Dude, I would totally support redirecting this $3,000,000,000 to fund the creation and placement of public suicide booths throughout major cities in the US... That's brilliant!
That should be the next candidates campaign platform.:)
NBC broadcast football in HDTV in 1998. That was SEVEN years ago. NFL broadcasting in HDTV on one of the big three networks is certainly not something hidden and secret that only a geek would know about.
The government started discussing HDTV standards in 1999.
DirecTV was doing HDTV in 2000.
In about 2000, the plan was to go to HDTV by 2005. In 2003, it was mandated that it would be 2007. Pretty much all of the things I mention can be found on Slashdot in the archives, which means they were published and discussed elsewhere. In fact, I first learned about the plan for ditching analog in 2005 - in 2000... ON TELEVISION. Enough so that I was aware of it when I went to buy my new TV in 2000. And I'm not any sort of a videophile or anything. Just an average joe who has read a news paper or new. This isn't obscure stuff. You almost have to intentionally avoid news about HDTV in the last six years to not know it was coming.
Unfortunately, the only people that would bother to do that are those who risk paying the most (out of tax) for it. Everyone else, in the state of things in this country, is thinking "Ooh sweet! Free stuff!" when they read that headline.
The saddest part is that 3,000,000,000 is about $30 per working, tax paying american. If you figure there are perhaps two of those per household - that's $60. How much will those converters cost in three more yeras, again? Oh, right - but then some beaurocrat wouldn't get to make a salary running the project.
Holy crap. You have 15 rooms in your house?! Why are you even posting on Slashdot?! You should be out in your yacht or something.
Still, doesn't it seem a bit sad that in the UK you have to pay the government to watch television... and in America, the government pays YOU to watch television? I guess In Soviet Russia, the government pays Television to watch YOU...?
If they're worth $3,000, they must be new. Why would you buy new TVs when everyone has known the digital switch would be coming any day now for the last five years? I spent $3,000 on my TV in 2000, knowing that by 2005 we would probably have to switch to HDTV. To prepare for it, I made sure I had an HDTV capable screen, so I could just throw on a converter later. And here it seems we've still got another three years.
Assuming people buy a television on an average of at least every decade - how can you blame the government if you don't have a proper television by 2009 when it was publically known it was coming by at least 2000?
And just so you know, I find the word "breeders" offensive.
Tough shit for you, dumbass. If you get paid by my tax dollars (subsidized) to have children - you are a breeder. When you breed, you are a breeder. It's simple.
Hence, (d) subsidizing new boxes. After all, we can't have poor people going without television or anything. They might get bored out of their minds and go to school or get a job.
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer when cassettes go out of style.
And if someone MUST baby the consumer, how about the fucking TELEVISION INDUSTRY do the subsidizing, instead? Why in the fucking hell should tax money go toward it? If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?
Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage. Now we want to add television watching to that?!
I so fucking give up. You win. Where do I go for the nearest de-education center so I can join the mind-numbed consumer masses?
As I mentioned, those weren't so much cured by drug companies as "eradicated" by policy. You can't give give someone with polio a pill that will cure them, to my knowledge. Oh - and plenty of people still suffer and die of both.
Even if we called those "cures", we can't call them *recent* cures. Aren't they each about 40 years old?! So with all of this technology and additional resources, we can't actually *cure* anything anymore?
What CURES has the drug industry ever devised? Great, they've made life more tolerable for people with AIDS. have they cured it? Have they cured ANYTHING?
What's the last revolutionary drug you can think of? Viagra doesn't count. What was the last disease cured by drug research? Common cold? Nope. Cancer? Diabetes? AIDs? Does polio count? I mean, that isn't so much cured as eradicated and that wasn't so much the feat of drug companies (I don't think?) as government policies.
You're a dick. If I were a little kid, I'd slash your tires and pop your wife. A piece of free software I could get off the internet is worse than a frigging apple or toothbrush!
We should send in an elite force to arrest and prosecute them, just like we would (and have done) to young guys trading music or movies in foreign countries. Show them who's boss. I'm shamed to say this, but as an American I must be honest, my country (or government, at least) doesn't really care if a bunch of brownish -toned people die of some disease or virus. Not unless you have some sort of natural resource that we might find interesting, at least.
To an extent, I have to agree. In my experiences over the many years, I've concluded that other than being ten years old and wanting a sugar fix, halloween is mostly for women. They like to get dressed up, play pretend and get a lot of attention. Especially if they can wear things that they otherwise might not get to. And they're largely the same selected handful of cliches. Most guys have seemed not to care too much. They go along either in the hopes of seeing and/or scoring with hot easy chicks after they've had a few too many or to watch that their own girlfriend (who probably dragged him along) didn't turn into one of the tipsy spread-eageled ho-bags craving the spotlight.
I know it sounds like the spoutings of an anti-social geezer, but I've just been to one too many of these things and seen too many bored guys and trampy attention whores in my years at them. Maybe it's different if you're talking about a small group of friends gathering for a few drinks and dinner in your living room, but any public event or major party will inevitably turn into something a shade or three off of what I described.
Anyway, I got over the dressing up and playing pretend thing a long time ago and I'm not so desparately craving attention that the few "oh that's a cool costume" comments are going to be worth my energy. I'll probably spend Halloween at home, resting from the hard week at the office (my week stops at midnight, Sundays) - or out crusing in my new 2006 Mustang. At the very worst, I'll be tossing back a few and listening to a band somewhere. What I most certainly will not be doing is dressing up like Hanz and fricking Franz in grey sweats, a weight lifting back brace and going around telling princesses, vampresses, fairies and barbarellas that I want to pump them up.
By the way - is it just me or do kids not even trick or treat any more? I usually buy crap loads of candy to give out to the kids and I have only seen half a dozen (combined) in the last decade. Man, when I was eight years old, you went out and hit every house you could until midnight.
Why would you spend one hundred bucks for one buck? This sounds like one of those "which is lighter - a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers" traps, to me.
Education is a privelege. You can stick a rider to any privelege you want. For example - while we would traditionally believe that we should not be subjected to drug or alcohol tests, searches or fingerprinting without having committed a crime - you can be forced to sign away those "rights" for the privelege of driving (along with protecting your social security number, since it's now usually required for any State ID or driver's license). Likewise, if we classify education as a privelege, we can tack on all the invasion we want. After all, if you don't want to give up those rights to your person - don't drive; if you don't want to give up those rights to your person; don't seek an education.
We can apply this to so many places in society. It's just a matter of redefining expectations and language. Eventually, we'll be able to classify everything you do as a "privelege" rather than a right. And once we've done that, you won't have any "rights" left.
And by then, I guess we won't have any terrorists. Of course, that's because we won't have any self-reliant, free-thinking, anti-authoritarians left, either.
I am not inherently against having a company standard. What I'm against is the continual changing of standards which don't improve anything within the company, but succeed in bringing executive attention to said brown noser. If you're going to have a new standard or philosophy every 24 months, what's the point?
Six Sigma, ITIL and all of these other countless "programs" that executives are in love with are a lot like all of the twelve step programs and self help programs that new agers are also in love with. Someone stumbles into the new buzzword corporate twelve step program and manages to talk all the other suckers into it to "improve" things. The brown noser just wants credit; doesn't really care about anything else. Likewise, there's always those few friends that get into things like being a breatharian and refusing to eat food, because they think they can live off sunlight and air. And they convince a few other gullible twits to go along with it. I see little difference between the two, except one is adopted and forced on an entire corporation.
IF you go through four of these renovations in less than a decade and you spend a couple million bucks on the consulting to do it each time, plus the cost of dedicating certain employees and committees to implement it, redesign internal tools and practices to adhere to your knew plan, then days and weeks writing up documentation and graphs and charts and flowcharts to obey and then waste several days each time putting every employee through a training program... what have you accomplished? And if the first three programs didn't work, what makes you think wasting all of your money and time on a fourth will?
Just the training alone for the lower level employees is absurdly expensive. Figure 50,000 employees who have to set aside four entire days of work. That's 200,000 lost days in the company. Try making that loss up to your customers!
BTW What proof is there for evolution, I've done some research and haven't found any proof yet, lots of theories but no proof.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I mean, you do realize that there is enormous evidence supporting evolution, right? It is ABSOLUTELY a theory (not just a hypothesis). On the other hand, the only evidence for theological origins are . . . well . . . books written by man. TommyKnockers is a book written by man, but that doesn't make it evidence for anything.
Reasonable people are open to all reasonable options. I'm open to all reasonable options. However, there is evidence supporting the widely-agreed abome theory of evolution. "Because I feel it in my bones" is not evidence of God or creation.
Now, when theologists stop going around trying to cloth their religion and creation myths in the robes of "science" and actually try coming up with true scientific evidence, more of us will listen. I've never heard a logical or reasonable presentation on creationism as a scientific possibility that was anything more than double-speak and the attempt to sway the ignorant (or at least, the uninformed).
So in the mean time, people would do best to keep their creation mythologies out of science.
Last week, every employee in my company (about 40,000 strong) got a self-published book from the CEO entitled "WHAT WE MUST DO". It was 50 pages. I'm not totally clear, still, what we must do. It was mostly a bunch of feel good pipe dreams. On the positive side, the binding glue smells really good. I kept several copies so that when one wears out, I'll have plenty of glue-sniffing goodness remaining.
What a waste of scientific effort. This was so obvious in the first place. Of course they suck at disemboweling. Even if they had the strength and accuracy to hurl the ball down the lane and knock all the pins over, how the hell would those tiny little arms hold the ball?
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, I would totally support redirecting this $3,000,000,000 to fund the creation and placement of public suicide booths throughout major cities in the US... That's brilliant!
:)
That should be the next candidates campaign platform.
NBC broadcast football in HDTV in 1998. That was SEVEN years ago. NFL broadcasting in HDTV on one of the big three networks is certainly not something hidden and secret that only a geek would know about.
The government started discussing HDTV standards in 1999.
DirecTV was doing HDTV in 2000.
In about 2000, the plan was to go to HDTV by 2005. In 2003, it was mandated that it would be 2007. Pretty much all of the things I mention can be found on Slashdot in the archives, which means they were published and discussed elsewhere. In fact, I first learned about the plan for ditching analog in 2005 - in 2000... ON TELEVISION. Enough so that I was aware of it when I went to buy my new TV in 2000. And I'm not any sort of a videophile or anything. Just an average joe who has read a news paper or new. This isn't obscure stuff. You almost have to intentionally avoid news about HDTV in the last six years to not know it was coming.
Unfortunately, the only people that would bother to do that are those who risk paying the most (out of tax) for it. Everyone else, in the state of things in this country, is thinking "Ooh sweet! Free stuff!" when they read that headline.
The saddest part is that 3,000,000,000 is about $30 per working, tax paying american. If you figure there are perhaps two of those per household - that's $60. How much will those converters cost in three more yeras, again? Oh, right - but then some beaurocrat wouldn't get to make a salary running the project.
Holy crap. You have 15 rooms in your house?! Why are you even posting on Slashdot?! You should be out in your yacht or something.
Still, doesn't it seem a bit sad that in the UK you have to pay the government to watch television... and in America, the government pays YOU to watch television? I guess In Soviet Russia, the government pays Television to watch YOU...?
If they're worth $3,000, they must be new. Why would you buy new TVs when everyone has known the digital switch would be coming any day now for the last five years? I spent $3,000 on my TV in 2000, knowing that by 2005 we would probably have to switch to HDTV. To prepare for it, I made sure I had an HDTV capable screen, so I could just throw on a converter later. And here it seems we've still got another three years.
Assuming people buy a television on an average of at least every decade - how can you blame the government if you don't have a proper television by 2009 when it was publically known it was coming by at least 2000?
And just so you know, I find the word "breeders" offensive.
Tough shit for you, dumbass. If you get paid by my tax dollars (subsidized) to have children - you are a breeder. When you breed, you are a breeder. It's simple.
Hence, (d) subsidizing new boxes. After all, we can't have poor people going without television or anything. They might get bored out of their minds and go to school or get a job.
I have an idea.
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer when cassettes go out of style.
And if someone MUST baby the consumer, how about the fucking TELEVISION INDUSTRY do the subsidizing, instead? Why in the fucking hell should tax money go toward it? If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?
Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage. Now we want to add television watching to that?!
I so fucking give up. You win. Where do I go for the nearest de-education center so I can join the mind-numbed consumer masses?
As I mentioned, those weren't so much cured by drug companies as "eradicated" by policy. You can't give give someone with polio a pill that will cure them, to my knowledge. Oh - and plenty of people still suffer and die of both.
Even if we called those "cures", we can't call them *recent* cures. Aren't they each about 40 years old?! So with all of this technology and additional resources, we can't actually *cure* anything anymore?
Yeah, and makes you carry the purse.
My response "If you didn't want to carry your purse with you, you should have left it in the car."
That doesn't answer my questions.
What CURES has the drug industry ever devised? Great, they've made life more tolerable for people with AIDS. have they cured it? Have they cured ANYTHING?
What's the last revolutionary drug you can think of? Viagra doesn't count. What was the last disease cured by drug research? Common cold? Nope. Cancer? Diabetes? AIDs? Does polio count? I mean, that isn't so much cured as eradicated and that wasn't so much the feat of drug companies (I don't think?) as government policies.
You're a dick. If I were a little kid, I'd slash your tires and pop your wife. A piece of free software I could get off the internet is worse than a frigging apple or toothbrush!
We should send in an elite force to arrest and prosecute them, just like we would (and have done) to young guys trading music or movies in foreign countries. Show them who's boss. I'm shamed to say this, but as an American I must be honest, my country (or government, at least) doesn't really care if a bunch of brownish -toned people die of some disease or virus. Not unless you have some sort of natural resource that we might find interesting, at least.
To an extent, I have to agree. In my experiences over the many years, I've concluded that other than being ten years old and wanting a sugar fix, halloween is mostly for women. They like to get dressed up, play pretend and get a lot of attention. Especially if they can wear things that they otherwise might not get to. And they're largely the same selected handful of cliches. Most guys have seemed not to care too much. They go along either in the hopes of seeing and/or scoring with hot easy chicks after they've had a few too many or to watch that their own girlfriend (who probably dragged him along) didn't turn into one of the tipsy spread-eageled ho-bags craving the spotlight.
I know it sounds like the spoutings of an anti-social geezer, but I've just been to one too many of these things and seen too many bored guys and trampy attention whores in my years at them. Maybe it's different if you're talking about a small group of friends gathering for a few drinks and dinner in your living room, but any public event or major party will inevitably turn into something a shade or three off of what I described.
Anyway, I got over the dressing up and playing pretend thing a long time ago and I'm not so desparately craving attention that the few "oh that's a cool costume" comments are going to be worth my energy. I'll probably spend Halloween at home, resting from the hard week at the office (my week stops at midnight, Sundays) - or out crusing in my new 2006 Mustang. At the very worst, I'll be tossing back a few and listening to a band somewhere. What I most certainly will not be doing is dressing up like Hanz and fricking Franz in grey sweats, a weight lifting back brace and going around telling princesses, vampresses, fairies and barbarellas that I want to pump them up.
By the way - is it just me or do kids not even trick or treat any more? I usually buy crap loads of candy to give out to the kids and I have only seen half a dozen (combined) in the last decade. Man, when I was eight years old, you went out and hit every house you could until midnight.
Why would you spend one hundred bucks for one buck? This sounds like one of those "which is lighter - a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers" traps, to me.
SCO OpenServer is kind of like Microsoft InnovationServer.
Here's the cut, folks:
Education is a privelege. You can stick a rider to any privelege you want. For example - while we would traditionally believe that we should not be subjected to drug or alcohol tests, searches or fingerprinting without having committed a crime - you can be forced to sign away those "rights" for the privelege of driving (along with protecting your social security number, since it's now usually required for any State ID or driver's license). Likewise, if we classify education as a privelege, we can tack on all the invasion we want. After all, if you don't want to give up those rights to your person - don't drive; if you don't want to give up those rights to your person; don't seek an education.
We can apply this to so many places in society. It's just a matter of redefining expectations and language. Eventually, we'll be able to classify everything you do as a "privelege" rather than a right. And once we've done that, you won't have any "rights" left.
And by then, I guess we won't have any terrorists. Of course, that's because we won't have any self-reliant, free-thinking, anti-authoritarians left, either.
I am not inherently against having a company standard. What I'm against is the continual changing of standards which don't improve anything within the company, but succeed in bringing executive attention to said brown noser. If you're going to have a new standard or philosophy every 24 months, what's the point?
Six Sigma, ITIL and all of these other countless "programs" that executives are in love with are a lot like all of the twelve step programs and self help programs that new agers are also in love with. Someone stumbles into the new buzzword corporate twelve step program and manages to talk all the other suckers into it to "improve" things. The brown noser just wants credit; doesn't really care about anything else. Likewise, there's always those few friends that get into things like being a breatharian and refusing to eat food, because they think they can live off sunlight and air. And they convince a few other gullible twits to go along with it. I see little difference between the two, except one is adopted and forced on an entire corporation.
IF you go through four of these renovations in less than a decade and you spend a couple million bucks on the consulting to do it each time, plus the cost of dedicating certain employees and committees to implement it, redesign internal tools and practices to adhere to your knew plan, then days and weeks writing up documentation and graphs and charts and flowcharts to obey and then waste several days each time putting every employee through a training program... what have you accomplished? And if the first three programs didn't work, what makes you think wasting all of your money and time on a fourth will?
Just the training alone for the lower level employees is absurdly expensive. Figure 50,000 employees who have to set aside four entire days of work. That's 200,000 lost days in the company. Try making that loss up to your customers!
Japtor?
BTW What proof is there for evolution, I've done some research and haven't found any proof yet, lots of theories but no proof.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I mean, you do realize that there is enormous evidence supporting evolution, right? It is ABSOLUTELY a theory (not just a hypothesis). On the other hand, the only evidence for theological origins are . . . well . . . books written by man. TommyKnockers is a book written by man, but that doesn't make it evidence for anything.
Reasonable people are open to all reasonable options. I'm open to all reasonable options. However, there is evidence supporting the widely-agreed abome theory of evolution. "Because I feel it in my bones" is not evidence of God or creation.
Now, when theologists stop going around trying to cloth their religion and creation myths in the robes of "science" and actually try coming up with true scientific evidence, more of us will listen. I've never heard a logical or reasonable presentation on creationism as a scientific possibility that was anything more than double-speak and the attempt to sway the ignorant (or at least, the uninformed).
So in the mean time, people would do best to keep their creation mythologies out of science.
Last week, every employee in my company (about 40,000 strong) got a self-published book from the CEO entitled "WHAT WE MUST DO". It was 50 pages. I'm not totally clear, still, what we must do. It was mostly a bunch of feel good pipe dreams. On the positive side, the binding glue smells really good. I kept several copies so that when one wears out, I'll have plenty of glue-sniffing goodness remaining.
Stop whining - it could have been a lot worse!
What a waste of scientific effort. This was so obvious in the first place. Of course they suck at disemboweling. Even if they had the strength and accuracy to hurl the ball down the lane and knock all the pins over, how the hell would those tiny little arms hold the ball?