First of all, I don't think selling papers is _illegal_, though. Unethical, yes, but then lots of unethical things pass for normal and legal business these days. (And it was even worse in the past.) So _if_ your implication is, basically, "they may be legitimate, but they're not legal", I'll have to disaggree there. They're against university rules, but AFAIK not against any state or federal laws. If they were illegal, you wouldn't need Google to do that, you could just forward those links to the police.
Second, legitimate is even trickier. Where do you draw the line? Technically speaking, anything legal _is_ a legitimate business. If you don't want it done, just pass a law to outlaw it.
And the business side pops up all the time (e.g, "but it creates employment!") when debating whether or not to make something illegal. It sure popped up in the spam and telemarketting debates, for example, all the way to the highest level. So basically when deciding whether it's legal or not, some MPs/congressmen/whatever-you-have, already considered the business side of it, and whether or not they want businesses doing that. E.g., whether the (lack of) ethics of it outweigh the employment created, tax income, and/or bribes from that lobby. In a way they already decided if that kind of business is legitimate or not.
Employment vs inflation is a constant concern since the Great Depression, when basically suddenly supply outstripped aggregate demand. (Yes, Say's Law does still apply, but "supply creates its own demand" only by lowering prices, and in the Great Depression suddenly the only point where you could actually sell all that stuff was below the production costs.) This became even worse when most industry moved offshore. Now we need even less people producing stuff. What do you do with the rest? Leave them unemployed, like in the 19'th century? Well, that also lowers the money they can spend to buy stuff, and that-a-way lies the downwards spiral that led to the Great Depression in the first place.
So nowadays governments actually get to see that employment stays roughly where they want it, and create some extra aggregate demand. (Deficit spending, pork barrel, social security, etc.) It works too, since we no longer have the economic crisis cycles that plagued most of the 19'th century and the first part of the 20'th century. Back then it was considered _normal_ that the industry goes through bankruptcy cycles and rises from the ashes based on demanding even longer work hours and lower salaries.
In a nutshell, a government's job is to see to it that you encourage (or at least don't discourage too much) people to create more jobs that don't actually produce something. Pretend to manage each other, create whole castes of marketters just trying to steal customers from each other, or do all sorts of convenience services to each other. And chip in a little to make it all keep working. Deserved or undeserved, ethical or unethical, as long as the negative impact is small enough, it doesn't matter. It matters that unemployment doesn't get out of hand. Because noone wants another Great Depression.
That's why even when debating something as annoying as telemarketting, the question just _has_ to pop up, basically, "how many jobs _are_ we nuking in the process? and can the rest of the economy absorb those?" You don't want to be the paladin in shiny armour that saved people from all evils... at the expense of causing the economy to collapse.
At any rate, that's why a lot of unproductive and even mildly unethical stuff is allowed to exist. In fact, encouraged to exist.
If you think that such companies are crossing the line into outright harmful, well, just lobby your lawmakers to outlaw it.
But, yeah, I'll aggree that Google is free to choose the companies it does business with.
Oh, one more thing: what also doesn't help there is that, even without the polluting effect of PR, today's idea of "media impartiality" means that they have to give equal space to two conflicting points of view, as if they were equal and just opinions. It shows that they don't take sides, right?
Even if a newspaper wrote about gravity, they can't just write "since Newton we've known that G = M * m / (r * r)". They have to also have another point of view, presented as equal in all aspects. So they just have to find some silly muppet with an opposing theory. And I don't mean MOND or space curvature, which would be at least a scientificaly sound thing. They'll find someone with some crackpot "no, no, no, gravity doesn't exist, we're just tied to the ground with invisible bungee cords! Aliens come at night and replace the broken ones!" theory.
Better yet, they'll present the latter as the breakthrough, and put the real scientist at the end of the article as the establishment-sponsored the-man-keeping-you-down voice of arbitrary authority.
It creates a false sense of contradiction and debate, where really there is none. It's simply that X is the real scientist, and Y is a crack-pot with no qualifications or peer-reviewed papers that noone takes seriously. But they won't tell you that, because that would violate their fucked-up "impartiality" creed. They can't tell you that X is the real scientist, because that would be siding with X in that "debate". And that's not impartial. It's only "impartial" if they present both as equals, and both theories as having equal merits and acceptance.
Gawd, this is just like food reports. Coffee's good for you, oh wait no its bad for you, oh on second thought its good for you . . ..
You're confusing real science with PR. They're not the same thing. PR is simply the evil twin of marketting, and makes marketting look all lawful good by comparison.
Marketting tells you stuff like "buy Moraelin's sugar-frosted chocolate flakes, they're grrreat."
PR goes and pretends to be science, news, interviews, etc, stuff that slips below your bullshit radar and hopefully undermines (A) the facts you base your judgment on, and (B) your confidence in any real science telling you otherwise. PR tells you stuff like, "a team of experts from the Elbonia Medical University discovered that cocoa contains all these enzimes that are good for you. Therefore eating lots of chocolate makes you live longer!" But ommits that all that stuff is only present in raw cocoa, not in chocolate.
(That, incidentally, is almost verbatim an actual PR coup funded by Mars. I just made up the name of the university, since I don't remember the real one off the top of my head.)
PR isn't science, it just pretends to be science, and loves taking stuff out of context. E.g., while real science would tell you about some synthetic food, "dude, it may have a little vitamins, but so does eating a carrot, and the carrot doesn't have all those nasty side effects", PR gives you the lopsided version of, "but it has added vitamins! We all know that you need vitamins, therefore this is good for you! Here's an article by Dr Sock Puppet saying that it's good for you."
Sometimes it's not even that "scientific". Sometimes they'll present some bullshit "perfect month to take a trip" formula, that incidentally matches their sponsor's ad campaign. It will usually add stuff that doesn't even have the same units, and do other blatant errors, but, hey, they'll find some good Dr Sock Puppet to sign it anyway.
The way it went is: a team of PR experts wrote that whole report and then went fishing for someone with a Dr or Prof title to sign his name on it. Most will say "no", but eventually they _will_ find someone who has nothing to lose and has no scruples anyway. He knows it's bogus, but it's not like he was doing any real research or had any recognition among his peers anyway, so no problem if his name becomes the laughing stock of the real scientists anyway. Sure, he'll take their money and sign his name on it.
Then the good PR people hit every single newspaper and even news agency with it. Disguised as _news_, not as an ad. Again, some will say no, but a lot will be glad to publish it. Even a mediocre PR agency will get you in the local newspapers, a top notch one can even get you on Reuters and on national TV.
Especially the newspapers actually love that kind of "news", because it's some free material to publish, and it's professionally written. And it's coming to you for free, instead of having you hunt for something worth writing about. Between writing about the local pig wrestling competition and publishing a profesionally written title about some nutrition breakthrough, complete with quotes from guys with Dr and Prof titles and all, guess which will a local newspaper prefer?
So to make a long story short, what you're seeing there isn't the scientists contradicting each other, but science vs PR. That's all. And by the sound of it, they achieved your goal of getting you confused. What you really see there is, basically:
PR: Coffee is good for you! Breakthrough research by Dr Sock Puppet spells it out for you! Science: Wait a minute, mate, that's only half the story you present there. Yeah, those effects are real, but what about these other ones? PR: New research by Prof Silly Muppet proves we were right! Coffee is awesome for you! Read it all here! Science: Oi! Well how about all these bad effects that were known for a century now? PR: Dr Greedy Shill calculated the formula for the perfect cup of coffee! And it's good for your health too! Don't miss it!
That would work maybe in English speaking countries, but not in Germany. We love big words down here, and, in the good tradition of gnomis/A-Team engineering, when we only have a bucket of small words, we get out our toolbox and build a huge word out of it.
We don't say "car", for example, we say, "Personenkraftwagen" (basically, "powered wagon for persons") or abbreviate it to PKW. But even if you abbreviate it, "Pe-Ka-Ve", is already 3 syllables. Buggerit. You can't explain cars in one syllable words down here, so I guess we all don't really understand cars. Bit of a shame, with all the car manufacturing we do, really;)
Actually, it gets funnier. Verbs are _usually_ two parts, since one part often gets to mark the end of the sentence. (That's the _first_ part of the verb that goes to the end of the sentence, btw.) That's not just a random detour, btw. I'm saying that because even when you're essentially just using the base meaning of the base verb, there's often a variant with an extra particle anyway, just to have something to put at the end of the sentence. So there goes the idea of using one syllable verbs.
The germanic tribes must have been really poor people, I figure. They couldn't afford a lot of verbs, so they left us a few base verbs and a small bucket of extra parts they can be combined with, to get just about everything else.
For example "bringen" (to bring) can be combined in fun ways to get stuff not even vaguely related to the root, like "umbringen" (to kill.) Or "ziehen" (to pull) can end up a plethora of other verbs, including "umziehen" (to move, as in, for example, to another residence), "anziehen" (to dress), "ausziehen" (to undress), etc. The verb "fangen" (to catch) can end up such stuff as the unrelated "anfangen" (to begin.)
Since in half the sentences that particle goes to the end of the sentence, you get the suspense of not knowing whether I brought my neighbour with me, or I killed him, until that last (actually, first) bit of the verb lands. It's poor man's Hitchcock, really. One mean trick you can play on your German friends is to _not_ say that last part, and watch their eyes glaze for a few seconds as they struggle to not forget the rest of the sentence while waiting for that last crucial bit. But I digress.
So, sadly, you're out of luck explaining anything in one syllable words to a German kid.
1. You amuse me. You talk about stupidity, yet you prove that _you_ are still too stupid to even understand what system I'm supporting there and what I'm not.
Here, lemme spare your little monkey brain the effort: I _don't_ support the kind of insurance you have to live with. I _do_ think that doctors have nothing to do with that insurance system.
Also, if I were to get diagnosed with just about anything, I _can_ get medical care, because I live in one of those countries where everyone pays for everyone else. That's why I was suggesting you change that system, instead of throwing a retarded rant about doctors. But I don't expect you to have enough neurons to understand that.
2. I do advocate taking responsibility, because it's retarded to _blame_ others for _your_ problems. Fine by me if you're too lazy to exercise an hour a day, which, according to your own messages, is what would take to lose some of that fat and be a lot healthier as a result. But at least fucking have the decency to also accept, at least theoretically, that it's your own fault for whatever happens as a result. Harping about how you don't adhere to the "fat and guilty" club is fucking retarded, when then you then go and rant along the lines of "fat and blaming the doctor."
Get this: primarily it's _your_ job to keep yourself fit and healthy. Just like brushing your teeth, really. If you choose to not take care of yourself, fine by me, but at least do have the decency to not blame others for it. The whole "fat and blaming the doctor for health problems" attitude is just as retarded as hearing someone go "never brushed my teeth, but I'm blaming the dentist." It's just fucking stupid.
3. About the moderation: dearie, all progress ever was made by people who said their opinion regardless of whether it was popular or not. Galileo's point of view wasn't popular, to say the least, but it happened to be right. Einstein's theory of relativity was called "bolshevism". Even the fact that you have a right to vote, instead of being a land-owners' state, has to do with some people saying the very unpopular thing at the moment: that it's about damn time it was a real democracy. Etc. The only reason we're out of the caves by now is because some people didn't care about being popular, and just said what they thought.
While SFVs (Stupid Fashion Victims) like you were always a part of the problem. At every point there was a good percentage of the population playing retarded prom-queen games. Along the lines of, "whaat? If I say I too am against the Inquisition, my neighbours will think I'm some kind of heathen too. I can't lose popularity like that. Let's join in the booing and hissing." Or "whaat? If I say I too am for universal vote, they'll think I'm some kind of malcontent who doesn't know his place. Let's boo at that idea."
And yes, that means even you _could_ be right or wrong, regardless of how others moderated you. But what you're too fucking retarded to understand is that that doesn't say I can't have my own opinion about it. That's what I was saying. And my opinion is that you're so fucking stupid, it's a miracle you can use a computer or tie your shoelaces.
4. If you don't like the mild euphemism "lemming", fine by me. By now you have more than proven, beyone all doubt, that you deserve a promotion there. I hereby dub thee "complete cretin."
You know nothing about what I have or haven't experienced of the medical profession. You're free and liberal with those insults, despite not even knowing what country I'm from, what the setup is here, or what treatment I've seen given by doctors. If you care, you can go look at my other replies or you can go fuck yourself. Either way I don't care. But hey when you're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to get treated DESPITE having medical insurance and you still can't get decent care, lets see how you fucking feel about it all. Wanker.
Well, here's what I do know, and I don't need more than the retarded tantrum above as proof. And if that's not enough, I can look at the other retarded tantrums you've posted in this thread alone.
But I digress. Here's what I do know: you're a fucking retard. Smooth brain. Room temperature IQ... in Celsius.
For starters, you _still_ can't comprehend the difference between doctors and the insurance accountants. When you talk about spending thousands of dollars, guess what? That's the insurance system that shafted you, not the doctors.
What _do_ you expect the doctors to do about it? Work for free and pay out of their own pocket for your care? Do _you_ do your job for free and pay the company expenses out of your own pocket? Then wtf of a right do you think you have to demand that from doctors?
In other words, when you rant and rave about the resemblance of the medical profession and prostitution: then how about _your_ job? Don't tell me you don't do it for money. Then what gives you the right to be outraged when others want to be paid for their work? _Nobody_ owes you a lollypop, and throwing spoiled-brat tantrums about it won't change that fact. You're just as big a hooker as them and as the rest of us. Now get off that high horse and learn to live in society.
I also do know, from your own retarded rants, that you're in a country where the "preexisting condition" idiocy does apply. That's all I need to know there. I don't give a fuck, and it makes no difference, whether that's USA or India or whatever. I just need to know what kind of insurance you have, and you already told me that. So throwing a retarded tantrum along the lines of "yeah, but you don't also know the colour of my underwear" is just pointless.
I also notice from the other answer of yours that you still don't understand how insurances work. When you let it rip about that rant about comunism and capitalism, you just prove that you're, simply put, too fucking stupid to understand what I'm talking about. That's not a rant, that's the whole crux of the problem. An insurance company is a company out to make money, ultimately. _That_ is why it excludes against pre-existing conditions. It's simple capitalism at work.
When they set your monthly rate to insure you against, say, fire, they look at how much they'd have to pay you _and_ the probability of that happening. It's a simple maths and statistics game. You get decent insurance if you can prove that you'll never need it, you pay through the nose if you're very likely to need it soon. The same applies to health ensurance: if they think there's a 1% chance that you'll need an expensive operation in your lifetime, you get good insurance, if they think you'll need it every year, they don't give you insurance at all.
At any rate, the _logical_ recourse there isn't to throw tantrums about the doctors, but to change that insurance system. There's no freakin' thing the doctors can do about it. If the insurance accountants don't pay, that's the end of it. WTF _do_ you expect the doctor to do there? _Someone_ has to pay. Either you lobby to change to a more fair system, or you suck it up and pay out of your own pocket. Expecting the doctors to work for free is _not_ an option.
But, more generally, I also notice is your propensity to blame your problems on others. It's the doctor's fault if he says you look like you're pregnant. (And, I see a couple of other "fat and proud of
And some retared fool has modded you insightful. You're insightful because you're arguing that it's too hard to have a medical system that provides actual care for the ill, and rant about communism and capitalism....and _I'm_ the lemming?
Heh. If the previous use of "lemming" was just a mild euphemism, the above tantrum above moderation earns the "lemming" title fair and square, beyond all reasonable doubt.
Why _do_ you care that much about moderation? It just says that one other person thought the same. Big deal either way. Out of millions of readers, no matter what you say, someone will think you're an asshole, someone will think you're an idiot, someone will think you're working for the global conspiracy, and someone will think it's the greatest thing ever said by a human. And someone can't read past the first paragraph. Which of them gets a mod point, is as good as a dice toss.
More importantly, the truth or falsehood of a statement don't have _anything_ to do with how popular or unpopular it is. As Carl Sagan put it, "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Neither getting a standing ovation, not getting laughed at, proves anything about being right or wrong.
So how about worrying about the message you read, or saying what you really believe, instead of throwing tantrums about moderation? Just an idea. Worrying about who's popular and who's not... that-a-way lies groupthink and SFV (Stupid Fashion Victim) syndrome.
It's insulting to those speaking out and those who have to live with OCDP[...]Way to go dickhead!
I'm sorry to rain on your parrade, "dickhead", but OCPD _can_ be cured. It's not some genetic incurable condition, it's just a dysfunctional attitude and set of axioms to base one's judgment on. (Just as a reminder: OCPD is not OCD. OCD is lining up pencils as some compulsive rituals. OCPD is lining pencils because it's the Right Thing, and everyone else is an idiot for settling for a less perfect solution.)
And, at least in some cases, it's a fuck-up of education: idiot parents demanding that their kids do everything _perfectly_ and finding flaws in _everything_, raise idiot kids just can't realize when a solution _is_ good enough.
So if you "have to live with OCPD", then do us all a favour already and go join a fucking support group. We've all had it up to _here_ with idiots solving the wrong problem and being obnoxious about it, just because of their fucked-up ideals of perfection.
Because, yes, invariably the "100% uncompromising solutions" that OCPD cases come up with are solving the wrong problem entirely. Real Life problems are usually not boolean yes/no problems with 1 variable, but min-max problems in a space of a dozen variables and two dozen constraints. In a real life problem you usually can't pick one variable, say, X, and max it to 100%, because that would cause the Y and Z variables to move out of the desired solution space.
Enter OCPD "uncompromising" "perfectionists" coming up with a crap solution that maxes X to 100% and proclaims that Y and Z are idiocies that only clueless lusers would care about. In his mind that's the perfect solution because it maximizing the arbitrary criterion of perfection he chose, but for everyone else it's a crap solution or not a solution at all.
So, again, for anyone "who have to live with OCPD": join a support group already. You're not the shining beacon of perfection in a flawed world, you're the guy with a personality disorder. That's it. You may have my compassion for whatever dysfunctional parents molded you that way, but if you choose to "live with OCPD", that's where my compassion ends. It _can_ be cured, and if you choose to annoy everyone around you instead of getting cured, that's already past compassion.
1. The doctors and nurses are the ones who treat you. None of them would refuse to treat you because of a pre-existing condition, or because your being dumb is what got you there in the first place. I've yet to hear about anyone working in the ER turning away a stroke patient because it was some pre-existing condition, or someone with a cracked skull because, hey, they shouldn't have climbed on the house in the first place.
2. Then there are the guys who have to pay for that kind of treatment. I.e., the insurances. These aren't doctors, these are MBA and accountant types. For them it doesn't matter if you live or die, for them it matters if they make money. If it doesn't make more money than the interest at the bank/investment-fund/whatever, they're going to take their money and put it there. For them it's all down to statistics. If there's a 1% chance that you'll need a $40,000 operation in the next 40 years, they'll factor that in as an extra $10 per year on your insurance. Make that $11 or $12, because they want to make a profit too. If it's a 50% chance, they might not insure you at all.
It's completely different professions, lemming.
And more importantly, it's not like that everywhere. On most of continental europe, and IIRC Canada too, the state stepped in and created a fund for everyone. Basically everyone pays for everyone else. It's not perfect, but noone ever ends up denied medical care _because_ it's known that they'll need it.
There you go, the medical profession has no problem with that kind of setup either. They just need a salary, and someone has to pay for all the machinery and equipment. If the state enforced a more fair way of paying for it, the doctors have no problem with it. In fact, I think most are for it.
Unfortunately, that won't go that easily in the USA, where a whole cult of the psychopaths is the default culture. There's a whole caste repeating to everyone that the american dream is to shaft someone on the way to the top, and that all that matters is the Holy Dollar. As Queensryche put it, "gotta make a milion, doesn't matter who dies." Caring for your fellow man is outright communistic and undermining the very fundament of the whole socierty. (Yeah, right.)
So if anyone did try to implement a fair system where everyone has access to medical care, _especially_ if it's known that they'll need it, I'm betting on an _avalanche_ of the following two responses:
1. Noooo, it's _my_ money! I'm healthy, why should I pay for all the bums with pre-existing conditions? Papa needs a car with a wing, not to subsidize all the cripples and retards. (Until they themselves discover that they do have some genetic condition that didn't become obvious until old age. The it's "why the fuck don't I get free healthcare from everyone else... and still keep all the money I saved by not paying for everyone else???")
2. Noooo, it's a communistic plot! Wtf of an anti-american and anti-capitalist idea is that to take from everyone according to their means, and give to everyone according to their needs? The free unrestricted market solves everything by itself! If that gets implemented, we're all _doomed_. All those lazy bums will stop working and live off medicare! People will stop working hard for a promotion if they get their medical needs covered anyway! The whole economy will collapse! (Never mind that it didn't collapse in, say, Germany, where exactly such a system is in place.)
At the risk of sounding like a troll, one constant of the universe is that for _everything_ you'll get at least the following kinds of responses:
1. things were working perfectly fine in the good old days, changing things and/or making me learn/do new stuff is _evil_. Someone ought to educate users instead, change the whole culture, whatever. (A.k.a., "back in my days we walked to school 2 miles through the snow, up hill both ways, and we _liked_ it" nostalgia.)
2. It's a conspiracy and/or it will be bought and killed by the conspiracy (A.k.a., paranoia.)
3. (If something physical needs to be built) Not in my back yard!!!
4. Yeah, but it's not 100% perfect and foolproof, therefore it's 100% rubbish (A.k.a., Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.)
I should qualify it though that being aware of the attacks still possible and planning around them is just the right state of mind for security. Yes, nothing is 100% perfect, so you still need to be on your toes. But claiming that something is useless crap because some convoluted scenario still isn't covered, well, that's already OCPD.
But, anyway, seriously. You could come up with a cheap cure for cancer, and you'd get a bunch of responses along the lines of:
1. "Things were perfectly fine in my days, we don't need no stinking cure for cancer. Just educate the lusers to stop smoking and eat their veggies, and everything will be just fine."
2. "It's not a cure for cancer, it's a big pharma conspiracy to make you take those pills for some other nefarious purpose!" or "The big pharma conspiracy will kill it! They make their money by treating for years, not by curing! They'll never allow an actual cure!"
3. "You're not building that factory in _my_ town! Why, my property value could go down if a factory is visible from the back yard!"
4. "Yeah, but it only cures 95% of the kinds of cancer. Plus, it still doesn't cure diabetes, AIDS and the bird flu! Plus, what do you do if a user is dumb enough to not go to the doctor until they die, or to go to some witch-doctor instead? Therefore it's 100% crap, and we shouldn't waste our time with it."
Number 4 just seems to be especially popular on Slashdot. What else is new?
They weren't more civil at any point in time, except in some formal settings. We can probably say that when gentlemen met at a posh club, they weren't calling each other cocksuckers, but then again even today they still don't. Move out of that setting, though, and it wasn't some rose-coloured golden age of being nice.
For starters, in that same age, they had just fought a war over, you know, _slavery_. People were bought and sold, treated in some cases worse than cattle, and savagely whipped or occasionally executed on a whim. How's that for being nice to one's fellow humans?
And speaking of that civil war, it saw its share of such colourful characters as Bloody Bill Anderson. The guy was _proud_ of applying terror tactics and executions not only against captured soldiers, but against civillian union sympathisers too.
Newspapers had not yet discovered that it pays to at least pretend to be impartial and objective. Yeah, I know they still aren't really, but back then they didn't even bother pretending. Lopsided, inflamatory and outright insulting journalism was the order of the day. Mud-slinging and outright libel were just normal political tools.
And then you should see what they said about other races and people. If you think nowadays' coverage of Iraq was a shame, back then it was orders of magnitude worse. It was for example the age of "white man's burden" and "mission to civilize" theories, where three quarters of the globe (including such civilizations like China or Japan) were presented as worse than Neanderthals, and it was the _burden_ of us poor white guys from the west to go sneer at them and shaft them, as some civilizing mission. And that was actually the _nice_ version.
It was also the age of such things as train robberies. No, they didn't jump into the train from horseback like in the movies. They just derailed the train, lots of people died, and the survivors got robbed.
It was the age of driving the natives out of their lands, and the occasional massacre. Custer for example wasn't a gentleman soldier in the war against savages, as the media at the time presented him. He was a guy who massacred whole camps, including a good percentage of the women and children, and held the survivors hostage (again, unarmed women and children) to force the rest of the tribe to accept being pushed into a reservation.
Etc, etc, etc.
The past _never_ was as cheerfully rose coloured as naive nostalgia presents it. That goes not only for the 19'th century. The Renaissance wasn't a cheerful age, like ren faires would have you believe, but a shithole that turned the whole european culture morbid and depressive for centuries. The knights in shiny armour weren't ideals of chivalry, but... well, let's just say that one manual for knights advised them to literally beat their wives senseless (as in, literally, until she loses consciousness) to keep them in line, and to break the wife's nose so other men won't find her pretty any more. And that's just one of the many atrocities of that caste. Etc.
Better yet, I can't help remembering some CS servers where most of the conversations involved people:
- calling each other gay, faggot, cock-sucker, and the like,
- calling each other "fucking camper" and/or "fucking cheater", (remember the keyword "fucking)
- telling each other how good their mom was in bed,
- trying the most underhanded sexist pickup lines on anyone whose name sounded, no matter how improbably, like it might be female. (And to some people even Chtulhu sounds feminine.)
Etc.
I shudder to think what ads would google keyword matching serve there. Condoms? Gay dating sites?
Even then they don't give them on 5 minutes notice. I _have_ been called on 3 firefighting jobs this year alone, and nothing spectacularly happened if my phone was off for an hour or two.
I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing the right thing, but I'm just saying that it won't stop the bad guys. Or not by itself. Ever. Yes, people should vote with their wallets, but not imagine that they're stopping anyone with that course of action. You're doing that for your own conscience, nothing more.
Being a good guy is good and fine, but it doesn't make the bad guys realize the error of their ways. It just makes them think you're a sheep to be sheared, or if that's not possible, then out-maneuvered and ignored.
And plans of the caliber of, "well, then we should all shun them" just don't work. There'll always be someone who is deluded, or uninformed, or plain old doesn't care. Whenever a plan starts with "well, if more people would..." that should be your clue that that plan won't work, never work, can't ever work.
And it's not about culture, it's about being realist enough. About 1 out of 30 people (at least for the USA) is medically a sociopath. Culture and shiny happy "we're all born good and doing the right thing" thinking don't work against them. They don't give a fuck about culture or about what the rest of the community thinks or does, except maybe in as much as it gets in the way of their plans. There's no amount of caring and being the living righteous example that will make them realize the error of their ways, because they're just not wired for that. You're just an unimportant dime-a-dozen NPC to them, and who the heck cares what an NPC thinks or does? You either keep them in check with fear of consequences, or, yes, they run amok.
And such "well, I'm not buying their stuff any more" one-man protests, well, it's good that you do that, but don't delude yourself that it'll stop Scientology or any other scam. On an efficiency scale it's on par with going and sulking in your room. Yeah, that'll show 'em.
Even if you take the "You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem." philosophy, there are simply too many who are part of your problem there. _Those_ are why such idealistic plans don't work.
Voting for the president works because 51% of the votes are enough to stop one of the candidates. Voting with your wallet _doesn't_ work, because even if you got 99% of the "votes" against a scam, the remaining 1% is _plenty_ to keep most scams going. Less than 1% keept spam or 419 scams perfectly profitable for a whole decade.
It's not a vote, it's a case where you'd need 100% of the "votes" to work at all. And noone got that in any election or on any issue. (Even the communist elections in most communist countries were realistic enough to claim reelection with only 90-something percent of the votes. Even to them it was blatantly obvious that 100% just doesn't happen naturally.) _That_ is the flaw in that idealistic plan.
Sadly, they didn't make themselves elligible for a Darwin award. Remember, the point of the Darwin awards isn't to name-and-shame stupid people who stayed in the gene pool, but to honour those who sacrificed themselves (preferrably in a spectacular way) to improve the species. I.e.,
1. they have to be an evolutionary dead end, without further chance to pass on whatever genes made them so stupid. I.e., they have to end up dead or at least unable to reproduce to qualify for the Darwin award.
E.g., Borston Corbett, although he never actually killed himself, would have deserved a Darwin Award (had the Darwin Awards existed at the time), for his castrating himself with a pair of scissors to avoid being tempted by prostitutes.
2. it must be obvious that it's to the good of the species that they removed themselves from the gene pool. The act by which they removed themselves from the gene pool must show remarkable stupidity and/or poor judgment. It must be blindingly obvious to someone of average intelligence that it's potentially (and very likely) fatal to do that, yet the nominee thought it would be a good idea.
E.g., someone who fell from the 20'th floor because they leaned against the bannister and it broke, doesn't qualify. Someone who fell from the 20'th floor when trying to stand on a wheelchair in their balcony to hang a bird house, that one fully quallified.
What does that mean here? A bunch of stupid teachers making kids cry isn't enough to earn them a Darwin award. Now maybe if they were trampled to death by the scared kids, then they'd qualify for a Darwin award. Though even that is debatable. It can be argued that one would more realistically expect the kids to cry and take cover than to do a stampede, and that it would take extreme bad luck for an adult to be trampled to death by a few kids.
Mind you, this whole act is such extreme stupidity (or maybe sociopathy) anyway, that it's a shame that they didn't go the extra mile to earn a Darwin award. Dunno how. Maybe climb on a house to play the gunman's role and fall over. Or something. But, alas, they stopped well short of removing themselves from the gene pool.
I'm sorry, but in all job interviews I've been, nothing even starts to move in less than a month. They'll want a CV first, then send you some forms/questionnaire/whatever to fill, wait some time as they wait for candidates and/or process the mountain of resumes, then you're one of a hundred or more guys interviewed, and only then anything actually happens.
The scenario you describe is nothing short of some company's making it a lottery. They skipped everything and just went with the first guy who had the cell phone on. I'm sorry, unless it's a janitor job, it just won't happen. And even for janitors, they still might talk to more than one, just to see who wants less money.
For a high paying job? Heh. Not even in your dreams. High paying jobs are also important jobs, one way or another. You don't hire your next software architect or even manager by lottery. Even if you didn't care about their qualifications (unlikely already), the very definition of "high paying" means that there's room for a lot of savings by interviewing more than one person and maybe excluding the ones with exorbitantly unreasonable demands.
Also, all job interviews I've been in, were preceeded by aggreeing on a reasonable time. Even if the company does have the upper hand there, it is generally understood that there might be times that simply aren't an option. Maybe on day X I'm scheduled in court, or maybe it's mom's funeral, or whatever, you know? It might have to be scheduled on the next day, or even next week.
Even if (ad absurdum) someone was that brain dead to make their request "I want you for the job interview here _now_, in 5 minutes!", would I want to work for that company? No, not really. It's just an indication of their general attitude, and that more unreasonable demands will come.
So basically, the example is akin to telling me "wear a Roman armour all the time, just in case you get your once-in-a-lifetime chance to travel 2000 years back in time and be elected Emperor!" Well, no, thank you very much, I'll take my chances and wear my usual outfit. The chances of that happening are close enough to nil, and I wouldn't lose _that_ much sleep even if that chance came and I missed it.
Yes, I know it was just an example, but that's the whole problem: all the examples on this topic are scenarios that are (A) extremely unlikely, and (B) silly. If the best reasons for being a full time telephone operator all the time, are such contrived scenarios that will never happened anyway, then excuse me if I do turn my cell phone off anyway. Between (a) having some privacy and time to myself, and (b) the unlikey chance that something like that happens, I'll choose the former every single time.
It really saddens me to rain on your utopian dream, but "it would work if we _all_ did X" _never_ worked. Never worked, doesn't work, never will.
By the same token, yeah, it would stop spam if we _all_ didn't buy that stuff, but there'll always be some idiots who do. Yeah, it would stop stock scams dead if we all didn't rush to buy hyped-through-spam stocks, but there'll always be some "smart" guys who think they can beat the system and do their own buying and selling just before it crashes. (It has been already proved to never work, but, hey, there's one born every minute anyway.) Yeah, it would stop unethical business practices dead if we all stopped buying from and investing in unethical companies, but, let's face it, you're a minority there; the majority just buys from whoever sells the cheapest, invests in whoever promises the most gain, and would even deal with the mafia perfectly happily. Etc.
And so it is with this kind of fucked-up cults too. Wishful "if we all started boycotting them" thinking won't work, because there'll always be a minority, no matter how small, who are fucked-up in the head and need some exotic, non-mainstream religion to give meaning to their fucked-up lives. And a cult doesn't really need billions of members to be profitable. If only as few as those who buy from spam links are also gullible enough to join your cult, you're already a rich guy. It's that simple.
So you'd literally need to get _everyone_ to join in your boycott for it to work. Not just "more", but literally "all".
In other words, the "allmighty buck" isn't that allmighty at all when it comes to righteous causes. And it tends to work against you every time.
What you need isn't self-righteous boycotts, what you need is laws and courts of law. You already have laws saying that (A) small excerpts _do_ fall under fair use, even if scientology doesn't like it, and (B) once they've made themselves a public figure, they can't really stop other people from talking about them, or even ridiculling them, and (C) they aren't supposed to use lawsuits just to silence their critics. See that those laws are applied. That's really the only realistic, working solution.
Again, here are his exact words: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles."
He's _not_ phrasing it as "the system is 95% idle, therefore it has no excuse to lag". He's phrasing it as the idle process "hogging all the resources" and "chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles." That's a pretty dumb way to describe it any way I want to look at it. Even as an attempt at humour, it's as dumb as it gets, and doubly so in an otherwise serious article.
Combine it with the previous part of that paragraph, and I'm just more convinced that he's just that stupid. He confuses unresponsiveness with "idle mode", although they're massively different phenomena. I have no trouble extrapolating from that confusion that he genuinely doesn't understand what idle mode is, and what the system idle mode is, in the next phrase.
And, generally, it just leaves me with an overall impression that the whole PC Magazine staff were retards. If he and another editor have trouble on the VPN, and noone at PC Magazine can help them... OMFG, they just don't have _any_ competent techie there.
The yes part is: I can aggree with all you wrote there. It's common sense, really.
The no part is: well, that was not really my gripe. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough.
My gripe is with people who should know better, but are taking such entertainers as the new Oracle Of Delphi, and their words as 100% accurate prediction to go by. Cringely said that Intel will buy Apple? It must be as good as an Intel press release. Cringely said that IBM will fire 150,000 out of 130,000 US jobs? It's as good as already happened!
Keyword there being: who should know better. I can understand Jack Hasbeen and Jill Manager reading it for entertainment value, and to feel on top of a domain they don't even understand. But I like to think that Slashdot == nerds who should have already caught on to the idea that the likes of Dvorak and Cringely are arse-clowns talking out the rear end.
Well, actually, on second thought, let me take back a bit of the "yes" part too. I can see how that sells better, but it's a bit of dishonesty anyway.
Thing is, "normal" people don't find computers entertaining at all, and don't buy computer magazines as entertainment. Whoever buys these, has some genuine interest in finding things out, whether because they're a techie, or because they manage some techies, or because they want to sound all knowledgeable in a meeting, or whatever. Telling them whatever lie or outlandish prediction just because it sells... well, is a breach of trust.
Briefly, while I can understand why it makes more money, I can't help feeling some disgust at the perpetrator anyway.
It's, if you will, like hearing about the WorldCom scam. I can see how it made them money (for a while), and how it was more profitable (for a while) than doing the honest thing, but somehow I end up disgusted at the whole thing anyway.
Sadly, he did write that, and no, it doesn't look tongue in cheek at all. Catch: XP Decay.
Genuine quote from the great pundit: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"
I've read the article again, just in case there might be some subtle sarcasm I've missed before, but it looks as serious as it gets, if anyone asks me.
The whole list is framed between:
- "This week's column is about exploring the commonly observed problems that crop up with each new release. Maybe Microsoft should patch the patches once in a while. Here are a few of my gripes - most of them a result of excessive patching." which doesn't really sound like the start of a joke, and
- "And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it." Which, again, would indicate that not only he's not joking, but he thinks that anyone who hasn't had those newbie problems is, in his own words, "full of it."
Speaking of which, the rest of the complaints sound... shall we say, computer illiterate. And that's putting it mildly. He sounds like the average Uncle Osric or Aunt Emma, who are terminally stumped as to why would their computer suddenly be sluggish or takes a while to connect on the network. It must be all those MS patches, really. Not like the kind of expert who fixes such things for fun, and/or knows exactly what worm was hogging the network.
Believe me, I've tried finding some trace of tongue-in-cheek irony there. I've hoped it would be an April 1st article. Nope.
But, hey, judge it for yourself. If you can detect some trace of sarcasm there, please tell me.
One can only wish, but I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, we still see Dvorak drivel making the front page. One would have thought that after the "my idle process is hogging 95% of the CPU cycles" whine, that would have been the last any tech-savvy site ever links to Dvorak, right? Well, dream on.
TBH, though, much as Cringely _is_ just a hack, I'd rather/. gave up on the whole class of "computer pundits" entirely. It's an easy job, and it's really about entertainment not computer expertise, ok? It's just a glorified SF version of the astrology columns in some newspapers. It just requires a thick enough skin to pretend it never happened, or that you were misunderstood, when 99% of the predictions don't come to pass. Better yet, phrase your predictions in a way that (A) gives them a time or an event, but never both, so it can't really be disproved, and (B) in the tried and tested "why X should do Y" way, so if it doesn't happen, it's obviously only because X is more stupid than you.
Briefly, it's not just about Cringely, but the whole caste is little more than a bunch of entertainers, and not one iota more reliable than astrologers. Linking to any of them, not just Cringely, as if they actually predicted something about to happen, is akin to linking to an astrology site. "The great Mr Psychic says this is your lucky day, go do an interview for a job if you're a Capricorn. [Read more...]" No more, and no less.
Well, hmm, if emoticons are supposed to represent what you're looking at, then that gives me an idea: there should be an introverted nerd emoticon representing a pair of shoes. I dunno how to draw that in ASCII, though.
Nope. Christianity had sects all along, and major theological debates to establish who's right and who's wrong. Most of the original sects were extinct by then, or nearly extinct, yes, but they had existed. I even mentioned some of them by name in the original message, but let's elaborate a bit on the time of each and provide some quick Wikipedia links:
- Gnosticism. Hardly a century had passed since Christ, and already Simon Magus (literally, don't laugh, Simon The Sorcerer;) was founding his own heresy loosely based on Christianity. It produced a shitload of scrolls which reused the biblical characters loosely for their own purposes.
- Arianism, being the teachings of Arius, who lived between 250 AD and 336 AD. Conflicted pretty badly with the Catholic doctrine, or at least the Council of Nicaea thought so. Also had quite a following, with whole people following his doctrines. E.g., the Vandals actively proselitised Arianism and persecuted those following the Nicene Creed, i.e., the catholic version.
- Nestorianism, being the doctrine of Nestorius, who lived between 386 and 451 AD, and at some point managed to become Patriarch of Constantinople. (Think, sorta the eastern pope.) It produced quite the schism too, with at least one branch of the church splitting irreversibly over this issue.
- Cathar. To quote from Wikipedia, "The first known Occitan Cathars appeared in Limousin between 1012 and 1020. Several were discovered and put to death at Toulouse in 1022. The synods of Charroux (Vienne) (1028) and Toulouse (1056) condemned the growing sect. Preachers were summoned to the districts of the Agenais and the Toulousain to combat the Cathar doctrine in the 1100s."
- Eastern Orthodoxy involved _centuries_ of growing schism and dispute between the Byzantines and Rome over such issues as iconoclasty in the east and the Filioque clause used by catholics. The rift became irreversible and the two churches split their ways in 1054, when each of the two heads of the churches proclaimed an anathema on the other. (Pretty much excomunicated each other.)
And that's just skimming over a millenium of schism and heresy. So, basically, there you go. There _were_ sects before Jan Hus and John Wycliffe.
Admittedly, they're not much taught in schools nowadays, while the hussite wars and the 30 year war are. But that doesn't mean they didn't exist.
1. Note my mentioning a credible threat. The us-vs-them in sports is never that sure. Each game could at least theoretically be lost. It might take a miracle, but it happens to every team. So even if you're on top, it _could_ happen that you get a bad day, your best player has a flu, and the next best sprains his ankle in the first 5 minutes. Whatever. This basically is what keeps fan rallied around that team.
By comparison, the corporate world moves very very slowly. Even if someone hired the best 10,000 geniuses, it would be a long time before MS even starts to feel the pressure. It's just not the same scenario.
If you will, the former scenario is the gorilla which _could_ lose even the next game, the latter is the gorilla which after a whole decade is just sorta moving from total supremacy to sorta only massive superiority in the market in some domains. The former maybe could use some encouragement just in case, the latter, well, obviously doesn't need any defending yet.
2. I wasn't talking about fans, but about die-hard fanboys. There's a subtle difference between fan and fanboy. The fan might just be obsessed with his team and spend a lot of time and money on that. The fanboy thinks his idol is the saviour (from whatever threats he perceives) and that you're either a brainwashed idiot and/or part of the enemy if you as little as see some merits at all in another team.
I mean, look at religion, look at Slashdot, read some console gaming forum. It's not just people who just happen to think religion X is cool, or OS Y is really good, or console Z has these neat games, you know. It's people who believe that the whole bloody future is at stake and _depends_ on their converting everyone to their cult. If you don't switch to Apple/Linux/PS3/AMD/whatever, we're all _doomed_. Monoculture disasters waiting to happen, stiffling innovation, fascism, bla, bla, bla, you're guilty of all that and more if you even consider an alternative.
Sad to say, by comparison, most sports fans seem pretty sane. Well, ok, maybe "sane" isn't the word, since some idiots do go to a soccer game just to riot and beat each other up afterwards. But even those, you know, do it because they want to get in a fist fight, not because they genuinely believe that the whole future depends on defeating the other team.
3. Fandom (and fanboyism) is by and large a social phenomenon too. Note that I didn't say that mainstream religions don't get fans. I said they don't get fanboys. What they do get in copious quantities however are, well, sheep. People who stick to the bandwagon just because it's the bandwagon, and it's fashionable among their peers to be seen on it.
These are basically people who go to church on sunday, because (they think) the rest of the city expects to see them there. Or rant about sports just because (they think) everyone else in their group is nuts about that team, and it doesn't pay to be the odd missfit. Or chest-thump about bringing democracy to Iraq, just because they think it would be a faux pas to be heard saying what (they imagine) their neighbours wouldn't want to hear. Etc.
Briefly, it's a lot of groupthink and show business. And you can get them to enact any behaviour imaginable, if you can get everyone in a group of N people to think that the other N-1 do the same and want to see the same. Including making an ass of themselves in the name of spectator sports.
These aren't however, the people who'll prozelitize and go on crusades/jihads. What for?
So in the same vein, the "followers" of Redmond are really just a bunch of people who don't really give a damn, and won't go on a jihad for the glory of Windows. They're just doing the mainstream thing, same as everyone else. And at most they'll put up the kind of behaviour that they (imagine they) see everyone doing about it. Unfortunately that doesn't mean chest thumping like in sports, but being equally jaded and clueless as the neighbour. (And I don't mean "clueless" as in "window
From the political arena. The USA is bashed constantly. As the 800 pound guerrilla it's expected and faults are highlighted and the good stuff rapidly forgotten or intentionally ignored. I imagine bashing the British Empire was fashionable in it's day.
Yes, but you sorta just illustrate my point. I was talking about zealots rushing to woship the gorilla, which mostly won't happen. You're talking about zealots rushing to bash the gorilla, which, yeah, happens all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I don't think selling papers is _illegal_, though. Unethical, yes, but then lots of unethical things pass for normal and legal business these days. (And it was even worse in the past.) So _if_ your implication is, basically, "they may be legitimate, but they're not legal", I'll have to disaggree there. They're against university rules, but AFAIK not against any state or federal laws. If they were illegal, you wouldn't need Google to do that, you could just forward those links to the police.
Second, legitimate is even trickier. Where do you draw the line? Technically speaking, anything legal _is_ a legitimate business. If you don't want it done, just pass a law to outlaw it.
And the business side pops up all the time (e.g, "but it creates employment!") when debating whether or not to make something illegal. It sure popped up in the spam and telemarketting debates, for example, all the way to the highest level. So basically when deciding whether it's legal or not, some MPs/congressmen/whatever-you-have, already considered the business side of it, and whether or not they want businesses doing that. E.g., whether the (lack of) ethics of it outweigh the employment created, tax income, and/or bribes from that lobby. In a way they already decided if that kind of business is legitimate or not.
Employment vs inflation is a constant concern since the Great Depression, when basically suddenly supply outstripped aggregate demand. (Yes, Say's Law does still apply, but "supply creates its own demand" only by lowering prices, and in the Great Depression suddenly the only point where you could actually sell all that stuff was below the production costs.) This became even worse when most industry moved offshore. Now we need even less people producing stuff. What do you do with the rest? Leave them unemployed, like in the 19'th century? Well, that also lowers the money they can spend to buy stuff, and that-a-way lies the downwards spiral that led to the Great Depression in the first place.
So nowadays governments actually get to see that employment stays roughly where they want it, and create some extra aggregate demand. (Deficit spending, pork barrel, social security, etc.) It works too, since we no longer have the economic crisis cycles that plagued most of the 19'th century and the first part of the 20'th century. Back then it was considered _normal_ that the industry goes through bankruptcy cycles and rises from the ashes based on demanding even longer work hours and lower salaries.
In a nutshell, a government's job is to see to it that you encourage (or at least don't discourage too much) people to create more jobs that don't actually produce something. Pretend to manage each other, create whole castes of marketters just trying to steal customers from each other, or do all sorts of convenience services to each other. And chip in a little to make it all keep working. Deserved or undeserved, ethical or unethical, as long as the negative impact is small enough, it doesn't matter. It matters that unemployment doesn't get out of hand. Because noone wants another Great Depression.
That's why even when debating something as annoying as telemarketting, the question just _has_ to pop up, basically, "how many jobs _are_ we nuking in the process? and can the rest of the economy absorb those?" You don't want to be the paladin in shiny armour that saved people from all evils... at the expense of causing the economy to collapse.
At any rate, that's why a lot of unproductive and even mildly unethical stuff is allowed to exist. In fact, encouraged to exist.
If you think that such companies are crossing the line into outright harmful, well, just lobby your lawmakers to outlaw it.
But, yeah, I'll aggree that Google is free to choose the companies it does business with.
Oh, one more thing: what also doesn't help there is that, even without the polluting effect of PR, today's idea of "media impartiality" means that they have to give equal space to two conflicting points of view, as if they were equal and just opinions. It shows that they don't take sides, right?
Even if a newspaper wrote about gravity, they can't just write "since Newton we've known that G = M * m / (r * r)". They have to also have another point of view, presented as equal in all aspects. So they just have to find some silly muppet with an opposing theory. And I don't mean MOND or space curvature, which would be at least a scientificaly sound thing. They'll find someone with some crackpot "no, no, no, gravity doesn't exist, we're just tied to the ground with invisible bungee cords! Aliens come at night and replace the broken ones!" theory.
Better yet, they'll present the latter as the breakthrough, and put the real scientist at the end of the article as the establishment-sponsored the-man-keeping-you-down voice of arbitrary authority.
It creates a false sense of contradiction and debate, where really there is none. It's simply that X is the real scientist, and Y is a crack-pot with no qualifications or peer-reviewed papers that noone takes seriously. But they won't tell you that, because that would violate their fucked-up "impartiality" creed. They can't tell you that X is the real scientist, because that would be siding with X in that "debate". And that's not impartial. It's only "impartial" if they present both as equals, and both theories as having equal merits and acceptance.
You're confusing real science with PR. They're not the same thing. PR is simply the evil twin of marketting, and makes marketting look all lawful good by comparison.
Marketting tells you stuff like "buy Moraelin's sugar-frosted chocolate flakes, they're grrreat."
PR goes and pretends to be science, news, interviews, etc, stuff that slips below your bullshit radar and hopefully undermines (A) the facts you base your judgment on, and (B) your confidence in any real science telling you otherwise. PR tells you stuff like, "a team of experts from the Elbonia Medical University discovered that cocoa contains all these enzimes that are good for you. Therefore eating lots of chocolate makes you live longer!" But ommits that all that stuff is only present in raw cocoa, not in chocolate.
(That, incidentally, is almost verbatim an actual PR coup funded by Mars. I just made up the name of the university, since I don't remember the real one off the top of my head.)
PR isn't science, it just pretends to be science, and loves taking stuff out of context. E.g., while real science would tell you about some synthetic food, "dude, it may have a little vitamins, but so does eating a carrot, and the carrot doesn't have all those nasty side effects", PR gives you the lopsided version of, "but it has added vitamins! We all know that you need vitamins, therefore this is good for you! Here's an article by Dr Sock Puppet saying that it's good for you."
Sometimes it's not even that "scientific". Sometimes they'll present some bullshit "perfect month to take a trip" formula, that incidentally matches their sponsor's ad campaign. It will usually add stuff that doesn't even have the same units, and do other blatant errors, but, hey, they'll find some good Dr Sock Puppet to sign it anyway.
The way it went is: a team of PR experts wrote that whole report and then went fishing for someone with a Dr or Prof title to sign his name on it. Most will say "no", but eventually they _will_ find someone who has nothing to lose and has no scruples anyway. He knows it's bogus, but it's not like he was doing any real research or had any recognition among his peers anyway, so no problem if his name becomes the laughing stock of the real scientists anyway. Sure, he'll take their money and sign his name on it.
Then the good PR people hit every single newspaper and even news agency with it. Disguised as _news_, not as an ad. Again, some will say no, but a lot will be glad to publish it. Even a mediocre PR agency will get you in the local newspapers, a top notch one can even get you on Reuters and on national TV.
Especially the newspapers actually love that kind of "news", because it's some free material to publish, and it's professionally written. And it's coming to you for free, instead of having you hunt for something worth writing about. Between writing about the local pig wrestling competition and publishing a profesionally written title about some nutrition breakthrough, complete with quotes from guys with Dr and Prof titles and all, guess which will a local newspaper prefer?
So to make a long story short, what you're seeing there isn't the scientists contradicting each other, but science vs PR. That's all. And by the sound of it, they achieved your goal of getting you confused. What you really see there is, basically:
PR: Coffee is good for you! Breakthrough research by Dr Sock Puppet spells it out for you!
Science: Wait a minute, mate, that's only half the story you present there. Yeah, those effects are real, but what about these other ones?
PR: New research by Prof Silly Muppet proves we were right! Coffee is awesome for you! Read it all here!
Science: Oi! Well how about all these bad effects that were known for a century now?
PR: Dr Greedy Shill calculated the formula for the perfect cup of coffee! And it's good for your health too! Don't miss it!
And so on, and so forth.
That would work maybe in English speaking countries, but not in Germany. We love big words down here, and, in the good tradition of gnomis/A-Team engineering, when we only have a bucket of small words, we get out our toolbox and build a huge word out of it.
;)
We don't say "car", for example, we say, "Personenkraftwagen" (basically, "powered wagon for persons") or abbreviate it to PKW. But even if you abbreviate it, "Pe-Ka-Ve", is already 3 syllables. Buggerit. You can't explain cars in one syllable words down here, so I guess we all don't really understand cars. Bit of a shame, with all the car manufacturing we do, really
Actually, it gets funnier. Verbs are _usually_ two parts, since one part often gets to mark the end of the sentence. (That's the _first_ part of the verb that goes to the end of the sentence, btw.) That's not just a random detour, btw. I'm saying that because even when you're essentially just using the base meaning of the base verb, there's often a variant with an extra particle anyway, just to have something to put at the end of the sentence. So there goes the idea of using one syllable verbs.
The germanic tribes must have been really poor people, I figure. They couldn't afford a lot of verbs, so they left us a few base verbs and a small bucket of extra parts they can be combined with, to get just about everything else.
For example "bringen" (to bring) can be combined in fun ways to get stuff not even vaguely related to the root, like "umbringen" (to kill.) Or "ziehen" (to pull) can end up a plethora of other verbs, including "umziehen" (to move, as in, for example, to another residence), "anziehen" (to dress), "ausziehen" (to undress), etc. The verb "fangen" (to catch) can end up such stuff as the unrelated "anfangen" (to begin.)
Since in half the sentences that particle goes to the end of the sentence, you get the suspense of not knowing whether I brought my neighbour with me, or I killed him, until that last (actually, first) bit of the verb lands. It's poor man's Hitchcock, really. One mean trick you can play on your German friends is to _not_ say that last part, and watch their eyes glaze for a few seconds as they struggle to not forget the rest of the sentence while waiting for that last crucial bit. But I digress.
So, sadly, you're out of luck explaining anything in one syllable words to a German kid.
1. You amuse me. You talk about stupidity, yet you prove that _you_ are still too stupid to even understand what system I'm supporting there and what I'm not.
Here, lemme spare your little monkey brain the effort: I _don't_ support the kind of insurance you have to live with. I _do_ think that doctors have nothing to do with that insurance system.
Also, if I were to get diagnosed with just about anything, I _can_ get medical care, because I live in one of those countries where everyone pays for everyone else. That's why I was suggesting you change that system, instead of throwing a retarded rant about doctors. But I don't expect you to have enough neurons to understand that.
2. I do advocate taking responsibility, because it's retarded to _blame_ others for _your_ problems. Fine by me if you're too lazy to exercise an hour a day, which, according to your own messages, is what would take to lose some of that fat and be a lot healthier as a result. But at least fucking have the decency to also accept, at least theoretically, that it's your own fault for whatever happens as a result. Harping about how you don't adhere to the "fat and guilty" club is fucking retarded, when then you then go and rant along the lines of "fat and blaming the doctor."
Get this: primarily it's _your_ job to keep yourself fit and healthy. Just like brushing your teeth, really. If you choose to not take care of yourself, fine by me, but at least do have the decency to not blame others for it. The whole "fat and blaming the doctor for health problems" attitude is just as retarded as hearing someone go "never brushed my teeth, but I'm blaming the dentist." It's just fucking stupid.
3. About the moderation: dearie, all progress ever was made by people who said their opinion regardless of whether it was popular or not. Galileo's point of view wasn't popular, to say the least, but it happened to be right. Einstein's theory of relativity was called "bolshevism". Even the fact that you have a right to vote, instead of being a land-owners' state, has to do with some people saying the very unpopular thing at the moment: that it's about damn time it was a real democracy. Etc. The only reason we're out of the caves by now is because some people didn't care about being popular, and just said what they thought.
While SFVs (Stupid Fashion Victims) like you were always a part of the problem. At every point there was a good percentage of the population playing retarded prom-queen games. Along the lines of, "whaat? If I say I too am against the Inquisition, my neighbours will think I'm some kind of heathen too. I can't lose popularity like that. Let's join in the booing and hissing." Or "whaat? If I say I too am for universal vote, they'll think I'm some kind of malcontent who doesn't know his place. Let's boo at that idea."
And yes, that means even you _could_ be right or wrong, regardless of how others moderated you. But what you're too fucking retarded to understand is that that doesn't say I can't have my own opinion about it. That's what I was saying. And my opinion is that you're so fucking stupid, it's a miracle you can use a computer or tie your shoelaces.
4. If you don't like the mild euphemism "lemming", fine by me. By now you have more than proven, beyone all doubt, that you deserve a promotion there. I hereby dub thee "complete cretin."
Well, here's what I do know, and I don't need more than the retarded tantrum above as proof. And if that's not enough, I can look at the other retarded tantrums you've posted in this thread alone.
But I digress. Here's what I do know: you're a fucking retard. Smooth brain. Room temperature IQ... in Celsius.
For starters, you _still_ can't comprehend the difference between doctors and the insurance accountants. When you talk about spending thousands of dollars, guess what? That's the insurance system that shafted you, not the doctors.
What _do_ you expect the doctors to do about it? Work for free and pay out of their own pocket for your care? Do _you_ do your job for free and pay the company expenses out of your own pocket? Then wtf of a right do you think you have to demand that from doctors?
In other words, when you rant and rave about the resemblance of the medical profession and prostitution: then how about _your_ job? Don't tell me you don't do it for money. Then what gives you the right to be outraged when others want to be paid for their work? _Nobody_ owes you a lollypop, and throwing spoiled-brat tantrums about it won't change that fact. You're just as big a hooker as them and as the rest of us. Now get off that high horse and learn to live in society.
I also do know, from your own retarded rants, that you're in a country where the "preexisting condition" idiocy does apply. That's all I need to know there. I don't give a fuck, and it makes no difference, whether that's USA or India or whatever. I just need to know what kind of insurance you have, and you already told me that. So throwing a retarded tantrum along the lines of "yeah, but you don't also know the colour of my underwear" is just pointless.
I also notice from the other answer of yours that you still don't understand how insurances work. When you let it rip about that rant about comunism and capitalism, you just prove that you're, simply put, too fucking stupid to understand what I'm talking about. That's not a rant, that's the whole crux of the problem. An insurance company is a company out to make money, ultimately. _That_ is why it excludes against pre-existing conditions. It's simple capitalism at work.
When they set your monthly rate to insure you against, say, fire, they look at how much they'd have to pay you _and_ the probability of that happening. It's a simple maths and statistics game. You get decent insurance if you can prove that you'll never need it, you pay through the nose if you're very likely to need it soon. The same applies to health ensurance: if they think there's a 1% chance that you'll need an expensive operation in your lifetime, you get good insurance, if they think you'll need it every year, they don't give you insurance at all.
At any rate, the _logical_ recourse there isn't to throw tantrums about the doctors, but to change that insurance system. There's no freakin' thing the doctors can do about it. If the insurance accountants don't pay, that's the end of it. WTF _do_ you expect the doctor to do there? _Someone_ has to pay. Either you lobby to change to a more fair system, or you suck it up and pay out of your own pocket. Expecting the doctors to work for free is _not_ an option.
But, more generally, I also notice is your propensity to blame your problems on others. It's the doctor's fault if he says you look like you're pregnant. (And, I see a couple of other "fat and proud of
Heh. If the previous use of "lemming" was just a mild euphemism, the above tantrum above moderation earns the "lemming" title fair and square, beyond all reasonable doubt.
Why _do_ you care that much about moderation? It just says that one other person thought the same. Big deal either way. Out of millions of readers, no matter what you say, someone will think you're an asshole, someone will think you're an idiot, someone will think you're working for the global conspiracy, and someone will think it's the greatest thing ever said by a human. And someone can't read past the first paragraph. Which of them gets a mod point, is as good as a dice toss.
More importantly, the truth or falsehood of a statement don't have _anything_ to do with how popular or unpopular it is. As Carl Sagan put it, "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Neither getting a standing ovation, not getting laughed at, proves anything about being right or wrong.
So how about worrying about the message you read, or saying what you really believe, instead of throwing tantrums about moderation? Just an idea. Worrying about who's popular and who's not... that-a-way lies groupthink and SFV (Stupid Fashion Victim) syndrome.
In other words: lemming.
I'm sorry to rain on your parrade, "dickhead", but OCPD _can_ be cured. It's not some genetic incurable condition, it's just a dysfunctional attitude and set of axioms to base one's judgment on. (Just as a reminder: OCPD is not OCD. OCD is lining up pencils as some compulsive rituals. OCPD is lining pencils because it's the Right Thing, and everyone else is an idiot for settling for a less perfect solution.)
And, at least in some cases, it's a fuck-up of education: idiot parents demanding that their kids do everything _perfectly_ and finding flaws in _everything_, raise idiot kids just can't realize when a solution _is_ good enough.
So if you "have to live with OCPD", then do us all a favour already and go join a fucking support group. We've all had it up to _here_ with idiots solving the wrong problem and being obnoxious about it, just because of their fucked-up ideals of perfection.
Because, yes, invariably the "100% uncompromising solutions" that OCPD cases come up with are solving the wrong problem entirely. Real Life problems are usually not boolean yes/no problems with 1 variable, but min-max problems in a space of a dozen variables and two dozen constraints. In a real life problem you usually can't pick one variable, say, X, and max it to 100%, because that would cause the Y and Z variables to move out of the desired solution space.
Enter OCPD "uncompromising" "perfectionists" coming up with a crap solution that maxes X to 100% and proclaims that Y and Z are idiocies that only clueless lusers would care about. In his mind that's the perfect solution because it maximizing the arbitrary criterion of perfection he chose, but for everyone else it's a crap solution or not a solution at all.
So, again, for anyone "who have to live with OCPD": join a support group already. You're not the shining beacon of perfection in a flawed world, you're the guy with a personality disorder. That's it. You may have my compassion for whatever dysfunctional parents molded you that way, but if you choose to "live with OCPD", that's where my compassion ends. It _can_ be cured, and if you choose to annoy everyone around you instead of getting cured, that's already past compassion.
That's so dumb, I don't even know where to begin.
1. The doctors and nurses are the ones who treat you. None of them would refuse to treat you because of a pre-existing condition, or because your being dumb is what got you there in the first place. I've yet to hear about anyone working in the ER turning away a stroke patient because it was some pre-existing condition, or someone with a cracked skull because, hey, they shouldn't have climbed on the house in the first place.
2. Then there are the guys who have to pay for that kind of treatment. I.e., the insurances. These aren't doctors, these are MBA and accountant types. For them it doesn't matter if you live or die, for them it matters if they make money. If it doesn't make more money than the interest at the bank/investment-fund/whatever, they're going to take their money and put it there. For them it's all down to statistics. If there's a 1% chance that you'll need a $40,000 operation in the next 40 years, they'll factor that in as an extra $10 per year on your insurance. Make that $11 or $12, because they want to make a profit too. If it's a 50% chance, they might not insure you at all.
It's completely different professions, lemming.
And more importantly, it's not like that everywhere. On most of continental europe, and IIRC Canada too, the state stepped in and created a fund for everyone. Basically everyone pays for everyone else. It's not perfect, but noone ever ends up denied medical care _because_ it's known that they'll need it.
There you go, the medical profession has no problem with that kind of setup either. They just need a salary, and someone has to pay for all the machinery and equipment. If the state enforced a more fair way of paying for it, the doctors have no problem with it. In fact, I think most are for it.
Unfortunately, that won't go that easily in the USA, where a whole cult of the psychopaths is the default culture. There's a whole caste repeating to everyone that the american dream is to shaft someone on the way to the top, and that all that matters is the Holy Dollar. As Queensryche put it, "gotta make a milion, doesn't matter who dies." Caring for your fellow man is outright communistic and undermining the very fundament of the whole socierty. (Yeah, right.)
So if anyone did try to implement a fair system where everyone has access to medical care, _especially_ if it's known that they'll need it, I'm betting on an _avalanche_ of the following two responses:
1. Noooo, it's _my_ money! I'm healthy, why should I pay for all the bums with pre-existing conditions? Papa needs a car with a wing, not to subsidize all the cripples and retards. (Until they themselves discover that they do have some genetic condition that didn't become obvious until old age. The it's "why the fuck don't I get free healthcare from everyone else... and still keep all the money I saved by not paying for everyone else???")
2. Noooo, it's a communistic plot! Wtf of an anti-american and anti-capitalist idea is that to take from everyone according to their means, and give to everyone according to their needs? The free unrestricted market solves everything by itself! If that gets implemented, we're all _doomed_. All those lazy bums will stop working and live off medicare! People will stop working hard for a promotion if they get their medical needs covered anyway! The whole economy will collapse! (Never mind that it didn't collapse in, say, Germany, where exactly such a system is in place.)
At the risk of sounding like a troll, one constant of the universe is that for _everything_ you'll get at least the following kinds of responses:
1. things were working perfectly fine in the good old days, changing things and/or making me learn/do new stuff is _evil_. Someone ought to educate users instead, change the whole culture, whatever. (A.k.a., "back in my days we walked to school 2 miles through the snow, up hill both ways, and we _liked_ it" nostalgia.)
2. It's a conspiracy and/or it will be bought and killed by the conspiracy (A.k.a., paranoia.)
3. (If something physical needs to be built) Not in my back yard!!!
4. Yeah, but it's not 100% perfect and foolproof, therefore it's 100% rubbish (A.k.a., Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.)
I should qualify it though that being aware of the attacks still possible and planning around them is just the right state of mind for security. Yes, nothing is 100% perfect, so you still need to be on your toes. But claiming that something is useless crap because some convoluted scenario still isn't covered, well, that's already OCPD.
But, anyway, seriously. You could come up with a cheap cure for cancer, and you'd get a bunch of responses along the lines of:
1. "Things were perfectly fine in my days, we don't need no stinking cure for cancer. Just educate the lusers to stop smoking and eat their veggies, and everything will be just fine."
2. "It's not a cure for cancer, it's a big pharma conspiracy to make you take those pills for some other nefarious purpose!" or "The big pharma conspiracy will kill it! They make their money by treating for years, not by curing! They'll never allow an actual cure!"
3. "You're not building that factory in _my_ town! Why, my property value could go down if a factory is visible from the back yard!"
4. "Yeah, but it only cures 95% of the kinds of cancer. Plus, it still doesn't cure diabetes, AIDS and the bird flu! Plus, what do you do if a user is dumb enough to not go to the doctor until they die, or to go to some witch-doctor instead? Therefore it's 100% crap, and we shouldn't waste our time with it."
Number 4 just seems to be especially popular on Slashdot. What else is new?
They weren't more civil at any point in time, except in some formal settings. We can probably say that when gentlemen met at a posh club, they weren't calling each other cocksuckers, but then again even today they still don't. Move out of that setting, though, and it wasn't some rose-coloured golden age of being nice.
For starters, in that same age, they had just fought a war over, you know, _slavery_. People were bought and sold, treated in some cases worse than cattle, and savagely whipped or occasionally executed on a whim. How's that for being nice to one's fellow humans?
And speaking of that civil war, it saw its share of such colourful characters as Bloody Bill Anderson. The guy was _proud_ of applying terror tactics and executions not only against captured soldiers, but against civillian union sympathisers too.
Newspapers had not yet discovered that it pays to at least pretend to be impartial and objective. Yeah, I know they still aren't really, but back then they didn't even bother pretending. Lopsided, inflamatory and outright insulting journalism was the order of the day. Mud-slinging and outright libel were just normal political tools.
And then you should see what they said about other races and people. If you think nowadays' coverage of Iraq was a shame, back then it was orders of magnitude worse. It was for example the age of "white man's burden" and "mission to civilize" theories, where three quarters of the globe (including such civilizations like China or Japan) were presented as worse than Neanderthals, and it was the _burden_ of us poor white guys from the west to go sneer at them and shaft them, as some civilizing mission. And that was actually the _nice_ version.
It was also the age of such things as train robberies. No, they didn't jump into the train from horseback like in the movies. They just derailed the train, lots of people died, and the survivors got robbed.
It was the age of driving the natives out of their lands, and the occasional massacre. Custer for example wasn't a gentleman soldier in the war against savages, as the media at the time presented him. He was a guy who massacred whole camps, including a good percentage of the women and children, and held the survivors hostage (again, unarmed women and children) to force the rest of the tribe to accept being pushed into a reservation.
Etc, etc, etc.
The past _never_ was as cheerfully rose coloured as naive nostalgia presents it. That goes not only for the 19'th century. The Renaissance wasn't a cheerful age, like ren faires would have you believe, but a shithole that turned the whole european culture morbid and depressive for centuries. The knights in shiny armour weren't ideals of chivalry, but... well, let's just say that one manual for knights advised them to literally beat their wives senseless (as in, literally, until she loses consciousness) to keep them in line, and to break the wife's nose so other men won't find her pretty any more. And that's just one of the many atrocities of that caste. Etc.
Better yet, I can't help remembering some CS servers where most of the conversations involved people:
- calling each other gay, faggot, cock-sucker, and the like,
- calling each other "fucking camper" and/or "fucking cheater", (remember the keyword "fucking)
- telling each other how good their mom was in bed,
- trying the most underhanded sexist pickup lines on anyone whose name sounded, no matter how improbably, like it might be female. (And to some people even Chtulhu sounds feminine.)
Etc.
I shudder to think what ads would google keyword matching serve there. Condoms? Gay dating sites?
Even then they don't give them on 5 minutes notice. I _have_ been called on 3 firefighting jobs this year alone, and nothing spectacularly happened if my phone was off for an hour or two.
I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing the right thing, but I'm just saying that it won't stop the bad guys. Or not by itself. Ever. Yes, people should vote with their wallets, but not imagine that they're stopping anyone with that course of action. You're doing that for your own conscience, nothing more.
Being a good guy is good and fine, but it doesn't make the bad guys realize the error of their ways. It just makes them think you're a sheep to be sheared, or if that's not possible, then out-maneuvered and ignored.
And plans of the caliber of, "well, then we should all shun them" just don't work. There'll always be someone who is deluded, or uninformed, or plain old doesn't care. Whenever a plan starts with "well, if more people would..." that should be your clue that that plan won't work, never work, can't ever work.
And it's not about culture, it's about being realist enough. About 1 out of 30 people (at least for the USA) is medically a sociopath. Culture and shiny happy "we're all born good and doing the right thing" thinking don't work against them. They don't give a fuck about culture or about what the rest of the community thinks or does, except maybe in as much as it gets in the way of their plans. There's no amount of caring and being the living righteous example that will make them realize the error of their ways, because they're just not wired for that. You're just an unimportant dime-a-dozen NPC to them, and who the heck cares what an NPC thinks or does? You either keep them in check with fear of consequences, or, yes, they run amok.
And such "well, I'm not buying their stuff any more" one-man protests, well, it's good that you do that, but don't delude yourself that it'll stop Scientology or any other scam. On an efficiency scale it's on par with going and sulking in your room. Yeah, that'll show 'em.
Even if you take the "You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem." philosophy, there are simply too many who are part of your problem there. _Those_ are why such idealistic plans don't work.
Voting for the president works because 51% of the votes are enough to stop one of the candidates. Voting with your wallet _doesn't_ work, because even if you got 99% of the "votes" against a scam, the remaining 1% is _plenty_ to keep most scams going. Less than 1% keept spam or 419 scams perfectly profitable for a whole decade.
It's not a vote, it's a case where you'd need 100% of the "votes" to work at all. And noone got that in any election or on any issue. (Even the communist elections in most communist countries were realistic enough to claim reelection with only 90-something percent of the votes. Even to them it was blatantly obvious that 100% just doesn't happen naturally.) _That_ is the flaw in that idealistic plan.
Sadly, they didn't make themselves elligible for a Darwin award. Remember, the point of the Darwin awards isn't to name-and-shame stupid people who stayed in the gene pool, but to honour those who sacrificed themselves (preferrably in a spectacular way) to improve the species. I.e.,
1. they have to be an evolutionary dead end, without further chance to pass on whatever genes made them so stupid. I.e., they have to end up dead or at least unable to reproduce to qualify for the Darwin award.
E.g., Borston Corbett, although he never actually killed himself, would have deserved a Darwin Award (had the Darwin Awards existed at the time), for his castrating himself with a pair of scissors to avoid being tempted by prostitutes.
2. it must be obvious that it's to the good of the species that they removed themselves from the gene pool. The act by which they removed themselves from the gene pool must show remarkable stupidity and/or poor judgment. It must be blindingly obvious to someone of average intelligence that it's potentially (and very likely) fatal to do that, yet the nominee thought it would be a good idea.
E.g., someone who fell from the 20'th floor because they leaned against the bannister and it broke, doesn't qualify. Someone who fell from the 20'th floor when trying to stand on a wheelchair in their balcony to hang a bird house, that one fully quallified.
What does that mean here? A bunch of stupid teachers making kids cry isn't enough to earn them a Darwin award. Now maybe if they were trampled to death by the scared kids, then they'd qualify for a Darwin award. Though even that is debatable. It can be argued that one would more realistically expect the kids to cry and take cover than to do a stampede, and that it would take extreme bad luck for an adult to be trampled to death by a few kids.
Mind you, this whole act is such extreme stupidity (or maybe sociopathy) anyway, that it's a shame that they didn't go the extra mile to earn a Darwin award. Dunno how. Maybe climb on a house to play the gunman's role and fall over. Or something. But, alas, they stopped well short of removing themselves from the gene pool.
Is that a joke? No, seriously.
I'm sorry, but in all job interviews I've been, nothing even starts to move in less than a month. They'll want a CV first, then send you some forms/questionnaire/whatever to fill, wait some time as they wait for candidates and/or process the mountain of resumes, then you're one of a hundred or more guys interviewed, and only then anything actually happens.
The scenario you describe is nothing short of some company's making it a lottery. They skipped everything and just went with the first guy who had the cell phone on. I'm sorry, unless it's a janitor job, it just won't happen. And even for janitors, they still might talk to more than one, just to see who wants less money.
For a high paying job? Heh. Not even in your dreams. High paying jobs are also important jobs, one way or another. You don't hire your next software architect or even manager by lottery. Even if you didn't care about their qualifications (unlikely already), the very definition of "high paying" means that there's room for a lot of savings by interviewing more than one person and maybe excluding the ones with exorbitantly unreasonable demands.
Also, all job interviews I've been in, were preceeded by aggreeing on a reasonable time. Even if the company does have the upper hand there, it is generally understood that there might be times that simply aren't an option. Maybe on day X I'm scheduled in court, or maybe it's mom's funeral, or whatever, you know? It might have to be scheduled on the next day, or even next week.
Even if (ad absurdum) someone was that brain dead to make their request "I want you for the job interview here _now_, in 5 minutes!", would I want to work for that company? No, not really. It's just an indication of their general attitude, and that more unreasonable demands will come.
So basically, the example is akin to telling me "wear a Roman armour all the time, just in case you get your once-in-a-lifetime chance to travel 2000 years back in time and be elected Emperor!" Well, no, thank you very much, I'll take my chances and wear my usual outfit. The chances of that happening are close enough to nil, and I wouldn't lose _that_ much sleep even if that chance came and I missed it.
Yes, I know it was just an example, but that's the whole problem: all the examples on this topic are scenarios that are (A) extremely unlikely, and (B) silly. If the best reasons for being a full time telephone operator all the time, are such contrived scenarios that will never happened anyway, then excuse me if I do turn my cell phone off anyway. Between (a) having some privacy and time to myself, and (b) the unlikey chance that something like that happens, I'll choose the former every single time.
Ahh, wishful thinking. How quaint.
It really saddens me to rain on your utopian dream, but "it would work if we _all_ did X" _never_ worked. Never worked, doesn't work, never will.
By the same token, yeah, it would stop spam if we _all_ didn't buy that stuff, but there'll always be some idiots who do. Yeah, it would stop stock scams dead if we all didn't rush to buy hyped-through-spam stocks, but there'll always be some "smart" guys who think they can beat the system and do their own buying and selling just before it crashes. (It has been already proved to never work, but, hey, there's one born every minute anyway.) Yeah, it would stop unethical business practices dead if we all stopped buying from and investing in unethical companies, but, let's face it, you're a minority there; the majority just buys from whoever sells the cheapest, invests in whoever promises the most gain, and would even deal with the mafia perfectly happily. Etc.
And so it is with this kind of fucked-up cults too. Wishful "if we all started boycotting them" thinking won't work, because there'll always be a minority, no matter how small, who are fucked-up in the head and need some exotic, non-mainstream religion to give meaning to their fucked-up lives. And a cult doesn't really need billions of members to be profitable. If only as few as those who buy from spam links are also gullible enough to join your cult, you're already a rich guy. It's that simple.
So you'd literally need to get _everyone_ to join in your boycott for it to work. Not just "more", but literally "all".
In other words, the "allmighty buck" isn't that allmighty at all when it comes to righteous causes. And it tends to work against you every time.
What you need isn't self-righteous boycotts, what you need is laws and courts of law. You already have laws saying that (A) small excerpts _do_ fall under fair use, even if scientology doesn't like it, and (B) once they've made themselves a public figure, they can't really stop other people from talking about them, or even ridiculling them, and (C) they aren't supposed to use lawsuits just to silence their critics. See that those laws are applied. That's really the only realistic, working solution.
Again, here are his exact words: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles."
He's _not_ phrasing it as "the system is 95% idle, therefore it has no excuse to lag". He's phrasing it as the idle process "hogging all the resources" and "chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles." That's a pretty dumb way to describe it any way I want to look at it. Even as an attempt at humour, it's as dumb as it gets, and doubly so in an otherwise serious article.
Combine it with the previous part of that paragraph, and I'm just more convinced that he's just that stupid. He confuses unresponsiveness with "idle mode", although they're massively different phenomena. I have no trouble extrapolating from that confusion that he genuinely doesn't understand what idle mode is, and what the system idle mode is, in the next phrase.
And, generally, it just leaves me with an overall impression that the whole PC Magazine staff were retards. If he and another editor have trouble on the VPN, and noone at PC Magazine can help them... OMFG, they just don't have _any_ competent techie there.
Well, sorta yes and no.
The yes part is: I can aggree with all you wrote there. It's common sense, really.
The no part is: well, that was not really my gripe. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough.
My gripe is with people who should know better, but are taking such entertainers as the new Oracle Of Delphi, and their words as 100% accurate prediction to go by. Cringely said that Intel will buy Apple? It must be as good as an Intel press release. Cringely said that IBM will fire 150,000 out of 130,000 US jobs? It's as good as already happened!
Keyword there being: who should know better. I can understand Jack Hasbeen and Jill Manager reading it for entertainment value, and to feel on top of a domain they don't even understand. But I like to think that Slashdot == nerds who should have already caught on to the idea that the likes of Dvorak and Cringely are arse-clowns talking out the rear end.
Well, actually, on second thought, let me take back a bit of the "yes" part too. I can see how that sells better, but it's a bit of dishonesty anyway.
Thing is, "normal" people don't find computers entertaining at all, and don't buy computer magazines as entertainment. Whoever buys these, has some genuine interest in finding things out, whether because they're a techie, or because they manage some techies, or because they want to sound all knowledgeable in a meeting, or whatever. Telling them whatever lie or outlandish prediction just because it sells... well, is a breach of trust.
Briefly, while I can understand why it makes more money, I can't help feeling some disgust at the perpetrator anyway.
It's, if you will, like hearing about the WorldCom scam. I can see how it made them money (for a while), and how it was more profitable (for a while) than doing the honest thing, but somehow I end up disgusted at the whole thing anyway.
Sadly, he did write that, and no, it doesn't look tongue in cheek at all. Catch: XP Decay.
Genuine quote from the great pundit: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"
I've read the article again, just in case there might be some subtle sarcasm I've missed before, but it looks as serious as it gets, if anyone asks me.
The whole list is framed between:
- "This week's column is about exploring the commonly observed problems that crop up with each new release. Maybe Microsoft should patch the patches once in a while. Here are a few of my gripes - most of them a result of excessive patching." which doesn't really sound like the start of a joke, and
- "And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it." Which, again, would indicate that not only he's not joking, but he thinks that anyone who hasn't had those newbie problems is, in his own words, "full of it."
Speaking of which, the rest of the complaints sound... shall we say, computer illiterate. And that's putting it mildly. He sounds like the average Uncle Osric or Aunt Emma, who are terminally stumped as to why would their computer suddenly be sluggish or takes a while to connect on the network. It must be all those MS patches, really. Not like the kind of expert who fixes such things for fun, and/or knows exactly what worm was hogging the network.
Believe me, I've tried finding some trace of tongue-in-cheek irony there. I've hoped it would be an April 1st article. Nope.
But, hey, judge it for yourself. If you can detect some trace of sarcasm there, please tell me.
One can only wish, but I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, we still see Dvorak drivel making the front page. One would have thought that after the "my idle process is hogging 95% of the CPU cycles" whine, that would have been the last any tech-savvy site ever links to Dvorak, right? Well, dream on.
/. gave up on the whole class of "computer pundits" entirely. It's an easy job, and it's really about entertainment not computer expertise, ok? It's just a glorified SF version of the astrology columns in some newspapers. It just requires a thick enough skin to pretend it never happened, or that you were misunderstood, when 99% of the predictions don't come to pass. Better yet, phrase your predictions in a way that (A) gives them a time or an event, but never both, so it can't really be disproved, and (B) in the tried and tested "why X should do Y" way, so if it doesn't happen, it's obviously only because X is more stupid than you.
TBH, though, much as Cringely _is_ just a hack, I'd rather
Briefly, it's not just about Cringely, but the whole caste is little more than a bunch of entertainers, and not one iota more reliable than astrologers. Linking to any of them, not just Cringely, as if they actually predicted something about to happen, is akin to linking to an astrology site. "The great Mr Psychic says this is your lucky day, go do an interview for a job if you're a Capricorn. [Read more...]" No more, and no less.
Well, hmm, if emoticons are supposed to represent what you're looking at, then that gives me an idea: there should be an introverted nerd emoticon representing a pair of shoes. I dunno how to draw that in ASCII, though.
Nope. Christianity had sects all along, and major theological debates to establish who's right and who's wrong. Most of the original sects were extinct by then, or nearly extinct, yes, but they had existed. I even mentioned some of them by name in the original message, but let's elaborate a bit on the time of each and provide some quick Wikipedia links:
;) was founding his own heresy loosely based on Christianity. It produced a shitload of scrolls which reused the biblical characters loosely for their own purposes.
- Gnosticism. Hardly a century had passed since Christ, and already Simon Magus (literally, don't laugh, Simon The Sorcerer
- Arianism, being the teachings of Arius, who lived between 250 AD and 336 AD. Conflicted pretty badly with the Catholic doctrine, or at least the Council of Nicaea thought so. Also had quite a following, with whole people following his doctrines. E.g., the Vandals actively proselitised Arianism and persecuted those following the Nicene Creed, i.e., the catholic version.
- Nestorianism, being the doctrine of Nestorius, who lived between 386 and 451 AD, and at some point managed to become Patriarch of Constantinople. (Think, sorta the eastern pope.) It produced quite the schism too, with at least one branch of the church splitting irreversibly over this issue.
- Cathar. To quote from Wikipedia, "The first known Occitan Cathars appeared in Limousin between 1012 and 1020. Several were discovered and put to death at Toulouse in 1022. The synods of Charroux (Vienne) (1028) and Toulouse (1056) condemned the growing sect. Preachers were summoned to the districts of the Agenais and the Toulousain to combat the Cathar doctrine in the 1100s."
- Eastern Orthodoxy involved _centuries_ of growing schism and dispute between the Byzantines and Rome over such issues as iconoclasty in the east and the Filioque clause used by catholics. The rift became irreversible and the two churches split their ways in 1054, when each of the two heads of the churches proclaimed an anathema on the other. (Pretty much excomunicated each other.)
And that's just skimming over a millenium of schism and heresy. So, basically, there you go. There _were_ sects before Jan Hus and John Wycliffe.
Admittedly, they're not much taught in schools nowadays, while the hussite wars and the 30 year war are. But that doesn't mean they didn't exist.
True, but it's more complex.
1. Note my mentioning a credible threat. The us-vs-them in sports is never that sure. Each game could at least theoretically be lost. It might take a miracle, but it happens to every team. So even if you're on top, it _could_ happen that you get a bad day, your best player has a flu, and the next best sprains his ankle in the first 5 minutes. Whatever. This basically is what keeps fan rallied around that team.
By comparison, the corporate world moves very very slowly. Even if someone hired the best 10,000 geniuses, it would be a long time before MS even starts to feel the pressure. It's just not the same scenario.
If you will, the former scenario is the gorilla which _could_ lose even the next game, the latter is the gorilla which after a whole decade is just sorta moving from total supremacy to sorta only massive superiority in the market in some domains. The former maybe could use some encouragement just in case, the latter, well, obviously doesn't need any defending yet.
2. I wasn't talking about fans, but about die-hard fanboys. There's a subtle difference between fan and fanboy. The fan might just be obsessed with his team and spend a lot of time and money on that. The fanboy thinks his idol is the saviour (from whatever threats he perceives) and that you're either a brainwashed idiot and/or part of the enemy if you as little as see some merits at all in another team.
I mean, look at religion, look at Slashdot, read some console gaming forum. It's not just people who just happen to think religion X is cool, or OS Y is really good, or console Z has these neat games, you know. It's people who believe that the whole bloody future is at stake and _depends_ on their converting everyone to their cult. If you don't switch to Apple/Linux/PS3/AMD/whatever, we're all _doomed_. Monoculture disasters waiting to happen, stiffling innovation, fascism, bla, bla, bla, you're guilty of all that and more if you even consider an alternative.
Sad to say, by comparison, most sports fans seem pretty sane. Well, ok, maybe "sane" isn't the word, since some idiots do go to a soccer game just to riot and beat each other up afterwards. But even those, you know, do it because they want to get in a fist fight, not because they genuinely believe that the whole future depends on defeating the other team.
3. Fandom (and fanboyism) is by and large a social phenomenon too. Note that I didn't say that mainstream religions don't get fans. I said they don't get fanboys. What they do get in copious quantities however are, well, sheep. People who stick to the bandwagon just because it's the bandwagon, and it's fashionable among their peers to be seen on it.
These are basically people who go to church on sunday, because (they think) the rest of the city expects to see them there. Or rant about sports just because (they think) everyone else in their group is nuts about that team, and it doesn't pay to be the odd missfit. Or chest-thump about bringing democracy to Iraq, just because they think it would be a faux pas to be heard saying what (they imagine) their neighbours wouldn't want to hear. Etc.
Briefly, it's a lot of groupthink and show business. And you can get them to enact any behaviour imaginable, if you can get everyone in a group of N people to think that the other N-1 do the same and want to see the same. Including making an ass of themselves in the name of spectator sports.
These aren't however, the people who'll prozelitize and go on crusades/jihads. What for?
So in the same vein, the "followers" of Redmond are really just a bunch of people who don't really give a damn, and won't go on a jihad for the glory of Windows. They're just doing the mainstream thing, same as everyone else. And at most they'll put up the kind of behaviour that they (imagine they) see everyone doing about it. Unfortunately that doesn't mean chest thumping like in sports, but being equally jaded and clueless as the neighbour. (And I don't mean "clueless" as in "window
Yes, but you sorta just illustrate my point. I was talking about zealots rushing to woship the gorilla, which mostly won't happen. You're talking about zealots rushing to bash the gorilla, which, yeah, happens all the time.