www.mit.edu:8001/geo
It will find longitude and latitude of cities, specific addresses, and various other things.
Kintanon
the appropriateness and inappropriateness of war if you beleive that killing people can ever be 'appropriate', then you have been brainwashed. the most basic tenet of any real moral philosophy is the sanctity of human life. it makes the US look foolish on the world stage when they say to milosevic et al. "don't kill people, killing people is a bad bad thing! hell, we think it's such a bad thing, we are going to send OUR army in and kill YOUR people. basically, they are saying "we will teach you not to kill by killing."... tha's like 'fucking for virginity'... it just makes no sense.
we are the defacto policeman of the world heh, tha's a good one. so basically, the US is hypocritical once again: by this logic, you have completely destroyed the notion of the soveriegn nation-state. so when the US complains about unfair trade practices or illegal immigrants, they are coming from the standpoint of: we can go anywhere in the world and do anything to anyone we want, but if anybody tries to do that to us, well, we'll just have to kill/sanction/brainwash them.
reduce the cost of war (in terms of casulties on both our side and theirs) how is training your army to be more effective at killing going to reduce the number of casualties, you nitwit! it might reduce the financial cost of war for you, but tha's about it.
you are going to have two choices why only two? you mean only two that you can think of... there's things like diplomacy, sanctions, the UN war crimes tribunal, etc. now, i don't have a problem if some highly highly skilled commandos capture these murderers so that they can stand trial in a court of law (what a new-age thought!) but, again, fighting to end some fighting makes you look like an idiot.
But having the biggest and baddest army in the world maximizes the chance that when I go to sleep tonight, death squads won't break into my house and murder my wife as she sleeps next to me. well, this is just wrong again. it is not your army that protects you from domestic deathsquads (i didn't know that was a problem in the states, i guess i'll have to look for them next time i'm down there), it would be your local police dept, as far as i can tell. of course, if you were a little more widely read even of your own citizens' writing, you would know that many of the worst deathsquads in history were armed and trained by the US military. grab some chomsky and re-assess your ideas of the nation-state.
I think you misunderstand some basic tenants of human thought. You can not tell Milosovic, 'Excuse me, we rather disapprove of you slaughtering thousands of people over there, could you please stop?' and expect him to stop. So unless you plan on selectively eliminating every human that has a potential for violence from the gene pool (which must necessarily involve violence and is usually classified as Genocide since it would end the human race) we will have violent people that must be opposed. And as nice as it is to believe that laying down in the street in front of a few dozen tanks is going to make a HUGE difference, if the driver of the tank just runs you down you're screwed.
As for Capturing people like milosovic, how exactly do you expect to do that without violence? The man doesn't just stroll down the street by himself.
I suggest you give up your hopelessly naive world view and whiny apologistic philosophy and go take a look at what REALLY happens when a violent person is given free reign to do what they will.
Kintanon
Microsoft is massive. Compaq is massive. AOL and IBM are massive. VA Linux is not massive. It's got a real pretty stock going, but it's not massive. No offense to VA, because you're right - they are a legit company.
But why would this (now) be a time for them to step in for DeCSS? Are you just suggesting this because they happen to have a lot of money?
They just stepped into a very public position by purchasing one of the major voices of the open source community. They have a lot of liquid cash around from that stock offering I imagine, and they have the resources necessary to help defend DeCSS. Prior to this purchase they were somewhat distanced from the conflict, but now they are pretty much squarely in the middle of it considering that their new acquisition has been named as a defendent in the case.
Kintanon
Now, Andover has been bought out by VA, well great. Now the "leading opensource news site" is owned by $5 billion corporation that has a vested intrest in promoting its services above others. Fantastic.
A couple days ago CmndrTaco said that it was "funny" that Time was reporting on AOL's jacked up AOL 5.0. Will it be 'funny' now when slashdot reports on VA's screwups? Or will VA just never make screwups, is that it?
Ever hear of journalistic independence? I guess not.
I think this is a valid concern, in my mind Slashdot is no longer to be trusted as an actual NEWS site, but only as a Tech site. I'll get my news the way I did before Slashdot, by skimming through all of the mainstream sites here and over seas. I'll still come here for some tech news, but I don't think we can trust any technology reviews anymore. Either they will skew the results in favor of their parent companies when possible or skew the results the OTHER way so as not to look like they are skewing in favor of their parent co.
I fully suspect VA to assign a couple of editors to the site to make sure that the stories are approved of, no matter what they say.
Kintanon