Damn straight! $42,000 a year doesn't even leave enough money leftover for all the chiropractic visits you need from being hunched over a computer 8+ hours a day.
The fact that you think that non-Caucasians AREN'T getting the good jobs probably means that you have been focusing primarily on your job and not the bigger picture of what your job means to the environment and society. It's easy to get tunnel-vision and focus on the immediate benefits of some particular product or technology. What is harder to see is the unintended consequences that are usually negative and range from annoying to deadly. There is getting to be a preponderance of evidence that our current Western model of doing business around the world is having serious negative consequences to society and the environment and the first people to really come to grips with this are the Caucasions. We are the ones that have been living and breathing it for the longest and have had the most personal experiences with the consequences.
If you enjoy feeding the corporate "beast" that's up to you but don't drink the kool-aid. Lazy, undisciplined Caucasions isn't the only reason, and probably isn't even the primary reason, that there aren't more Caucasions working for corporations in research and development.
Maybe engineers tend to believe Creationism because they've seen how many things can go wrong even when there is a modicum of intelligence behind the design. A functioning planet like Earth, with its diverse biomes, million-plus species, and resilient ecosystems makes them look really stupid because they can't do better than supposed "random interactions" and survival of the fittest.
Your statement implies that the current incarnation of capitalism is the only one possible. My rant against globalization and "for-profit" corporations doesn't mean that I am against capitalism. Commerce can take place, and has taken place for hundreds of years, without corporations and without global movements of business operations to take advantage of cheap labor and fewer government restrictions. What I am against is a system that works well for fewer and fewer people.
People need to be able to work and make a "livable wage" otherwise people will resort to crime or become dependent on government handouts. People also need to live in an environment that is non-toxic otherwise they will fight whatever is destroying their environment or find a new place to live. I believe, and feel free to come up with your own theory, that corporations have become the biggest impediment to healthy capitalism because they are chartered to encourage greed and allow people to avoid a sense of personal responsibility. They have leveraged technological advances and global disparities in standards of living to make money at the expense of the environment and the long-term impacts on workers. They have been able to do this because people failed to understand the impact corporations would have. That is changing.
Sure globalization is great if you ignore the niggling minor problems like pollution and exploitation of desperate workers. Also you would have to arbitrarily decide that dying from chronic diseases from living older is better than dying younger from acute diseases. And of course since there is no objective way to measure quality of life we'll just assume that people with the most stuff are the happiest. It validates the American lifestyle so Americans, at least, have to approve to avoid cognitive dissonance.
The best thing any government could do would be to eliminate the formation of "for-profit" corporations. Their "it's all about the profit" charters have made them a danger to the planet. They have used globalization to avoid doing the right thing environmentally and socially. They have no conscience because no one in a corporation feels personally responsible for the negative impacts of the company. As they say: "It's not personal, it's just business". Globalization is really a corporate phenomena that takes advantage of foolish people who would rather chase what they want rather than what they need.
If you have to lie to your parents to maintain your relationship with them then the bomb was already planted a long time ago. It was only a matter of time for it to go off. I don't condone what the hackers did but they can't actually destroy anyone that isn't already primed for destruction.
If you want to argue that you should be able to live whatever kind of twisted life you want without interference from anyone else then you should take it up with God.
If the overseer is expected to have a degree in Computer Science it's likely that they are expected to be a technical manager that understands the process and pitfalls of creating software. This requires years of experience and to get those years of experience you need to start as a "code monkey". Asking a recent Computer Science graduate to manage a team of Indian coders is a recipe for disaster.
Where the global economy has become more of a "confidence game" than a true measure of productivity because of fiat money. Where government subsidies, bailouts and entitlement programs create enormous distortions in the true strength of an economy, you have to wonder if anyone really knows what's going on.
I would agree with you, except for the biology part. Not because there hasn't been some startling developments in the area of biology but because it takes a longer time to see the blowback from the discoveries in biology than in other fields. All you have to do is read a book like "Why Things Bite Back" by Edward Tenner to see that "the more things change, the more they stay the same".
You can't debate with a religious fundamentalist who already knows The Truth.
Exactly, but you make it sound like a bad thing. We can't all be experts on everything so we clearly recognize who is correct. Even if we could, that would still exclude epiphanies, revelations, and other suprarational means of understanding life. I think many people on Slashdot have watched too much Star Trek. It's entertainment not reality.
Yes indeed! Ignorance is bliss! And you can always rationalize that it's not your JOB to actually understand the problems, just make them go away.
Until, of course, that ignorance has lead you down the garden path to your own demise. I certainly wish it was true that "what you don't know won't hurt you". Unfortunately, in IT in particular, that has never held true for me.
Speaking for the antimatter, I believe that there is a misconception. We don't appreciate being called the "anti" matter. We are the other-matter to you. From our perspective, you are the antimatter! You don't like it very much when someone calls YOU antimatter do you. I wish we could all just get along but it was not meant to be. We will continue to annihilate any of you that try to contact us. Please! Just leave us alone!!!!
If you want to get your ethics from a real person instead of a book I'd be happy to oblige. You see, I was born under a "lucky" star so everyone who wasn't should send me money. Since you get your advice from "real people", you obviously weren't born under a "lucky" star and are what we call an unlucky person. Please let me know if PayPal works for you because that is the most ethical method for you to send me money.
I'm not sure whether to see people writing to an ethicist as silly or scary. As many people have stated, ethics is something beyond just what the law says. It is the idea that some things are intrinsically right or wrong whether there is a law against it or not. It has to have a basis in something real otherwise it's just someone's opinion. Treating ethics like it's equivalent to etiquette or relational advice is just bizarre to me. Who's opinion should really matter?!?!
Morality is normally backed up by religious writings of some sort. If you don't take your ethics reasoning from something like the Bible, Torah, Koran, etc. then it doesn't even CLAIM to have the authority of God behind it. The fact that all the religious writings have conflicting teachings is another issue, but at least there is some attempt at codifying the rules and it is faith that keeps you in line with them.
Writing in to a newspaper for ethical advice is obviously just a way to try and gain support for your ethical view in an argument with someone. If the ethicist agrees with you then you read the article to your spouse/parent/friend in an attempt to convince them to see things your way. If the ethicist disagrees then you label the ethicist a charlatan/idiot and move on to someone else who will see things like you. This might be a fun way to have an argument but a truly useless way to develop any real "moral compass".
I love the "power rush" I get from forums, especially Slashdot. Where else can you send hundreds of people into a rage with one post? Since I can't afford a trip to Europe this year I'll have to settle for whatever pleasure I get here...(sigh).
I can see that you are a "true believer" that doesn't actually care about facts that contradict your worldview so I won't bother. Claiming to have critical thinking skills and actually having them are two different things. You should look into that.
The point was more that since evolution ISN'T provable why even teach it at all. Whether life got here through evolution or intelligent design doesn't really matter from a strictly scientific perspective. Science isn't going to a come to a screeching halt because we don't discuss why life exists in school. That is a responsibility best left to the parents. Claiming evolution is the best explanation for life is pure arrogance since it is merely a theory and all scientific theories have, so far, all been proven either wrong or, at least incomplete, over time.
Also, the Catholic church may have been the bad guy way back in the 1600's when they actually had more power but the new bad guys are the pharmaceutical industry and their ilk. They suppress scientific findings and play "fast and loose" with statistics to help their bottom line. How many herbal remedies, like Saint John's Wort, which have been proven as or more effective than their pharmaceutical counterparts, are kept out of mainstream medicine through their political machinations. If you think the church is still the enemy of science you need to catch up to the 21st century.
The aliens will probably decode our video signals before anything else and if they see any of the "reality shows" they'll know were not worth communicating with.
People that claim that living cells somehow came to be out of a chemical soup don't know much about science. The concept of abiogenesis (life from non-living matter) has NEVER been shown to be possible, even in a laboratory situation, It is so statistically improbable that that it staggers the imagination that anyone can claim to even consider it part of science. It has NOT impeded the progress of science to have the explanation for the existence of all the flora and fauna on Earth undetermined by science.
It comes down to the same issue every time, which is whether there is a God or not. Evolution is a pathetic attempt to counter the idea that there must be some intelligent design behind the universe. Science is science until we get to the theory of evolution where the religious belief, and claiming no religion IS a religious belief, of the person gets revealed.
"Innovation" is thrown out to appeal to the young and the naive. Everyone wants to think they're doing something that is making the world a better place so our corporate overlords tap into that by turning every scientific and engineering innovation into something akin to the wheel or the light bulb. Let's face it, big-screen televisions and iPhones may bring pleasure to those who buy them but they don't meet any fundamental human need.
If you want to know why this country doesn't exalt engineers like other countries you just need to look around the U.S.. We may complain about our infrastructure but it far exceeds the infrastructure of most countries. We have well designed homes, roads, water distribution, and sewer systems. The really important areas have already been engineered, so what is left? The need to "green-up" some of these areas will keep some engineers busy but for the most part engineers are really working on luxury items. We don't really NEED a space program, genetically modified seeds, or a slew of other items. They are just adding to an already phenomenally complex world that is exceeding our ability to understand and react to in a rational way. We are trying to solve problems created by technology with more technology which, IMHO, is insane.
I'm with you. It is definitely more "scam" than anything else. Everything I've read about using genetically modified organisms to produce fuel inevitably run into how to get the fuel out before the concentration kills the organism that produced it.
Technology like the Fischer-Tropsch method was proven viable using coal years ago. It isn't that big a step to use biomass. I'm watching companies like Range Fuels and research on plants like Miscanthus Giganteus. They have much more believable claims.
Inevitably, if it sounds too good to be true then it usually isn't true.
TCP contains some of the most incredible heuristic algorithms I've ever seen. Each algorithm, like Slow Start, RTT Estimation, SACK, etc. are relatively simple but together they work incredibly well at keeping data flowing across heterogeneous networks. They work so well that I've seen TCP overcome broken ethernet drivers and make them appear to work. Unfortunately, as someone who use to look at TCP traces for a living, I can tell you it can be really hard to work backwards from packet traces to figure out what is going on in the TCP/IP stack because there can be so much going on at the same time. This means that Wireshark in the hands of a weekend-hacker can easily lead to erroneous conclusions. If you follow this link and go to section 14.5 Random Early Detection (RED) you can see that the issue is already known and there are already solutions to mitigate the problem.
Relax and take a deep breath. Now you can move on to something more important......... like where you're going to spend your eternity
Well as someone who lives in an area that produces crops that can't be harvested mechanically, the vast majority of farm workers are Hispanic and probably illegal. It is the only way the farmers can make money in southern California.
What you failed to mention is how much money you make from government subsidies. My understanding is that crops like soy, corn and wheat are NOT profitable without them.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn straight! $42,000 a year doesn't even leave enough money leftover for all the chiropractic visits you need from being hunched over a computer 8+ hours a day.
I guess that eventually one half of the population will be watching the other half....Actually, if you include YouTube, that might already be true.
"Excuse me sir. What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a professional voyeur!"
The fact that you think that non-Caucasians AREN'T getting the good jobs probably means that you have been focusing primarily on your job and not the bigger picture of what your job means to the environment and society. It's easy to get tunnel-vision and focus on the immediate benefits of some particular product or technology. What is harder to see is the unintended consequences that are usually negative and range from annoying to deadly. There is getting to be a preponderance of evidence that our current Western model of doing business around the world is having serious negative consequences to society and the environment and the first people to really come to grips with this are the Caucasions. We are the ones that have been living and breathing it for the longest and have had the most personal experiences with the consequences.
If you enjoy feeding the corporate "beast" that's up to you but don't drink the kool-aid. Lazy, undisciplined Caucasions isn't the only reason, and probably isn't even the primary reason, that there aren't more Caucasions working for corporations in research and development.
Maybe engineers tend to believe Creationism because they've seen how many things can go wrong even when there is a modicum of intelligence behind the design. A functioning planet like Earth, with its diverse biomes, million-plus species, and resilient ecosystems makes them look really stupid because they can't do better than supposed "random interactions" and survival of the fittest.
Your statement implies that the current incarnation of capitalism is the only one possible. My rant against globalization and "for-profit" corporations doesn't mean that I am against capitalism. Commerce can take place, and has taken place for hundreds of years, without corporations and without global movements of business operations to take advantage of cheap labor and fewer government restrictions. What I am against is a system that works well for fewer and fewer people.
People need to be able to work and make a "livable wage" otherwise people will resort to crime or become dependent on government handouts. People also need to live in an environment that is non-toxic otherwise they will fight whatever is destroying their environment or find a new place to live. I believe, and feel free to come up with your own theory, that corporations have become the biggest impediment to healthy capitalism because they are chartered to encourage greed and allow people to avoid a sense of personal responsibility. They have leveraged technological advances and global disparities in standards of living to make money at the expense of the environment and the long-term impacts on workers. They have been able to do this because people failed to understand the impact corporations would have. That is changing.
Sure globalization is great if you ignore the niggling minor problems like pollution and exploitation of desperate workers. Also you would have to arbitrarily decide that dying from chronic diseases from living older is better than dying younger from acute diseases. And of course since there is no objective way to measure quality of life we'll just assume that people with the most stuff are the happiest. It validates the American lifestyle so Americans, at least, have to approve to avoid cognitive dissonance.
The best thing any government could do would be to eliminate the formation of "for-profit" corporations. Their "it's all about the profit" charters have made them a danger to the planet. They have used globalization to avoid doing the right thing environmentally and socially. They have no conscience because no one in a corporation feels personally responsible for the negative impacts of the company. As they say: "It's not personal, it's just business". Globalization is really a corporate phenomena that takes advantage of foolish people who would rather chase what they want rather than what they need.
If you have to lie to your parents to maintain your relationship with them then the bomb was already planted a long time ago. It was only a matter of time for it to go off. I don't condone what the hackers did but they can't actually destroy anyone that isn't already primed for destruction.
If you want to argue that you should be able to live whatever kind of twisted life you want without interference from anyone else then you should take it up with God.
If the overseer is expected to have a degree in Computer Science it's likely that they are expected to be a technical manager that understands the process and pitfalls of creating software. This requires years of experience and to get those years of experience you need to start as a "code monkey". Asking a recent Computer Science graduate to manage a team of Indian coders is a recipe for disaster.
Isn't that the truth!
Where the global economy has become more of a "confidence game" than a true measure of productivity because of fiat money. Where government subsidies, bailouts and entitlement programs create enormous distortions in the true strength of an economy, you have to wonder if anyone really knows what's going on.
I would agree with you, except for the biology part. Not because there hasn't been some startling developments in the area of biology but because it takes a longer time to see the blowback from the discoveries in biology than in other fields. All you have to do is read a book like "Why Things Bite Back" by Edward Tenner to see that "the more things change, the more they stay the same".
You can't debate with a religious fundamentalist who already knows The Truth.
Exactly, but you make it sound like a bad thing. We can't all be experts on everything so we clearly recognize who is correct. Even if we could, that would still exclude epiphanies, revelations, and other suprarational means of understanding life. I think many people on Slashdot have watched too much Star Trek. It's entertainment not reality.
Yes indeed! Ignorance is bliss! And you can always rationalize that it's not your JOB to actually understand the problems, just make them go away.
Until, of course, that ignorance has lead you down the garden path to your own demise. I certainly wish it was true that "what you don't know won't hurt you". Unfortunately, in IT in particular, that has never held true for me.
Speaking for the antimatter, I believe that there is a misconception. We don't appreciate being called the "anti" matter. We are the other-matter to you. From our perspective, you are the antimatter! You don't like it very much when someone calls YOU antimatter do you. I wish we could all just get along but it was not meant to be. We will continue to annihilate any of you that try to contact us. Please! Just leave us alone!!!!
Thank You
If you want to get your ethics from a real person instead of a book I'd be happy to oblige. You see, I was born under a "lucky" star so everyone who wasn't should send me money. Since you get your advice from "real people", you obviously weren't born under a "lucky" star and are what we call an unlucky person. Please let me know if PayPal works for you because that is the most ethical method for you to send me money.
I'm not sure whether to see people writing to an ethicist as silly or scary. As many people have stated, ethics is something beyond just what the law says. It is the idea that some things are intrinsically right or wrong whether there is a law against it or not. It has to have a basis in something real otherwise it's just someone's opinion. Treating ethics like it's equivalent to etiquette or relational advice is just bizarre to me. Who's opinion should really matter?!?!
Morality is normally backed up by religious writings of some sort. If you don't take your ethics reasoning from something like the Bible, Torah, Koran, etc. then it doesn't even CLAIM to have the authority of God behind it. The fact that all the religious writings have conflicting teachings is another issue, but at least there is some attempt at codifying the rules and it is faith that keeps you in line with them.
Writing in to a newspaper for ethical advice is obviously just a way to try and gain support for your ethical view in an argument with someone. If the ethicist agrees with you then you read the article to your spouse/parent/friend in an attempt to convince them to see things your way. If the ethicist disagrees then you label the ethicist a charlatan/idiot and move on to someone else who will see things like you. This might be a fun way to have an argument but a truly useless way to develop any real "moral compass".
I love the "power rush" I get from forums, especially Slashdot. Where else can you send hundreds of people into a rage with one post? Since I can't afford a trip to Europe this year I'll have to settle for whatever pleasure I get here...(sigh).
I can see that you are a "true believer" that doesn't actually care about facts that contradict your worldview so I won't bother. Claiming to have critical thinking skills and actually having them are two different things. You should look into that.
Is that dismissive, authoritarian style working for you? I'm guessing that people that don't NEED you for something wouldn't spend 5 minutes with you.
The point was more that since evolution ISN'T provable why even teach it at all. Whether life got here through evolution or intelligent design doesn't really matter from a strictly scientific perspective. Science isn't going to a come to a screeching halt because we don't discuss why life exists in school. That is a responsibility best left to the parents. Claiming evolution is the best explanation for life is pure arrogance since it is merely a theory and all scientific theories have, so far, all been proven either wrong or, at least incomplete, over time.
Also, the Catholic church may have been the bad guy way back in the 1600's when they actually had more power but the new bad guys are the pharmaceutical industry and their ilk. They suppress scientific findings and play "fast and loose" with statistics to help their bottom line. How many herbal remedies, like Saint John's Wort, which have been proven as or more effective than their pharmaceutical counterparts, are kept out of mainstream medicine through their political machinations. If you think the church is still the enemy of science you need to catch up to the 21st century.
The aliens will probably decode our video signals before anything else and if they see any of the "reality shows" they'll know were not worth communicating with.
People that claim that living cells somehow came to be out of a chemical soup don't know much about science. The concept of abiogenesis (life from non-living matter) has NEVER been shown to be possible, even in a laboratory situation, It is so statistically improbable that that it staggers the imagination that anyone can claim to even consider it part of science. It has NOT impeded the progress of science to have the explanation for the existence of all the flora and fauna on Earth undetermined by science.
It comes down to the same issue every time, which is whether there is a God or not. Evolution is a pathetic attempt to counter the idea that there must be some intelligent design behind the universe. Science is science until we get to the theory of evolution where the religious belief, and claiming no religion IS a religious belief, of the person gets revealed.
"Innovation" is thrown out to appeal to the young and the naive. Everyone wants to think they're doing something that is making the world a better place so our corporate overlords tap into that by turning every scientific and engineering innovation into something akin to the wheel or the light bulb. Let's face it, big-screen televisions and iPhones may bring pleasure to those who buy them but they don't meet any fundamental human need.
If you want to know why this country doesn't exalt engineers like other countries you just need to look around the U.S.. We may complain about our infrastructure but it far exceeds the infrastructure of most countries. We have well designed homes, roads, water distribution, and sewer systems. The really important areas have already been engineered, so what is left? The need to "green-up" some of these areas will keep some engineers busy but for the most part engineers are really working on luxury items. We don't really NEED a space program, genetically modified seeds, or a slew of other items. They are just adding to an already phenomenally complex world that is exceeding our ability to understand and react to in a rational way. We are trying to solve problems created by technology with more technology which, IMHO, is insane.
I'm with you. It is definitely more "scam" than anything else. Everything I've read about using genetically modified organisms to produce fuel inevitably run into how to get the fuel out before the concentration kills the organism that produced it.
Technology like the Fischer-Tropsch method was proven viable using coal years ago. It isn't that big a step to use biomass. I'm watching companies like Range Fuels and research on plants like Miscanthus Giganteus. They have much more believable claims.
Inevitably, if it sounds too good to be true then it usually isn't true.
TCP contains some of the most incredible heuristic algorithms I've ever seen. Each algorithm, like Slow Start, RTT Estimation, SACK, etc. are relatively simple but together they work incredibly well at keeping data flowing across heterogeneous networks. They work so well that I've seen TCP overcome broken ethernet drivers and make them appear to work. Unfortunately, as someone who use to look at TCP traces for a living, I can tell you it can be really hard to work backwards from packet traces to figure out what is going on in the TCP/IP stack because there can be so much going on at the same time. This means that Wireshark in the hands of a weekend-hacker can easily lead to erroneous conclusions. If you follow this link and go to section 14.5 Random Early Detection (RED) you can see that the issue is already known and there are already solutions to mitigate the problem.
Relax and take a deep breath. Now you can move on to something more important......... like where you're going to spend your eternity
Well as someone who lives in an area that produces crops that can't be harvested mechanically, the vast majority of farm workers are Hispanic and probably illegal. It is the only way the farmers can make money in southern California.
What you failed to mention is how much money you make from government subsidies. My understanding is that crops like soy, corn and wheat are NOT profitable without them.