Wal-Mart empowers everyone - except for those employees that are seemingly forced to work there - but for consumers, Wal-Mart is a win.
Until they've destroyed all their competition. Do you think they cut their prices because they're really nice people? As soon as there is no one left to undercut, what do you think will happen to their prices?
Once I was hired to manage a convenience store that was doing poorly because the previous manager was stealing money/merchandise. Anyway, after a few weeks I got a series of calls about getting the inventory down. Finally, my boss said that she, her boss, and I would be written up if I didn't get the inventory down within a week. So, when the Coca-Cola, Pepsi, cigarette vendors showed up, I told them we wouldn't need anything that week. I did get the inventory down to the required level. Of course I also pissed off a LOT of customers by not having their usual poison in stock, and we lost about $3000 worth of business that week. But, the number chasers were happy.
Within about a year the chain closed that store and several others.
The fact that more than half of engineering students admit to cheating should be more than a bit disturbing, if they are cheating in their engineering classes.
If you think that's bad... several years ago I knew a Chem E. major who told me that in some of his courses the instructors taught the class about circumventing EPA regulations, toxic waste dumping, etc. in order to save some bucks. Monkey see, monkey do.
I, for one, don't want vinyl. How the hell am I supposed to rip that to put on my computer and iPods?! Sampling? With all the resulting noise? No thanks!
I recently purchased "Time Fades Away" by Neil Young on vinyl through eBay. Have you ever listened to that album? I'm willing to bet you haven't since it's never been made officially available on CD. So far, Neil has refused to release it on that format (for a variety of reasons). I digitized it, burned a CD, and now have the pleasure of listening to it on the computer, boombox, or whatever.
Point being, there is some fantastic music out there which is only available on vinyl. Some people may be able to do without it; but not me.
Incidentally, many newer CD's sound levels are so high that the digitized waveform is clipped, resulting in... you guessed it... NOISE. So, they are no panacea for the music afficionado.
One thing that's different is the size. The cover art is larger and the lyrics/credits are easier to read.
A larger package also permits the inclusion of more goodies. How many of you remember the old Alice Cooper album "School's Out" that looked like a school desk? In the first few printings, the sleeve hinged open to reveal a picture of pencils, erasers, etc. It also had fold-out legs, and the record itself had a pair of panties stretched over it.
You cannot get that kind of coolness from a CD and a jewel box.
Speak for yourself. I don't have a cellphone, and furthermore I don't ever intend to have one. I don't use IRC/IM or any of that crap. I like playing video games, but I don't get into the whole multiplayer thang.
I don't think people need other people around all the time as much as they need human noise. I noticed this years ago with television. I'd go over to a friend's house to visit, and their attention would be partially focused on the telly as they engaged in channel surfing --- a continuous stream of flash and sound with no discernable message. Now it's cellphones: Everywhere I go in public people spend their time yapping away on them. But, if I bother to sit and listen, I discover that the content of their "conversation" is nonexistant. It's just chatter... white noise.
I don't understand what compels people to continually talk for the sake of talking, much less desire to listen to it. It reminds me of my kids' continuous babble --- I love 'em, but goddamn it's nice when they head to school for a few hours so I can enjoy some peace and quiet.
Not at the universities I've been to. The kindly professors would let me sit in for FREE. Ergo, I did NOT have to PAY to enter the classroom and take a seat. Which means, as I said, the money the other students paid was for their evaluation --- an evaluation I did not pay for and did not receive.
True, but for more and more people, if their Internet connection is down, you might as well throw the machine away.
Right. Computers were little more than expensive paperweights before the advent of the internet. Thanks for the history lesson.
Other than typing papers for school, what non-Net things do people do anymore other than play games (which are now network-dependent such as WoW)?
Are you serious? Ever hear of computer programming, web-page design, accounting, word-processing, modeling and simulations, image editing, ad infinitum??? OH! You were talking about the masses of Joe-6-packs for whom the computer is some fancy entertainment center that beams porn, mp3's, and multiplayer video games into the home. No one uses a computer to get real work done. Not this day and age.
There are still the Quicken hold-outs, but now that all banks offer online service and everyone takes debit cards, what's the point of balancing a checkbook on the PC?
Uh, to register transactions that take a few days to appear on your account?
... I think once that type of computing becomes normal, it will be hard to imagine going back to a world where all your data was "trapped" in a box in your house, and you couldn't just log in anywhere in the world and work with your stuff or share/edit/view it with others.
Wow. It must be great to be you. Here's my anecdote:
I recently moved between states in the U.S. For the duration of the trip (2 days) I was completely without internet access. When I arrived at my new home, the internet wasn't available for two weeks. Granted, I could go to the library and wait an hour to get on to one of their machines. However, I don't feel comfortable typing in passwords to my e-mail accounts, bank accounts, etc. on public machines --- for obvious reasons.
So, the point is, not everyone is in your position.
Reliability - Network services have real redundancy. If your hard drive dies, you might lose all or some of your work, depending how good your backups are (most people have none at all). If your house burns down, you might lose it all. Having it stored remotely in multiple physical locations is safer.
Reliability - until your network connection goes down. Then it's pack up your computer and track down another connection.
The interpretation here is that paying tuition gives you the right to attend the lecture.
Although that may be the policy of some individual instructors, many will let a student "sit in" for free. Your tuition pays the instructor to evaluate your work.
These things need to change. And they will not unless people quit allowing themselves and their privacy to be exploited.
It may be too late already.
Back in the '80's, the employers started demanding people piss in a cup to be hired or stay employed. People went right along with it --- after all, they had bills to pay. And, most probably didn't do illegal drugs anyway, so what's the harm, right? Except, you might be pissing a list of medications into that cup. Who wants to hire someone with mental illness, after all?
Then, in the early '90's, the company my father worked for was bought by a larger company. This company had a no-smoking policy... that extended into his very home. Any employee still smoking after something like 60 days would be terminated. So, what choice did he have? There was no other company in town needing someone with his skills. He complied.
Now it's credit checks. A lot of people make mistakes, especially when they are young. This credit check thing just about insures that a mistake or two early on will hound you to your grave by denying you a wage capable of paying off your debt. It's ironic how companies bitch and moan so much about people not paying their bills, all the while funding billions of dollars into advertising their products to these same people from childhood on up. Just like the pusher man, the first hit is free: here's the spider-man toy in your McDonald's Happy Meal. Then when you're addicted to having all this shit, and make some bad financial decisions, nobody wants you. "Go find a job, loser! Pay your bills!" Except there is no job for the poor, consumer junky.
These corporate bastards have got everyone by the balls, and they just keep twisting them tighter and tighter. How long before they require weekly bloodwork, complete medical records, DNA samples, weekly lie detector tests, fingerprints, bugs in your home, FBI background checks, ad nauseum, before granting people the privilege of slaving their life away plucking chickens at $7/hr?
If guns are illegal, you just have to arrest everyone with a gun and you get most of the criminals in prison before they manage to commit more serious crime.
Right, because there was no violent crime before some deranged knucklehead invented firearms. Cain slew Abel? Impossible! Guns weren't around back then. All that stuff about Roman conquest and hordes of Germanic berserkers with knives... hogwash!! It never happened. And what about poor little JonBenet Ramsey? Hell, the cops would never have known she was dead if it weren't for the loud report of the.44 Magnum that blew her brains out all over the basement!
Your choice to use a Linux box doesn't give you the right to circumvent the law.
And, just because the founding fathers of the U.S.A. paid taxes and had no representation didn't give them the right to circumvent the law of England. Oh, well.
Okay, Mr. Reading Comprehension, kindly quote exactly where he claimed he couldn't prove that 2+2=4. Not being able to convince someone of a fact is not the same as not being able to demonstrate a proof of the fact. And even if he couldn't prove it, as you assert without substantiation, that's not the same as believing it to be unprovable. Those are three different things that you are conflating. Back to college with ye.
Pity it hasn't got anything to do with anything I've said. Which, to repeat, is: it is hypocritical to demand that one unprovable dogma (which the op claimed 2+2=4 is) is taught in schools and simultaneously demand that another is not, just because he happens to believe in one and not the other.
You confuse fact with fantasy. 2+2=4 is not unprovable dogma. It is an indisputable fact regardless of whether or not one particular person can prove it. If you insist that the only things worth teaching are those that each and every student must personally verify, they'll die of old age before leaving school. Religious beliefs are not facts -- they can be verified by NO ONE. Get it? A fact can be verified by anyone given the time, money, and intellect. Society, for whatever reason, deems these things worthy to teach in a school.
ve already said that I'm not disputing the equation. I am, however, beginning to wonder: since no one seems to be able to give this evidence they assert exists, do they know it or has "2+2=4" been hammered to their heads long enough that they take it on faith?
No. It's just that the proof that 2+2=4 is (a) too long to post here, (b) probably too difficult for you to follow, and (c) definitely offtopic.
Many, many school districts in the US run Windows and things operate just fine.
Well, that all depends on who you ask, doesn't it? I don't know about school districts, but I can speak first hand about working as a mathematics instructor at a community college and being restricted to using Microsoft products. Things DON'T operate just fine. Have you ever tried to prepare a mathematical document with MS Word that doesn't look like it was scrawled by a 6-year-old? I thought not. It's fucking impossible. So, I went to our "Admin" to request her kind permission to install LaTeX on one of the sacred MS boxen. She did, and things were okay until we got new computers. So, I asked her again to put LaTeX on the new machine. Her response was, "Last time it broke the e-mail client, so I'll not allow it." Ahhhh, the genius and worldly knowledge of the MS slave. So, I prepared my documents at home, exported them to.PDF files (since the bloody MS boxen couldn't even read postscript files), took them to work on a disc, and printed them out on the school computers using the single useful program installed on them --- the free Acrobat reader.
The poster whom I responded to specifically stated that he can't prove that 2+2=4. Apart from that, since you didn't actually provide the proof, but only stated that one exists, it is still a matter of belief:).
Anyway, the point here is that the grandparent wanted his children taught things that he said he can't prove, but nonetheless felt justified in judging others who behave the same way.
Absurd. Once again, 2+2=4 is an established fact that people from different religions, cultures, and nationalities know to be true. Just like these same folks know that Los Angeles, California exists --- even if most of them have not been there. These matters are common knowledge and undisputed. Now, pay close attention as I play my trump card: Any doubt as to the veracity of these facts can be removed by learning mathematics or traveling to L.A.
Religious doctrine, on the other hand, is a matter of personal faith. There is NO WAY to verify that Jesus Christ existed, or that Cain and Abel existed, or that even YHWH exists. There is no one alive today who has met these individuals (and whose accounts can be verified). There are no historical documents establishing their existence either. No proof exists. Ergo, there is no hypocrisy on the part of the poster you responded to. You are comparing apples with oranges.
...So ? I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. Unless you are suggesting that one should be judged for putting one's own beliefes before the interests of the state.
It has everything to do with it. In a democracy, the state is the union of the people. The state (that is, the people) run the public schools. Their will is that 2+2=4 be taught there, and that religious doctrine not be taught there. The poster you replied to is justified in holding the majority position.
I'm getting in deeper than my current knowledge allows me, but I will try anyways. The same art that you used to get to the conclusion that 2+2=4, does not have an answer for 1/0. What that means is that it is a flawed system.
Hardly. Why should there be an answer to 1/0? To satisfy some vague aesthetic notion of how things ought to be?
So. You can't prove that 2+2=4, but you insist that it is taught in schools nevertheless. And, presumably, if someone else insisted that schools teach that 2+2=5, then you will raise hell as well, since it directly conflicts with what you want your children to learn. So in short, you want your children to learn in school what you believe to be true, and not something which conflicts with it, depite you being unable to prove it to be true.
There is a mathematical proof that 2+2=4, but not that 2+2=5. It is not a matter of belief.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
Simple, the state has no vested interest in any particular religion. In fact, according to the constitution, there can be no state sponsored religion. If people want religion, there are churches... in abundance. The state DOES have an interest in people knowing that 2+2=4, especially when it comes time to fill out the 1040 forms.
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Wal-Mart empowers everyone - except for those employees that are seemingly forced to work there - but for consumers, Wal-Mart is a win.
Until they've destroyed all their competition. Do you think they cut their prices because they're really nice people? As soon as there is no one left to undercut, what do you think will happen to their prices?
Once I was hired to manage a convenience store that was doing poorly because the previous manager was stealing money/merchandise. Anyway, after a few weeks I got a series of calls about getting the inventory down. Finally, my boss said that she, her boss, and I would be written up if I didn't get the inventory down within a week. So, when the Coca-Cola, Pepsi, cigarette vendors showed up, I told them we wouldn't need anything that week. I did get the inventory down to the required level. Of course I also pissed off a LOT of customers by not having their usual poison in stock, and we lost about $3000 worth of business that week. But, the number chasers were happy.
Within about a year the chain closed that store and several others.
The fact that more than half of engineering students admit to cheating should be more than a bit disturbing, if they are cheating in their engineering classes.
... several years ago I knew a Chem E. major who told me that in some of his courses the instructors taught the class about circumventing EPA regulations, toxic waste dumping, etc. in order to save some bucks. Monkey see, monkey do.
If you think that's bad
Check this out.
I, for one, don't want vinyl. How the hell am I supposed to rip that to put on my computer and iPods?! Sampling? With all the resulting noise? No thanks!
... you guessed it ... NOISE. So, they are no panacea for the music afficionado.
I recently purchased "Time Fades Away" by Neil Young on vinyl through eBay. Have you ever listened to that album? I'm willing to bet you haven't since it's never been made officially available on CD. So far, Neil has refused to release it on that format (for a variety of reasons). I digitized it, burned a CD, and now have the pleasure of listening to it on the computer, boombox, or whatever.
Point being, there is some fantastic music out there which is only available on vinyl. Some people may be able to do without it; but not me.
Incidentally, many newer CD's sound levels are so high that the digitized waveform is clipped, resulting in
One thing that's different is the size. The cover art is larger and the lyrics/credits are easier to read.
A larger package also permits the inclusion of more goodies. How many of you remember the old Alice Cooper album "School's Out" that looked like a school desk? In the first few printings, the sleeve hinged open to reveal a picture of pencils, erasers, etc. It also had fold-out legs, and the record itself had a pair of panties stretched over it.
You cannot get that kind of coolness from a CD and a jewel box.
Speak for yourself. I don't have a cellphone, and furthermore I don't ever intend to have one. I don't use IRC/IM or any of that crap. I like playing video games, but I don't get into the whole multiplayer thang.
... white noise.
I don't think people need other people around all the time as much as they need human noise. I noticed this years ago with television. I'd go over to a friend's house to visit, and their attention would be partially focused on the telly as they engaged in channel surfing --- a continuous stream of flash and sound with no discernable message. Now it's cellphones: Everywhere I go in public people spend their time yapping away on them. But, if I bother to sit and listen, I discover that the content of their "conversation" is nonexistant. It's just chatter
I don't understand what compels people to continually talk for the sake of talking, much less desire to listen to it. It reminds me of my kids' continuous babble --- I love 'em, but goddamn it's nice when they head to school for a few hours so I can enjoy some peace and quiet.
Yeah, because two wrongs make a right! Dumbass.
BUT, if a room is overcrowded, they are not going to let you sit in since the seats are for registered students.
Well, in that case, you won't be able to buy your way in either --- the class will be closed.
Not at the universities I've been to. The kindly professors would let me sit in for FREE. Ergo, I did NOT have to PAY to enter the classroom and take a seat. Which means, as I said, the money the other students paid was for their evaluation --- an evaluation I did not pay for and did not receive.
True, but for more and more people, if their Internet connection is down, you might as well throw the machine away.
... I think once that type of computing becomes normal, it will be hard to imagine going back to a world where all your data was "trapped" in a box in your house, and you couldn't just log in anywhere in the world and work with your stuff or share/edit/view it with others.
Right. Computers were little more than expensive paperweights before the advent of the internet. Thanks for the history lesson.
Other than typing papers for school, what non-Net things do people do anymore other than play games (which are now network-dependent such as WoW)?
Are you serious? Ever hear of computer programming, web-page design, accounting, word-processing, modeling and simulations, image editing, ad infinitum??? OH! You were talking about the masses of Joe-6-packs for whom the computer is some fancy entertainment center that beams porn, mp3's, and multiplayer video games into the home. No one uses a computer to get real work done. Not this day and age.
There are still the Quicken hold-outs, but now that all banks offer online service and everyone takes debit cards, what's the point of balancing a checkbook on the PC?
Uh, to register transactions that take a few days to appear on your account?
Sorry. I'm not the sharing kind.
Wow. It must be great to be you. Here's my anecdote:
I recently moved between states in the U.S. For the duration of the trip (2 days) I was completely without internet access. When I arrived at my new home, the internet wasn't available for two weeks. Granted, I could go to the library and wait an hour to get on to one of their machines. However, I don't feel comfortable typing in passwords to my e-mail accounts, bank accounts, etc. on public machines --- for obvious reasons.
So, the point is, not everyone is in your position.
Reliability - Network services have real redundancy. If your hard drive dies, you might lose all or some of your work, depending how good your backups are (most people have none at all). If your house burns down, you might lose it all. Having it stored remotely in multiple physical locations is safer.
Reliability - until your network connection goes down. Then it's pack up your computer and track down another connection.
The interpretation here is that paying tuition gives you the right to attend the lecture.
Although that may be the policy of some individual instructors, many will let a student "sit in" for free. Your tuition pays the instructor to evaluate your work.
These things need to change. And they will not unless people quit allowing themselves and their privacy to be exploited.
... that extended into his very home. Any employee still smoking after something like 60 days would be terminated. So, what choice did he have? There was no other company in town needing someone with his skills. He complied.
It may be too late already.
Back in the '80's, the employers started demanding people piss in a cup to be hired or stay employed. People went right along with it --- after all, they had bills to pay. And, most probably didn't do illegal drugs anyway, so what's the harm, right? Except, you might be pissing a list of medications into that cup. Who wants to hire someone with mental illness, after all?
Then, in the early '90's, the company my father worked for was bought by a larger company. This company had a no-smoking policy
Now it's credit checks. A lot of people make mistakes, especially when they are young. This credit check thing just about insures that a mistake or two early on will hound you to your grave by denying you a wage capable of paying off your debt. It's ironic how companies bitch and moan so much about people not paying their bills, all the while funding billions of dollars into advertising their products to these same people from childhood on up. Just like the pusher man, the first hit is free: here's the spider-man toy in your McDonald's Happy Meal. Then when you're addicted to having all this shit, and make some bad financial decisions, nobody wants you. "Go find a job, loser! Pay your bills!" Except there is no job for the poor, consumer junky.
These corporate bastards have got everyone by the balls, and they just keep twisting them tighter and tighter. How long before they require weekly bloodwork, complete medical records, DNA samples, weekly lie detector tests, fingerprints, bugs in your home, FBI background checks, ad nauseum, before granting people the privilege of slaving their life away plucking chickens at $7/hr?
My own solution? I don't work anymore. Fuck 'em.
I suggest getting hold of Mark Twain's "Letters From the Earth". It will put a smile on your face.
You know, a lot of folks said the same thing about admitting black people into their establishment. This ruling was probably made for the same reason.
If guns are illegal, you just have to arrest everyone with a gun and you get most of the criminals in prison before they manage to commit more serious crime.
... hogwash!! It never happened. And what about poor little JonBenet Ramsey? Hell, the cops would never have known she was dead if it weren't for the loud report of the .44 Magnum that blew her brains out all over the basement!
Right, because there was no violent crime before some deranged knucklehead invented firearms. Cain slew Abel? Impossible! Guns weren't around back then. All that stuff about Roman conquest and hordes of Germanic berserkers with knives
How I long for the good old days.
Your choice to use a Linux box doesn't give you the right to circumvent the law.
And, just because the founding fathers of the U.S.A. paid taxes and had no representation didn't give them the right to circumvent the law of England. Oh, well.
Okay, Mr. Reading Comprehension, kindly quote exactly where he claimed he couldn't prove that 2+2=4. Not being able to convince someone of a fact is not the same as not being able to demonstrate a proof of the fact. And even if he couldn't prove it, as you assert without substantiation, that's not the same as believing it to be unprovable. Those are three different things that you are conflating. Back to college with ye.
Pity it hasn't got anything to do with anything I've said. Which, to repeat, is: it is hypocritical to demand that one unprovable dogma (which the op claimed 2+2=4 is) is taught in schools and simultaneously demand that another is not, just because he happens to believe in one and not the other.
You confuse fact with fantasy. 2+2=4 is not unprovable dogma. It is an indisputable fact regardless of whether or not one particular person can prove it. If you insist that the only things worth teaching are those that each and every student must personally verify, they'll die of old age before leaving school. Religious beliefs are not facts -- they can be verified by NO ONE. Get it? A fact can be verified by anyone given the time, money, and intellect. Society, for whatever reason, deems these things worthy to teach in a school.
ve already said that I'm not disputing the equation. I am, however, beginning to wonder: since no one seems to be able to give this evidence they assert exists, do they know it or has "2+2=4" been hammered to their heads long enough that they take it on faith?
No. It's just that the proof that 2+2=4 is (a) too long to post here, (b) probably too difficult for you to follow, and (c) definitely offtopic.
Many, many school districts in the US run Windows and things operate just fine.
.PDF files (since the bloody MS boxen couldn't even read postscript files), took them to work on a disc, and printed them out on the school computers using the single useful program installed on them --- the free Acrobat reader.
Well, that all depends on who you ask, doesn't it? I don't know about school districts, but I can speak first hand about working as a mathematics instructor at a community college and being restricted to using Microsoft products. Things DON'T operate just fine. Have you ever tried to prepare a mathematical document with MS Word that doesn't look like it was scrawled by a 6-year-old? I thought not. It's fucking impossible. So, I went to our "Admin" to request her kind permission to install LaTeX on one of the sacred MS boxen. She did, and things were okay until we got new computers. So, I asked her again to put LaTeX on the new machine. Her response was, "Last time it broke the e-mail client, so I'll not allow it." Ahhhh, the genius and worldly knowledge of the MS slave. So, I prepared my documents at home, exported them to
The poster whom I responded to specifically stated that he can't prove that 2+2=4. Apart from that, since you didn't actually provide the proof, but only stated that one exists, it is still a matter of belief :).
...So ? I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. Unless you are suggesting that one should be judged for putting one's own beliefes before the interests of the state.
Anyway, the point here is that the grandparent wanted his children taught things that he said he can't prove, but nonetheless felt justified in judging others who behave the same way.
Absurd. Once again, 2+2=4 is an established fact that people from different religions, cultures, and nationalities know to be true. Just like these same folks know that Los Angeles, California exists --- even if most of them have not been there. These matters are common knowledge and undisputed. Now, pay close attention as I play my trump card: Any doubt as to the veracity of these facts can be removed by learning mathematics or traveling to L.A.
Religious doctrine, on the other hand, is a matter of personal faith. There is NO WAY to verify that Jesus Christ existed, or that Cain and Abel existed, or that even YHWH exists. There is no one alive today who has met these individuals (and whose accounts can be verified). There are no historical documents establishing their existence either. No proof exists. Ergo, there is no hypocrisy on the part of the poster you responded to. You are comparing apples with oranges.
It has everything to do with it. In a democracy, the state is the union of the people. The state (that is, the people) run the public schools. Their will is that 2+2=4 be taught there, and that religious doctrine not be taught there. The poster you replied to is justified in holding the majority position.
I'm getting in deeper than my current knowledge allows me, but I will try anyways. The same art that you used to get to the conclusion that 2+2=4, does not have an answer for 1/0. What that means is that it is a flawed system.
Hardly. Why should there be an answer to 1/0? To satisfy some vague aesthetic notion of how things ought to be?
So. You can't prove that 2+2=4, but you insist that it is taught in schools nevertheless. And, presumably, if someone else insisted that schools teach that 2+2=5, then you will raise hell as well, since it directly conflicts with what you want your children to learn. So in short, you want your children to learn in school what you believe to be true, and not something which conflicts with it, depite you being unable to prove it to be true.
... in abundance. The state DOES have an interest in people knowing that 2+2=4, especially when it comes time to fill out the 1040 forms.
There is a mathematical proof that 2+2=4, but not that 2+2=5. It is not a matter of belief.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
Simple, the state has no vested interest in any particular religion. In fact, according to the constitution, there can be no state sponsored religion. If people want religion, there are churches