Screw spendthrift state governments. Instead of controlling state spending by paring down ridiculous state and local employee pensions, the first thing the MA state legislature and governor did was increase sales taxes by 25%. Not a very bright move in the middle of a recession when your state is right next door to sales-tax-free NH. No wonder that's where Amazon located their regional distribution center. A great case example of how high state taxes kill off jobs and commerce, sending them to lower tax states instead.
Somebody go create a new Facebook group called "F*ck the f*cking f*cks who f*cking f*cked 'F*ck Islam'". I would do it myself but Facebook sucks and I never go there.
Oops, sorry. It looked like the "Well, F*ck Islam!" thread was deleted at the bottom, but it has reappeared up higher in the list somehow, so at least it appears that Slashdot is not selectivly deleting threads. Unlike Facebook.
I agree. Slashdot is engaging in selective censorship by eliminating posts which criticise Islam, and so many threads criticising other religions over the years have never been censored.
Am I wrong when I think that if there were a site on Facebook call F*ck Chistianity, with a similar petition of outraged Facebook users saying they would quit unless the site was taken down, that the story would get the entirely opposite spin when it ran on Slashdot, with the writer coming down on the side of free speech over protecting outraged religionists from being offended?
And I am no Christian zealot, either. However, sites like Slashdot and Digg skew to the liberal/moonbatty side, and unfortunately there is an all-to-apparent double-standard / hypocritical attitude that Islam deserves special treatment compared to Christianity and Judaism.
Free speech should come first in all cases -- I don't care which group is offended.
Sports in real life do not change their playfields or rules very much (if at all). Because the game and playfield do not change over time, viewers get to know the nuances of strategy. To some extent this is what happened in Korea with Starcraft. Starcraft is an old game and by sticking with it year after year, even though newer games with better graphics were available, it gave viewers a chance to get to know the nuanced strategies and gameplay styles of particular players. In the US, there has been a lack of focus when televisimg videogame competition and no standardization on a particular game. Instead, broadcasters simply go for whatever is the most popular game (hence CBS's choice of WoW and Guitar hero of all things) in a given year, and then switch games completely the next year.
The other problem I see is with trying to get people interested in watching videogames of real sports. Why would anyone want to watch Fight Night or Madden when they could watch real boxing or real football?
That's BS. The poor visa-holding individual you are referring to should be grateful that the US allowed him the privilege of studying here on a student visa, getting a first-class education, and being able to work on a temporary basis in the US. All of the visa and work rules are clear about the fact of the temporary nature of the student and work visas, and the fact that the law requires that qualified and interested American workers get preference in the hiring process. The people who use these visas to study and work in America know what the deal is before they come here, and for them to complain about it is just whining and trying to change the rules after already agreeing to them. Be grateful to the US for the generosity it has already shown you, and stop trying to take a mile after being given an inch.
I agree in principle with the concept of network neutrality, but I agree that ISPs still should be able to prioritize by TYPE of packet in order to enhance quality of service. What I mean is that in terms of priority packets should be ordered something like:
Packets involved in real-time emergency-service communication
Packets involved in general real-time communication
Packets involved in streaming media
Packets involved in general file downloading/transfer (e.g. loading web pages)
Packets involved in non-real-time communication (e.g. email, voicemail, videomail, etc.)
While I agree with the comments saying that 10MB-60MB of email storage space represents outdated service compared to the amount of email space offered by Google/Yahoo/Hotmail, etc., I highly doubt that if each and every Gmail user were actually storing 10GB of email that Google would or could continue to offer that much email storage space. I bet that 99% of Gmail accounts are not even using 1% of the storage space theoretically available to them. So the actual disk space requirement for Google is far, far less than the total number of Gmail accounts mutliplied by 10GB.
"Developers can deal with looking at tables and grids full of data to make decisions and get things done, but other types of workers (executives, salespeople, etc.) have little to no attention span and need a picture to be worth a thousand words, i.e. their software designed completely differently."
This sounds like it is referring to the need for a new type of accessibility software -- accessibility software for the intellectually disabled (i.e. executives, salespeople, project managers, etc.).
Sorry for the rather mean sarcasm, but lately my entire job has become devoted to having to produce output that has been pre-digested for the consumption of supposedly intelligent professionals who are somehow unable to look at a table with more than two rows and three columns without throwing up their hands in frustration.
I thought white blood cells were giant honking cells. Aren't they much bigger than the size of the manufacturing process used to fabricate modern computer chips? I would have thought a piece of silicon the size of a white blood cell would be able to store more than 2000 words.
Is it just me, or are there any archaeologists who disagree with the popular explanation given for the use/purpose of these kinds of figurines (i.e, used in magic fertility rituals, etc.). Wouldn't the simplest explanation be that they are an early form of pr0n for the lonely male out on a hunting trip?
Oh yeah, I understand now, you just have to apply liberal moonbat logic to undertand how something like this happens.
The Democrats voted for a bill that would have restricted free speech, therefore it must be Republican conspiracy masterminded by Karl Rove in which Halliburton makes billions of dollars.
With all the whining we hear from liberals about how Republicans are a bunch of fascists, the Patriot Act, yadda yadda yadda, it's nice to finally see liberal Democrats reveal themselves as the real fascists. Democrats, now that they are incontrol of Congress need Big Government measures to keep tabs on the political opposition, just like any good fascist political party would.
Yes, that is true. I have flown without ID myself when I was returning home from vacation after I had the misfortune of having my wallet stolen. The airline and security personnel were extremely kind, and the extra security I had to go through was actually quite speedy considering its thoroughness. In the end it was a completely painless experience.
If a commercial airliner is considered the private property of the airline which owns the airplane, doesn't the airline have the right decide what they require from their customers as a pre-condition of entering into the business arrangement of purchasing a ticket to ride on one of their airplanes? If you don't like their pre-conditions, then you are free to choose another mode of transportation with a different company.
Another argument which defeats this kind of radical interpretation of the individual right to privacy is that the flightpaths over our cities and towns present a safety risk to residents on the ground, and so shouldn't each community be allowed to vote whether their town will allow an airline which does not check the ID of its passengers to fly through its airspace? Seems fair to me, except all the radical civil libertarians probably wouldn't like the fact that I highly doubt if even 1% of the cities and towns in the country would vote to allow overflights by airlines with such lax security.
I don't care if they determine that there is no need to ban cellphones because of interference with plane electronics -- I'd still rather the ban is kept anyway in order to keep flights from turning into cacophonous gab-fests. Flights are already uncomfortable and headache-inducing anyway...lets not make them noisy as well.
Many of the games on Xbox Live arcade may be rendered in 3D, but have gameplay similar to older 2D games. I think the 3D capabilities can be use to add visual flair while still retaining the gameplay of popular 2D gametypes.
Yes, but physicists who believe in unprovable string theories have not yet formed a political coalition to demand that the rest of us spend trillions of dollars making radical changes to our lives and the world economy based on their unprovable theory that they have formed a "consensus" about. If they do, I would suggest skepticism in that case as well.
At various times in the past, the politically-correct left-wingers in the scientific community have had other "consensus" doomsday scenarios that have never transpired as they predicted. It's a good thing we didn't waste our time, money and effort protecting ourselves against threats that were never real to begin with.
If you want a real threat to worry about, try nuclear proliferation combined with the spread of ignorant, Islamic fundamentalism.
If all the predictions are true, isn't this just a way of nature balancing itself out? The climate changes the doomsayers predict will have the effect of reducing the human population, which will reduce CO2 emissions, which will bring things back into balance.
Anyway, I live in cold-ass New England and even though I live in a coastal town, my house probably 70-80 feet above sea level, so if global warming means I need to do less snowshoveling and my winter heat bill goes down, and by the time I'm ready to retire the climate in Massachusetts will be like Florida and due to the rise in sea level I may have oceanfront property, I don't necessarily see a downside. Sucks for the rest of ya, I guess:-)
I'm not a bigshot scientist from Harvard or anything, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but just in case it might help someone out I'd like to suggest an idea on how to save yourself from being drowned by the big SUDDEN, FLASH-FLOOD rise in sea levels which supposedly will occur over the course of some 70 YEARS: don't buy or build a house on the shore or in a flood-prone area.
The main difference I have found in hiring is that there is a pretty low "signal-to-noise" ratio at all degree levels if you were to hire a random sample of employees at each degree level. In other words, you can't just rely on the degree as an indicator of how good someone will be in a job. However, I will say that the signal-to-noise ratio is worse among candidates with Bachelor's degrees. The best hires tend to have Master's degrees. They're more affordable, very nearly as smart, and more efficient and productive than Ph.D.'s. Ph.D.'s can be a real burden as full-time employees. They soak up big paychecks and a lot of them have spent so long in academia that they lose sight of timelines and get bogged down in minutiae. I prefer hiring them only when necessary, and for the most part prefer to use them only as consultants.
Maybe that's true in engineering, but in the social sciences (jn the US), the M.A. or M.S. is usually awarded upon completing and defending your Master's thesis after finishing virtually all of the coursework required for a Ph.D. It normally takes 2 years, but many people take 3 since the coursework during the first 2 years is pretty heavy and finding time to work on the thesis can be hard. After the 2nd year, most of the credit hours you have on your schedule are for working on your thesis (if you are still working on it) or your dissertation (if you are going continue on and get a Ph.D.).
I think that quality instruction in writing (which would include higher standards for being allowed to teach), setting high writing standards in school, and parents setting high expectations for academic effort and performance could easily counteract any bad habits students may develop due to text messaging. The decline of writing skills is the fault of our failing, unaccountable academic system, not the internet or text messaging on cell phones. Do you think private schools would be able to stay in business if they had the poor quality of instruction that many of our public schools do?
Slashdot Mirror
Screw spendthrift state governments. Instead of controlling state spending by paring down ridiculous state and local employee pensions, the first thing the MA state legislature and governor did was increase sales taxes by 25%. Not a very bright move in the middle of a recession when your state is right next door to sales-tax-free NH. No wonder that's where Amazon located their regional distribution center. A great case example of how high state taxes kill off jobs and commerce, sending them to lower tax states instead.
Somebody go create a new Facebook group called "F*ck the f*cking f*cks who f*cking f*cked 'F*ck Islam'". I would do it myself but Facebook sucks and I never go there.
Me me me! I'll join.
Oops, sorry. It looked like the "Well, F*ck Islam!" thread was deleted at the bottom, but it has reappeared up higher in the list somehow, so at least it appears that Slashdot is not selectivly deleting threads. Unlike Facebook.
I agree. Slashdot is engaging in selective censorship by eliminating posts which criticise Islam, and so many threads criticising other religions over the years have never been censored.
Am I wrong when I think that if there were a site on Facebook call F*ck Chistianity, with a similar petition of outraged Facebook users saying they would quit unless the site was taken down, that the story would get the entirely opposite spin when it ran on Slashdot, with the writer coming down on the side of free speech over protecting outraged religionists from being offended? And I am no Christian zealot, either. However, sites like Slashdot and Digg skew to the liberal/moonbatty side, and unfortunately there is an all-to-apparent double-standard / hypocritical attitude that Islam deserves special treatment compared to Christianity and Judaism. Free speech should come first in all cases -- I don't care which group is offended.
Sports in real life do not change their playfields or rules very much (if at all). Because the game and playfield do not change over time, viewers get to know the nuances of strategy. To some extent this is what happened in Korea with Starcraft. Starcraft is an old game and by sticking with it year after year, even though newer games with better graphics were available, it gave viewers a chance to get to know the nuanced strategies and gameplay styles of particular players. In the US, there has been a lack of focus when televisimg videogame competition and no standardization on a particular game. Instead, broadcasters simply go for whatever is the most popular game (hence CBS's choice of WoW and Guitar hero of all things) in a given year, and then switch games completely the next year. The other problem I see is with trying to get people interested in watching videogames of real sports. Why would anyone want to watch Fight Night or Madden when they could watch real boxing or real football?
That's BS. The poor visa-holding individual you are referring to should be grateful that the US allowed him the privilege of studying here on a student visa, getting a first-class education, and being able to work on a temporary basis in the US. All of the visa and work rules are clear about the fact of the temporary nature of the student and work visas, and the fact that the law requires that qualified and interested American workers get preference in the hiring process. The people who use these visas to study and work in America know what the deal is before they come here, and for them to complain about it is just whining and trying to change the rules after already agreeing to them. Be grateful to the US for the generosity it has already shown you, and stop trying to take a mile after being given an inch.
While I agree with the comments saying that 10MB-60MB of email storage space represents outdated service compared to the amount of email space offered by Google/Yahoo/Hotmail, etc., I highly doubt that if each and every Gmail user were actually storing 10GB of email that Google would or could continue to offer that much email storage space. I bet that 99% of Gmail accounts are not even using 1% of the storage space theoretically available to them. So the actual disk space requirement for Google is far, far less than the total number of Gmail accounts mutliplied by 10GB.
Sorry for the rather mean sarcasm, but lately my entire job has become devoted to having to produce output that has been pre-digested for the consumption of supposedly intelligent professionals who are somehow unable to look at a table with more than two rows and three columns without throwing up their hands in frustration.
If the copper in a penny is too expensive, then why not just use a cheaper material like plastic?
I thought white blood cells were giant honking cells. Aren't they much bigger than the size of the manufacturing process used to fabricate modern computer chips? I would have thought a piece of silicon the size of a white blood cell would be able to store more than 2000 words.
Is it just me, or are there any archaeologists who disagree with the popular explanation given for the use/purpose of these kinds of figurines (i.e, used in magic fertility rituals, etc.). Wouldn't the simplest explanation be that they are an early form of pr0n for the lonely male out on a hunting trip?
Oh yeah, I understand now, you just have to apply liberal moonbat logic to undertand how something like this happens.
The Democrats voted for a bill that would have restricted free speech, therefore it must be Republican conspiracy masterminded by Karl Rove in which Halliburton makes billions of dollars.
Thanks for explaining it to me. I get it now.
With all the whining we hear from liberals about how Republicans are a bunch of fascists, the Patriot Act, yadda yadda yadda, it's nice to finally see liberal Democrats reveal themselves as the real fascists. Democrats, now that they are incontrol of Congress need Big Government measures to keep tabs on the political opposition, just like any good fascist political party would.
Yes, that is true. I have flown without ID myself when I was returning home from vacation after I had the misfortune of having my wallet stolen. The airline and security personnel were extremely kind, and the extra security I had to go through was actually quite speedy considering its thoroughness. In the end it was a completely painless experience.
Another argument which defeats this kind of radical interpretation of the individual right to privacy is that the flightpaths over our cities and towns present a safety risk to residents on the ground, and so shouldn't each community be allowed to vote whether their town will allow an airline which does not check the ID of its passengers to fly through its airspace? Seems fair to me, except all the radical civil libertarians probably wouldn't like the fact that I highly doubt if even 1% of the cities and towns in the country would vote to allow overflights by airlines with such lax security.
I don't care if they determine that there is no need to ban cellphones because of interference with plane electronics -- I'd still rather the ban is kept anyway in order to keep flights from turning into cacophonous gab-fests. Flights are already uncomfortable and headache-inducing anyway...lets not make them noisy as well.
Many of the games on Xbox Live arcade may be rendered in 3D, but have gameplay similar to older 2D games. I think the 3D capabilities can be use to add visual flair while still retaining the gameplay of popular 2D gametypes.
Yes, but physicists who believe in unprovable string theories have not yet formed a political coalition to demand that the rest of us spend trillions of dollars making radical changes to our lives and the world economy based on their unprovable theory that they have formed a "consensus" about. If they do, I would suggest skepticism in that case as well.
At various times in the past, the politically-correct left-wingers in the scientific community have had other "consensus" doomsday scenarios that have never transpired as they predicted. It's a good thing we didn't waste our time, money and effort protecting ourselves against threats that were never real to begin with.
If you want a real threat to worry about, try nuclear proliferation combined with the spread of ignorant, Islamic fundamentalism.
If all the predictions are true, isn't this just a way of nature balancing itself out? The climate changes the doomsayers predict will have the effect of reducing the human population, which will reduce CO2 emissions, which will bring things back into balance.
Anyway, I live in cold-ass New England and even though I live in a coastal town, my house probably 70-80 feet above sea level, so if global warming means I need to do less snowshoveling and my winter heat bill goes down, and by the time I'm ready to retire the climate in Massachusetts will be like Florida and due to the rise in sea level I may have oceanfront property, I don't necessarily see a downside. Sucks for the rest of ya, I guess :-)
I'm not a bigshot scientist from Harvard or anything, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but just in case it might help someone out I'd like to suggest an idea on how to save yourself from being drowned by the big SUDDEN, FLASH-FLOOD rise in sea levels which supposedly will occur over the course of some 70 YEARS: don't buy or build a house on the shore or in a flood-prone area.
The main difference I have found in hiring is that there is a pretty low "signal-to-noise" ratio at all degree levels if you were to hire a random sample of employees at each degree level. In other words, you can't just rely on the degree as an indicator of how good someone will be in a job. However, I will say that the signal-to-noise ratio is worse among candidates with Bachelor's degrees. The best hires tend to have Master's degrees. They're more affordable, very nearly as smart, and more efficient and productive than Ph.D.'s. Ph.D.'s can be a real burden as full-time employees. They soak up big paychecks and a lot of them have spent so long in academia that they lose sight of timelines and get bogged down in minutiae. I prefer hiring them only when necessary, and for the most part prefer to use them only as consultants.
Maybe that's true in engineering, but in the social sciences (jn the US), the M.A. or M.S. is usually awarded upon completing and defending your Master's thesis after finishing virtually all of the coursework required for a Ph.D. It normally takes 2 years, but many people take 3 since the coursework during the first 2 years is pretty heavy and finding time to work on the thesis can be hard. After the 2nd year, most of the credit hours you have on your schedule are for working on your thesis (if you are still working on it) or your dissertation (if you are going continue on and get a Ph.D.).
I think that quality instruction in writing (which would include higher standards for being allowed to teach), setting high writing standards in school, and parents setting high expectations for academic effort and performance could easily counteract any bad habits students may develop due to text messaging. The decline of writing skills is the fault of our failing, unaccountable academic system, not the internet or text messaging on cell phones. Do you think private schools would be able to stay in business if they had the poor quality of instruction that many of our public schools do?