Leave it to the French to use a catapult and throw cows at the US Military, defeating so many high-tech toys with mass and velocity. I can just see the battle group comm chatter: "Attention all ships, attention all ships: Run Away!"
Sonic technology is much more capable than laser technology.
That is a very astute observation. Probably not suitable for squads, but definitely for bases, if they can airlift it. And the nuclear reactor to power it. Oh wait. So much technology relies upon electricity and the military is powerless to get beyond its naval reactors. Or those monstrous diesel generators.
For everyone who has an online account, here's the issue:
There's no anti-fraud checking for your "forgot my password" tools. So that means, if you are in China, and hacking an account, you go to the "I forgot my password" link for that account, and answer the question. voila! You are in. Sure, might take a few times, but who cares? I asked someone I know with a relationship with Google and Yahoo to do something with the info, and the response was un-flattering.
So please, if your question is "what is my favorite color" and it is red, white, or blue, come up with a better answer. Like "red-blooded American" or "white like the stars" or "blue a shade after midnight"
This will foil the Chi-coms so they can't use a dictionary attack. Longer the better. 20 characters, and Google itself would have a hard time doing a brute-force rainbow attack.
Wow. I don't care if whatever Kevin Costner invested his fortune in amounted to something as hare-brained as a Brewster's Millions investment scam, he did something to try to prevent a dystopian future. Yay, Kevin! Even if the apparent goal of WaterWorld was to bankrupt Sony Pictures, you at least did something. I wonder if guilt motivated his actions at all? Oh well, all good.
President Obama did receive tremendous amounts of money from special interest. He received $77,000 from BP PAC. No wonder he struggled with not condemning them, they lined his pockets!
Yeah, you're right. On the scale of "North Korea" where they just make people disappear. I can just see the state letter:
Dear Madam,
On behalf of the People's Correctional Facility of North Korea, we are most sorry to report your son, while playing a banned D&D game, failed his dexterity roll against a spellcast as well as a critical hit save, the monster involved was level 20, and the spell involved resulted in a permanent Invisibility curse. We lack the ability to detect your son, however we do believe he is alive and well, somewhere on this planet. We are returning his personal affects as some comfort, however we think his shoes are cursed, and recommend you not let anyone wear them.
This is a debate over "fun" versus paying a debt to society and investing in the social adjustment that is supposed to improve a criminal's ability to return to society. You can't fight D&D. It is paper and pencil and dice, or it is excellent memory skills, and any number of ways to generate a random number. Flutter a few scraps of paper to the ground, or a dried leaf. Which end is up determines the number value. Strategy, chance, and imagination. That's where the fight really is.
Do these elements show socialization skills? Cooperative ability? Evaluation of morals? Imagine if the prison ruled that all players must be Lawful Good. All these scenarios acted out in imagination helps decision-making, provided there's a good GM in charge of player role accuracy. I actually think role-playing games could be very useful. Role-playing is quite useful in psychological counseling, is it not?
If I were imprisoned, I'd consider it a significant investment in an opportunity to work hard on improving myself, so as to no longer be a detriment to society. I would certainly not expect to be permitted to write Mein Kempf, or plot my next Una-Bomber attacks, much less communicate with folks on the outside to plot the next tragic act in my Jihad against the Great Satan.
Prison should be about rehabilitation, not detention. In there, it is a battle for hearts and minds on an individual level, and the treasure of redemption. I say someone takes the fight into the dungeons, and helps slay the dragons on the inside of every man's heart.
I see a very clear ramification: defamation of character lawsuit. Show negligence on the part of the vice-principal. Record the humiliation and emotional trauma of the poor kid being picked on, teased, mocked, for what probably was a well-intended science project at a tech school. If the kid followed any of the guidelines for a science fair project, he should have submitted designs and worked with his teacher on it. I notice no discussion of the electronics/ general science teacher was involved. Some of this story is missing. This is LOUSY journalism.
Is it me, or does the "Federal Agent" badge look really tarnished now, from the technology vantage? I mean, who out there *can't* image a hard drive? I'll bet they broke it because they weren't grounded. Besides, opening a laptop these days, that's a difficult task. Need more than a few certifications, I say. Last time mine was professionally serviced, it needed a motherboard replacement after it was fixed. So, I wonder if the federal agents just took the laptop to the Geek Squad and asked them to do it for them?
The last time I did a code review, it was with a development team in Latin America, writing an application for me. I think my days of code reviews are over. The largest amount of time I spent doing code reviews was when I worked QA at a medical claims transaction processing company. It really lost its nuance then: everything was Object-Oriented Perl. If you ever see my face, you might imagine several scars from when I tried to claw my eyes out during one of those code reviews.
The official hospital report recorded: "injuries sustained while attempting to read someone else's regular expressions."
These days, I spend most of my time convincing people that ODSM is not an add-on level to Halo, trying to convince people that entitlements are not hand-outs of money but important technological elements of information security, and building virtual machine demo images at about the pace of a boy with a new set of Legos on Christmas Day. Coding is just another tool for my job.
I do have a co-worker who is a woman, and she tells me plenty of stories in line with this. She's got I think a Master's in Computer Science, and the customer will just talk like she doesn't know anything, or she's not even in the room, which is impressively rude, given the fact that she is frequently the tallest person in the room.
Neat that you've been to Russia. I have had former Soviet acquaintances tell me that going and waiting in several hours-long lines was social. Women would bring their five children, kids grew up in lines. It kind of reminds me the Gridlock episode of Dr Who, really.
So, help me with corroboration or a contrary assessment: what caused these ridiculous lines? I was told by aforementioned Soviets that it was done to subdue the people.
Thank you for your insight. You command an interesting mind and heart.
What you are describing is a "circle the wagons" move. My guess is that a group returns from the boy's bathroom with a new strategy to present to the larger group. It just materialized into the air, like so much methane and sulphur! I smell something. Fact is, they would do that whether it was the men's room or Instant Messages.
Maybe women will understand why men get unhinged when they see women travel in packs all the time to the ladies' room. I think your narrative would be more upfront if the individuals decided to meet separately and then announce it, but you're describing politics here, not sexism. The men's room may have been a convenient dividing line. If another man was antithetical, it would have been "outside for a smoke" "upstairs to get something from a printer" or related.
The code review story, hey, I've made that mistake but never by gender. The lesson I learned was to just politely ask "excuse me, where are you with your skill level? Oh. It's your code. got it. Pardon me." And on the other side of things, I once had a guy with a PhD in computer science remove some OO code of mine and replace it with three static code branches in the repository.
I guess what I'm saying generally is that sexism is less common. Differences in the way people think is more common, and differences in the way people think because they are different sexes is the stuff in the middle we need to respect as not blatant, just incidental. Room for everyone to understand each other more.
They exist, I've met them, but women who get excited about technology, and women who succeed in technology are an intersecting set, not a full union set. I have a female teammate (from Houston, I might add), who will go on and on about her car. I know a woman who has been in IT who will go on and on about her Mac.
Now, how about the ones who go on and on about their code? Allison in Dayton, Ohio: your IDXML framework was worth bragging about! I've told a lot of people about it, too.
My advice: celebrate the women who succeed in IT/computers. Leave the ones who suck to figure things out for themselves, and tell everyone on the outside of IT/computers to, in this case, read 500+ comments instead of 1 article by sociologists.
Yay! You are like a few of my female associates in the field. Please give strong consideration to speak at grade schools about your career. You are the kind of leader that young women need. I admire your spirit and accomplishments. Please don't ever lose sight of that. I suspect you don't even need the encouragement, but I'm writing it anyway. Feminists are not suffragettes.
And the coward failed to speak to you directly about it, I'm guessing? Typical. Tell your pastor that the person who spoke up needs some spiritual guidance and probably has some unaddressed wounds in their life.
When I've worked with small children in church care programs, I've always insisted on having a female helper. At a minimum, it resolves the "trip to the bathroom" needs, but additionally, it avoids the appearance of impropriety, however insane that may be as a personal accusation.
Hey, you might be in the BSA: any chance there's a Merit Badge in the Girl Scouts for computers?
Except on the few occasions where women have aptitude and interest, but are socially pressured to avoid IT/computers, I would say your attitude is healthy. I really think that's the only problem here: discouraging women who actually might thrive if encouraged.
I genuinely hope you are a man catching these secret meetings in the men's room. The men's room is sacred, and I've found it typically very quiet, except for the occasional biological sounds. It isn't a social place, and the last time I've said anything in a men's room, it's typically been "that faucet's not working" or "occupied." Locker rooms are a bit different, but toilet facilities? Come on. It's not like we have couches in there.
I think what's really happening is conversations get started, like in a hallway. Anything longer than a couple minutes, I swear, if I was in a stall, I'd probably shout "hey, guys, take it outside, please. I'm workin' here." If I ever catch someone on their cell phone having a casual conversation (unless they are trying desperately to have a difficult conversation in private), I will ritually consider making flatulent, throat-clearing, or expectorating noises to communicate their location. At a minimum, I'll give them a puzzled, offended look.
I don't know where you are where a transsexual appearing female is actually attractive. It has been my observation that transsexuals are emotionally troubled, and I'll back that up with the APA's DSM II materials. The APA took it out of DSM III+ only on the protest of the gay rights crowd, not because they were the least bit wrong on the subject. The transsexual was probably overlooked for reasons other than appearing gender.
I'm not without my compassion, but to undergo intense surgery just because you're convinced you should have been born "a man" or "a woman" is not accepting who you are. And, you know what? That translates to poor self-image. I really, genuinely feel for people who are struggling like that. But, denying that there isn't a poor self-image, some level of emotional pain or suffering, that's not compassionate, that's being selectively observant. How you address the issue is another matter entirely. I remember there was some article on Slashdot about being able to locate "closet" homosexuals on social media sites by feeding in data such as who their friends are, to determine probability that they are homosexual. One thing that homosexuals have on heterosexuals is that, on the whole, they have love and compassion figured out, because they need it more, and have built a tight community around it. That did not require a research grant to figure out.
So, on topic, here's my theory: women dislike IT/computer science because it is thankless, grueling, demeaning, and without the right "titan" spirit, emotionally damaging. I'll put forward the argument that emotional balance is harder for a woman because of their hormone dynamics, and they wear thin more easily in this field, and either back out of it completely, become a heartless person (there's an example above with totem poles) and deny their nature, or they work very hard to find an excellent life balance and actually thrive.
Okay, I'm parsing this. You understand the challenges, you don't indicate in your post that you've ever faced them, so that makes you a college student, studying either computer science or information technology/related. You align yourself with the technology culture by saying you are a geek. You like technology, but not enough to face its challenges, so you're going for a "softer" job, which to you is teaching. That means your defeatist spirit will then go on to influence young women in the future to leave it to the men, thereby propagating and multiplying the condition.
If I've gotten any of your background right, I'm going to suggest you not abandon your passion for technology, and just choose something a little less brutal, like technical support. Your hours are fixed, you will face challenges, but they will not drain you because you will have peers to lean upon for input, until you get more proficient. Leave the influence of young, capable female minds to the men and women who are driven. Wok for five or ten years, prove yourself, then look at teaching. I regard teaching young minds as a sacred job, not a bin for half-hearted left-overs from a degree program who wanted a soft place to land.
My apologies to those in technical support who do go all-out. I've met a few of you, but you know you are the exception!
I am sorry for your loss. There are winners and losers in every divorce. Be the winner. Rise above this. Change who you are on the inside. Courts don't take that away, you do. If she never changes and just becomes a soulless shell with nothing but material and ephemeral things, she is the one suffering, not you. All the wealth in the world won't mean a thing to her if she sees you happy with less. It will enrage her. Believe me, buddy, I've seen it happen. I call it poetic justice.
On the subject of women in computers, I've noticed only a few categories:
Talented, foreign-born women
untalented American women
exceptions in either direction
I am always pleased to meet the exceptional, talented American woman. With men, obviously I see talent and mediocrity, regardless of origin. If you are a talented woman, regardless of where you are born, please commit time to volunteer at and American school to speak to promising girls in your local schools. There is obviously a cultural problem at work here. If women want to solve this, they can. I will not get in their way. In fact, I will help, but I can only do so much as a man in this situation.
First, it was a piece of string hanging off the top of the sensors, then it was a stray wisp of puffy cloud. After that, it was a ship that was somewhere around the launch location, although how close, I'll never doubt it was far enough not to get caught up in the blast, perhaps in danger of falling bits if the thing exploded. Presently, more wispy clouds and a failed radar system are plaguing a large but mostly harmless activity.
Personally, I think they should go ahead and launch it. The amount of money wasted in the hundreds of people running amok in Florida is outstanding.
You're justifying buying the Mac when OS X came out, like the rest of us, aren't you? Even Eric Schwartz bought a Mac eventually. We're okay, then, right?
You know, the Amiga community is probably pleased that the announcement page got slashdotted. I really wish that things had worked out differently, that when Escom AG or even Gateway 2000 bought them, they would have committed to the platform. There were some ideas in the later Amiga OS designs which are only just now showing up in Vista. And, if I'm correct, they pulled it off without the same, disgusting overhead of Vista. I think, to honor the dedication of the Amiga community, we should all enjoy a moment of their perspective on things. Let's not forget where a lot of the Amiga community went, shall we? XFree86 seems to have a few high-profile Amiga developers working on it, or did when it was created. My co-workers, there seems to be a distinct lineage of former Amiga users, and if you run into someone who is a good programmer, it's worth the trouble to ask if they used to program on the Amiga. That clapped out old beastie was really fun to program, and I, for one, miss it.
Slashdot Mirror
Leave it to the French to use a catapult and throw cows at the US Military, defeating so many high-tech toys with mass and velocity. I can just see the battle group comm chatter: "Attention all ships, attention all ships: Run Away!"
Sonic technology is much more capable than laser technology.
That is a very astute observation. Probably not suitable for squads, but definitely for bases, if they can airlift it. And the nuclear reactor to power it. Oh wait. So much technology relies upon electricity and the military is powerless to get beyond its naval reactors. Or those monstrous diesel generators.
For everyone who has an online account, here's the issue: There's no anti-fraud checking for your "forgot my password" tools. So that means, if you are in China, and hacking an account, you go to the "I forgot my password" link for that account, and answer the question. voila! You are in. Sure, might take a few times, but who cares? I asked someone I know with a relationship with Google and Yahoo to do something with the info, and the response was un-flattering. So please, if your question is "what is my favorite color" and it is red, white, or blue, come up with a better answer. Like "red-blooded American" or "white like the stars" or "blue a shade after midnight" This will foil the Chi-coms so they can't use a dictionary attack. Longer the better. 20 characters, and Google itself would have a hard time doing a brute-force rainbow attack.
Wow. I don't care if whatever Kevin Costner invested his fortune in amounted to something as hare-brained as a Brewster's Millions investment scam, he did something to try to prevent a dystopian future. Yay, Kevin! Even if the apparent goal of WaterWorld was to bankrupt Sony Pictures, you at least did something. I wonder if guilt motivated his actions at all? Oh well, all good.
President Obama did receive tremendous amounts of money from special interest. He received $77,000 from BP PAC. No wonder he struggled with not condemning them, they lined his pockets!
OK, that one is the best! I think the longer the coil (diameter), the more twists, the more power drained, right?
Dear Madam,
On behalf of the People's Correctional Facility of North Korea, we are most sorry to report your son, while playing a banned D&D game, failed his dexterity roll against a spellcast as well as a critical hit save, the monster involved was level 20, and the spell involved resulted in a permanent Invisibility curse. We lack the ability to detect your son, however we do believe he is alive and well, somewhere on this planet. We are returning his personal affects as some comfort, however we think his shoes are cursed, and recommend you not let anyone wear them.
Most Sincerely,
Wei Tu Yun
Prisons are big business, and just like everything else, they are run by big business.
This sentence is absolutely heartless and undeniably true at the same time. How do we change it?
Do these elements show socialization skills? Cooperative ability? Evaluation of morals? Imagine if the prison ruled that all players must be Lawful Good. All these scenarios acted out in imagination helps decision-making, provided there's a good GM in charge of player role accuracy. I actually think role-playing games could be very useful. Role-playing is quite useful in psychological counseling, is it not?
If I were imprisoned, I'd consider it a significant investment in an opportunity to work hard on improving myself, so as to no longer be a detriment to society. I would certainly not expect to be permitted to write Mein Kempf, or plot my next Una-Bomber attacks, much less communicate with folks on the outside to plot the next tragic act in my Jihad against the Great Satan.
Prison should be about rehabilitation, not detention. In there, it is a battle for hearts and minds on an individual level, and the treasure of redemption. I say someone takes the fight into the dungeons, and helps slay the dragons on the inside of every man's heart.
I see a very clear ramification: defamation of character lawsuit. Show negligence on the part of the vice-principal. Record the humiliation and emotional trauma of the poor kid being picked on, teased, mocked, for what probably was a well-intended science project at a tech school. If the kid followed any of the guidelines for a science fair project, he should have submitted designs and worked with his teacher on it. I notice no discussion of the electronics/ general science teacher was involved. Some of this story is missing. This is LOUSY journalism.
Is it me, or does the "Federal Agent" badge look really tarnished now, from the technology vantage? I mean, who out there *can't* image a hard drive? I'll bet they broke it because they weren't grounded. Besides, opening a laptop these days, that's a difficult task. Need more than a few certifications, I say. Last time mine was professionally serviced, it needed a motherboard replacement after it was fixed. So, I wonder if the federal agents just took the laptop to the Geek Squad and asked them to do it for them?
The official hospital report recorded: "injuries sustained while attempting to read someone else's regular expressions."
These days, I spend most of my time convincing people that ODSM is not an add-on level to Halo, trying to convince people that entitlements are not hand-outs of money but important technological elements of information security, and building virtual machine demo images at about the pace of a boy with a new set of Legos on Christmas Day. Coding is just another tool for my job.
I do have a co-worker who is a woman, and she tells me plenty of stories in line with this. She's got I think a Master's in Computer Science, and the customer will just talk like she doesn't know anything, or she's not even in the room, which is impressively rude, given the fact that she is frequently the tallest person in the room.
I think you should call this the "Red Stapler Theory." Covers office supplies and Soviet Russia!
So, help me with corroboration or a contrary assessment: what caused these ridiculous lines? I was told by aforementioned Soviets that it was done to subdue the people.
Thank you for your insight. You command an interesting mind and heart.
Maybe women will understand why men get unhinged when they see women travel in packs all the time to the ladies' room. I think your narrative would be more upfront if the individuals decided to meet separately and then announce it, but you're describing politics here, not sexism. The men's room may have been a convenient dividing line. If another man was antithetical, it would have been "outside for a smoke" "upstairs to get something from a printer" or related.
The code review story, hey, I've made that mistake but never by gender. The lesson I learned was to just politely ask "excuse me, where are you with your skill level? Oh. It's your code. got it. Pardon me." And on the other side of things, I once had a guy with a PhD in computer science remove some OO code of mine and replace it with three static code branches in the repository.
I guess what I'm saying generally is that sexism is less common. Differences in the way people think is more common, and differences in the way people think because they are different sexes is the stuff in the middle we need to respect as not blatant, just incidental. Room for everyone to understand each other more.
Now, how about the ones who go on and on about their code? Allison in Dayton, Ohio: your IDXML framework was worth bragging about! I've told a lot of people about it, too.
My advice: celebrate the women who succeed in IT/computers. Leave the ones who suck to figure things out for themselves, and tell everyone on the outside of IT/computers to, in this case, read 500+ comments instead of 1 article by sociologists.
Yay! You are like a few of my female associates in the field. Please give strong consideration to speak at grade schools about your career. You are the kind of leader that young women need. I admire your spirit and accomplishments. Please don't ever lose sight of that. I suspect you don't even need the encouragement, but I'm writing it anyway. Feminists are not suffragettes.
When I've worked with small children in church care programs, I've always insisted on having a female helper. At a minimum, it resolves the "trip to the bathroom" needs, but additionally, it avoids the appearance of impropriety, however insane that may be as a personal accusation.
Hey, you might be in the BSA: any chance there's a Merit Badge in the Girl Scouts for computers?
Except on the few occasions where women have aptitude and interest, but are socially pressured to avoid IT/computers, I would say your attitude is healthy. I really think that's the only problem here: discouraging women who actually might thrive if encouraged.
I think what's really happening is conversations get started, like in a hallway. Anything longer than a couple minutes, I swear, if I was in a stall, I'd probably shout "hey, guys, take it outside, please. I'm workin' here." If I ever catch someone on their cell phone having a casual conversation (unless they are trying desperately to have a difficult conversation in private), I will ritually consider making flatulent, throat-clearing, or expectorating noises to communicate their location. At a minimum, I'll give them a puzzled, offended look.
I don't know where you are where a transsexual appearing female is actually attractive. It has been my observation that transsexuals are emotionally troubled, and I'll back that up with the APA's DSM II materials. The APA took it out of DSM III+ only on the protest of the gay rights crowd, not because they were the least bit wrong on the subject. The transsexual was probably overlooked for reasons other than appearing gender.
I'm not without my compassion, but to undergo intense surgery just because you're convinced you should have been born "a man" or "a woman" is not accepting who you are. And, you know what? That translates to poor self-image. I really, genuinely feel for people who are struggling like that. But, denying that there isn't a poor self-image, some level of emotional pain or suffering, that's not compassionate, that's being selectively observant. How you address the issue is another matter entirely. I remember there was some article on Slashdot about being able to locate "closet" homosexuals on social media sites by feeding in data such as who their friends are, to determine probability that they are homosexual. One thing that homosexuals have on heterosexuals is that, on the whole, they have love and compassion figured out, because they need it more, and have built a tight community around it. That did not require a research grant to figure out.
So, on topic, here's my theory: women dislike IT/computer science because it is thankless, grueling, demeaning, and without the right "titan" spirit, emotionally damaging. I'll put forward the argument that emotional balance is harder for a woman because of their hormone dynamics, and they wear thin more easily in this field, and either back out of it completely, become a heartless person (there's an example above with totem poles) and deny their nature, or they work very hard to find an excellent life balance and actually thrive.
If I've gotten any of your background right, I'm going to suggest you not abandon your passion for technology, and just choose something a little less brutal, like technical support. Your hours are fixed, you will face challenges, but they will not drain you because you will have peers to lean upon for input, until you get more proficient. Leave the influence of young, capable female minds to the men and women who are driven. Wok for five or ten years, prove yourself, then look at teaching. I regard teaching young minds as a sacred job, not a bin for half-hearted left-overs from a degree program who wanted a soft place to land.
My apologies to those in technical support who do go all-out. I've met a few of you, but you know you are the exception!
On the subject of women in computers, I've noticed only a few categories:
I am always pleased to meet the exceptional, talented American woman. With men, obviously I see talent and mediocrity, regardless of origin. If you are a talented woman, regardless of where you are born, please commit time to volunteer at and American school to speak to promising girls in your local schools. There is obviously a cultural problem at work here. If women want to solve this, they can. I will not get in their way. In fact, I will help, but I can only do so much as a man in this situation.
Personally, I think they should go ahead and launch it. The amount of money wasted in the hundreds of people running amok in Florida is outstanding.
You're justifying buying the Mac when OS X came out, like the rest of us, aren't you? Even Eric Schwartz bought a Mac eventually. We're okay, then, right?
You know, the Amiga community is probably pleased that the announcement page got slashdotted. I really wish that things had worked out differently, that when Escom AG or even Gateway 2000 bought them, they would have committed to the platform. There were some ideas in the later Amiga OS designs which are only just now showing up in Vista. And, if I'm correct, they pulled it off without the same, disgusting overhead of Vista. I think, to honor the dedication of the Amiga community, we should all enjoy a moment of their perspective on things. Let's not forget where a lot of the Amiga community went, shall we? XFree86 seems to have a few high-profile Amiga developers working on it, or did when it was created. My co-workers, there seems to be a distinct lineage of former Amiga users, and if you run into someone who is a good programmer, it's worth the trouble to ask if they used to program on the Amiga. That clapped out old beastie was really fun to program, and I, for one, miss it.