They could always use another ISP. Just because it's the largest doesn't mean it has to be the one you choose. It's like people who whine about having to use AOL. When you ask why they don't choose another provider, they respond "But AOL is the largest!". (???)
True, there are some areas in which the church really is the only service available, but I guess that's the price of development. If nobody else is willing to move in and provide service and the church is, well -- then it's their business how they want to run their service. Nobody is forcing people to get internet access in the first place.
On the other hand, I've never been fond of Christian mission work. "We'll move in, provide needed services like medical aid and helping provide agricultural assistance, and in the process, we'll wash them of their evil non-Christian beliefs by assmiliating them through our indoctrination".
Interestingly enough, the church doesn't have a problem allowing kids to play bloody shootem-ups in their Church-run internet cafes. I guess it's okay to blow someone's head off but not to reasearch breast cancer or track down a killer photo of Angelina Jolie partially nude.
Maybe another entity will move in and provide competition in these areas and then there will be a choice as to whether or not they want filtered service or not. Then again, since the church has so much political clout in the region, they may just move into the legal system and demand filtering by all ISP's so that only the word of the almighty (Christian)God is available.
All in all, this isn't anything different than what they'd like to do in the United States. ---
seumas.com
However, I don't believe that is entirely human nature.
Look at people who do things not for money or competition though the money may be needed in their lives and their projects may certainly be able to earn revenue. People like myself, who run an auction site drains time, energy and patience, has enough members that a pretty good income could be earned, but is completely free. Not only free, but totally advertisement free in every way.
There are a lot of others who do some much cooler services to the world on the web and don't look to make a killing at it. It's just as much human nature not to exploit as it is to exploit, in my opinion.
In fact, it isn't specifically that people use the internet (specifically the web) for financial gain. What makes me so upset with these people is that they do so with absolutely no regard for the human element of the web. They're like the adult videostore or strip club that moves into a peaceful neighborhood with lots of small familes and children and nearby schools and churches. Yes, they have every right to make a buck. They have every right to set-up shop. But they do so with such disregard for the other people who are sharing that geography. They couldn't care less that the neighborhood also caters to people just going for a stroll, reading a book in the library across the street, praying in the church a block down, educating children a block up, sipping coffee in the cafe next door...
The internet isn't just a giant phone book or shopping mall. The internet was built by the people (granted, it was the military and scientific arms that did the work, but they are extensions of the public), not some high-priced contractor hired to create a venue for you to sell your blow-up dolls, get rich quick schemes and As Seen On TV gadgets. There were great people from the very beginning of the internet who have contributed to this and when people abuse things like cashing in on linking or forbidding people fundemental online rights (to use the term very loosely) because to do so would seriously compromise their change to extort a few pennies, is a discredit to everyone.
Imagine what it would feel like if a neighborhood gathered together to turn an unused lot into a wonderful playground and then it was obliterated to make way for previously mentioned porn shop or strip bar. I can't imagine anything more analogous. ---
seumas.com
When I was in school (this was only a few years ago), 20% of school time was spent watching a movie so the teacher could slack off. Another 60% was spent with guest speakers from DARE, AIDs clinics, Planned Parenthood, learning about how to have safe sex, how to do drugs safely, how smoking is bad for us, how drinking is bad for us, how we need to save the environment and how men are the bane of the world.
Most of the other 20% is spent learning the basics. Reading, math, science.
I don't mean to sound like an uptight right-winger (I'm not at all) -- but these really were the things school time was spent on the most. If we spent time being indoctrinated about how good smoking is and how men rule the world and how corporate america is god, I would be complaining about that, too.
My point being, indoctrination and propoganda can be presented through video just as well as live in a physical classroom. ---
seumas.com
Facts cannot be copyrighted or owned. Publishing a URL is no different than publishing directions to a gas station, a list of phone numbers, book titles and stores that they can be bought in or reviews of meals at restaurants.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. -- Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort. ---
seumas.com
1. At her party, Acid Burn points to what is obviously a Mac Laptop and says "look, it's a pentium 5" or something similar.
That's why it's so funny! I really doubt they included a Mac because they thought it really was some 31337 haxor machine.
All the graphical "matrix-ish" (Gibson's matrix, not the Wachowski Bros) stuff used to show them "hacking" the mainframe. Either they should've left that stupid crap out, or they should've stuck "somewhere in the late 21st century" at the beginning of the movie so that we weren't expected to view that stuff as current tech.
I think that was along the same lines of the Mac intention. It must have been tongue-in-cheek. I had the same complaints the first couple times I watched it. Then I finally realized "Wait a second... This has to be intentional" -- and now I can really enjoy it. It's almost... campy.
Besides, I'd watch grass grow if Angelina Jolie was sitting on it. ---
seumas.com
Man, school computer classes must have changed a lot since my time. I'm only 23, but my highschool computer class consisted of learning to type with a cardboard placard over your hands to prevent cheating. The advanced class included some very minor BASIC lessons. Besides, our teacher was usually busy playing SimCity while we spent the 90 minutes doing our typing lessons.
And this was on the black an white screen all-in-one-box Mac IIe's (I think that's what they were called?) from the very early 80's.
I still recall writing my first computer program (a graphical slot-machine game) in Pascal. It earned me an A+, even though I skipped 95% of the classes. Hell, nobody (including the instructor) even knew how to install and configure the Pascal compiler until I walked through it. And it was never used by anyone else but myself.
Now, I wasn't some gee-whiz high-brained computer kid either. My experience with computers was very limited at the time -- though my desire was strong.
It's nice to know that there may be some teachers out there who not only know more about computers than how to type up a school report or use Yahoo!, but teach their classes on these alternative subjects.
My brother just turned thirteen and his seventh-grade class is learning a little bit about HTML, but that's it. I'm hoping that they will actually provide some UNIX experience before highschool for him (or at least, in highschool if nothing else). Unfortunately, his current computer class contains nothing but iMacs and a few older Apple machines. ---
seumas.com
A bad hollywood portrayal? Hackers was anything but that. Hackers was actually a well-written movie with a lot of undertoned parody and 'inside jokes'. Saying it was a bad portrayal is like saying that The Weekend Update (on Saturday Night Live) is a bad portrayal of a news cast. Of course it is! That's the intention and the charm! ---
seumas.com
First of all, last time I did a RedHat install, the main installation required two full CD's (then there were two or three cd's full of utilities, source code and documentation). The install, without a web, news, mail or ftp server, required over a gig.
Last time I installed Debian (lastnight in fact), I installed from a half-full cd burned from the downloaded disk image. With Zope, Postgresql, ftp, xwindows, gnome and kde, games, emacs and just about everything else including sendmail and apache, the final size was under 500mb.
Last time I installed Windows98, it was around 500mb, without any servers or much software (notepad, solitaire, minesweeper... that's about it).
Last time I had to reinstall Debian because of an OS problem? Never. Last time I had to reinstall Windows98? About every 90 days.
And the complaints in the article that "Linux is too bountiful for the average user"... What the fuck is that? This, written by a guy who lives in America -- where we order Big Macs, drive Cadilacs, buy in bulk and wipe our asses with double-rolls of double-ply toilet-paper?
The argument that there are "so many packages, tools and choices that it's baffling" is rediculous, too. If you're using RedHat -- just choose the 'Desktop' installation. A relatively reasonable desktop system configuration is selected with that choice that will suit most users. And if you're using Debian, just select 'simple' from the packages menu and choose 'Gnome, XWindows, Newbie Help' and you'll have a an equally useful desktop system.
Installing Debian is faster, easier and more precise than installing Windows, if you ask me. So most of the articles claims fall flat. I'm sorry, but while this article would have been mostly on target three years ago, it is simply untrue today.
Consumers need to wake up and realize that they are never going to have their cake and eat it too. The closest they'll come to user-friendly might be a Mac or Windows box -- but they'll suffer a lot of reliability loss (especially on Windows). They'll suffer some financial expenses every time they want to add a game, word processor, network utility... And if they want a highly reliable, extremely configurable, very affordable system like Linux, they're going to have to sit down and thumb through a manual or read a few introductions to the operating system online. To say that it should be as simple to operate as a toaster is just plain stupid. People will pay $13 for a toaster and read the manual that comes with it, but they won't bother to read the manual that comes with their $2000 computer? ---
seumas.com
And yes, I know there wills till be 365 days in a 13 month year. I was being a smart-ass.
By the way, nobody would ever implement a 13 month calendar to make human time/biological cycles more synchronous. The only thing that matters is how much it will help industry. This is the same reason America still has almost no paid vacation time compared to the rest of the world. ---
seumas.com
Perhaps I should start charging a fee for people who come to my door. After all, I have to invest time and energy in getting off the sofa, walking to the door, opening the door and asking who it is -- instead of just letting every stranger into my house as they wish.
Some expenses are a necessity and are the responsibitily accepted under the circumstances. People may use your restroom in your restaurant, but you can't charge for it and you can't deny access to it from the public. It is an accepted expense, whether or not it is used. ---
seumas.com
Actually, this story was posted under 'Your Rights Online' a week ago, but not on the main page.
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/15/00282 11). I was a bit disgruntled that this article was kicked off to the side like that where it only received about six comments when it was a bigger issue than 'Read To Your Kids, Go To Jail' and the like which were on the main page at the time.
Glad to see Taco realizes this is news deserving o a broader range of discussion.:) ---
seumas.com
I would say it has nothing to do with what you would like him to do. Whether you want him to learn a cutting-edge technology or develope nano-technology is irrelavent.
Open him up to all the available sources. I didn't have anyone to point me toward all the things that are out there when I was about twelve and I think that stifled my computer experience and knowledge by at least six years. If I had known I could learn to program something other than BASIC and actually install my own Unix server when I was a kid, I would be far beyond where I am now. Instead, I didn't find this stuff out until I hooked up with the right friends after highschoool.
Show him the people, groups, books, online guides and other resources are and offer to assist with anything that piques his curiosity. Help provide the hardware resources that he needs to tool around with things that he is intrigued by. He'll find his own path -- you need to be the machete he whacks the clutter away with -- not his compass. His natural intellect and insatiable desire for knowledge will be his compass.
Pushing a kid in math or technology is just as disasterous as pushing a kid in football or wrestling. They need a foundation and companion -- not a booster rocket strapped to their ass, shoving them toward things. ---
seumas.com
Just seems that this would be an article best posted on the main page of Slashdot. This is of interest to everyone and deserved more than half dozen posts of discussion. It's certainly more widely interesting than Fandom Vs. Fandom or Read To Your Childre, Go To Jail. ---
seumas.com
I somehow doubt that the penalty of infringing the agreement imposed by a third-party on a public domain piece of literature is imprisonment. ---
seumas.com
I find this to be a pretty stupid decision, marketing-wise. What could be so bad about having your OS's general look appear on as many computers as possible? Familiarize people with the look of your systems and popularize it at the same time. Nike plasters their logo on everything in the world and I very much doubt they would complain if you went around advertising for them free of charge.
Now, if themes.org or someone else where charging for the Apple-like theme, there would be a very legitimate complaint -- but nobody is profiting directly off of the theme. ---
seumas.com
Unfortunately, a lot of companies don't see the value in doing that. For instance, the CEO of my company made my salary 2153 times over last year. If the rule of your company were enforced, either he would have been limited to earning about $700,000 or I would have been paid $14,000,000.
There certainly is an uneven playing field in most companies which discourages a lot of valuable employees from putting in the effort. They bust their butts as much as anyone else and put in the 100 hour work weeks routinely, but at the end of the year, their 5% pay increase is nothing compared to the extra $20 million the CEO takes above and beyond his previous year.
This is why a lot of people snicker when management indulges in company-wide propaganda pushing us to help the company succeed and grow. I could not possibly care less about the revenue of the company I work for because I don't care about helping management buy another house in a foreign retreat.
Big pay increases don't come from helping your current company succeed -- they come from jumping ship and joining another company who sees your value and wants to employ you at a salary more accurately reflecting your contributions. ---
seumas.com
Hm. That's interesting, because every experience I've had with companies that contract temps is that they are set under just as great of expectations as the rest of us, but they can be hired at about 50% the cost of the rest of us.
And as you'll notice, the mention of cubicles was not directly attributed to the environment at Microsoft but in the industry in general, referring to CEO's, VP's and others also in general. ---
seumas.com
Of course the VP of the company believes it's a great place to work. He has full benefits, a millionaire's salary and several weeks of paid vacation.
If he were stuck as a permatemp employee with a so-so wage, few or no benefits, working in a cubical on insane deadlines, battling the average office-woes -- all the time knowing the guy down the hall doing the same thing you're doing is making double your salary and earning full benefits because he is technically a 'full time employee' (despite the fact that you may very well have worked for the company longer as a temp employee than the other guy has at all) -- and he might be compelled to revise his statement.
CEO's, VP's and other upper-management types always think things are rosey -- easy to do when you spend your day on the golf course bragging about your new yacht. Quite another when you actually WORK for a living. ---
seumas.com
I think it's beyond our capabilities to say with certainty that life must have a necessity for oxygen, water and other things that most life on our planet depends on. We now know that there is life in places we once thought absolutely impossible, such as the volcanic vents under the ocean where the temperature and volitility should eliminate any chance for life -- but there it is.
I would assert that the chances of life everywhere in the universe being relatively paralell to our own on this planet (humanoid, mamallian, reptilian, etc) or life being radically different in form and survival throughout are about equal. With only our own planet as a base for the time being, it is difficult to establish accurate foresight. ---
seumas.com
I'm no astronomy or physics buff, but if the planets are as big as Jupiter, wouldn't the gravity be extremely prohibative? Do we know for certain that gravity does not severely limit the capability for the proliferation of life?
Even if there were life -- intelligent life and for the sake of this post, let's say intelligent enough to have civilizations and technology -- would it even be possible for them to build something powerful enough to escape their own gravity and ever travel through their solar system?
I know -- pointless questions -- but they are the first things that came to my mind when I saw that. I'm no Hubble, okay?:) ---
seumas.com
I'm really surprised at the lack of media attention (that is, NONE) given to the purchase of the rights to index full genetic information for an entire population -- liberties granted by their own government for a fee.
Outside of specific groups like Slashdot and a few scientific journals, I have heard ZERO conversation on this in meat-space or meat-media.
Come on people -- real life makes The 6th Day look like a fucking walk through Disneyland. ---
seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
True, there are some areas in which the church really is the only service available, but I guess that's the price of development. If nobody else is willing to move in and provide service and the church is, well -- then it's their business how they want to run their service. Nobody is forcing people to get internet access in the first place.
On the other hand, I've never been fond of Christian mission work. "We'll move in, provide needed services like medical aid and helping provide agricultural assistance, and in the process, we'll wash them of their evil non-Christian beliefs by assmiliating them through our indoctrination".
Interestingly enough, the church doesn't have a problem allowing kids to play bloody shootem-ups in their Church-run internet cafes. I guess it's okay to blow someone's head off but not to reasearch breast cancer or track down a killer photo of Angelina Jolie partially nude.
Maybe another entity will move in and provide competition in these areas and then there will be a choice as to whether or not they want filtered service or not. Then again, since the church has so much political clout in the region, they may just move into the legal system and demand filtering by all ISP's so that only the word of the almighty (Christian)God is available.
All in all, this isn't anything different than what they'd like to do in the United States.
---
seumas.com
Look at people who do things not for money or competition though the money may be needed in their lives and their projects may certainly be able to earn revenue. People like myself, who run an auction site drains time, energy and patience, has enough members that a pretty good income could be earned, but is completely free. Not only free, but totally advertisement free in every way.
There are a lot of others who do some much cooler services to the world on the web and don't look to make a killing at it. It's just as much human nature not to exploit as it is to exploit, in my opinion.
In fact, it isn't specifically that people use the internet (specifically the web) for financial gain. What makes me so upset with these people is that they do so with absolutely no regard for the human element of the web. They're like the adult videostore or strip club that moves into a peaceful neighborhood with lots of small familes and children and nearby schools and churches. Yes, they have every right to make a buck. They have every right to set-up shop. But they do so with such disregard for the other people who are sharing that geography. They couldn't care less that the neighborhood also caters to people just going for a stroll, reading a book in the library across the street, praying in the church a block down, educating children a block up, sipping coffee in the cafe next door...
The internet isn't just a giant phone book or shopping mall. The internet was built by the people (granted, it was the military and scientific arms that did the work, but they are extensions of the public), not some high-priced contractor hired to create a venue for you to sell your blow-up dolls, get rich quick schemes and As Seen On TV gadgets. There were great people from the very beginning of the internet who have contributed to this and when people abuse things like cashing in on linking or forbidding people fundemental online rights (to use the term very loosely) because to do so would seriously compromise their change to extort a few pennies, is a discredit to everyone.
Imagine what it would feel like if a neighborhood gathered together to turn an unused lot into a wonderful playground and then it was obliterated to make way for previously mentioned porn shop or strip bar. I can't imagine anything more analogous.
---
seumas.com
Most of the other 20% is spent learning the basics. Reading, math, science.
I don't mean to sound like an uptight right-winger (I'm not at all) -- but these really were the things school time was spent on the most. If we spent time being indoctrinated about how good smoking is and how men rule the world and how corporate america is god, I would be complaining about that, too.
My point being, indoctrination and propoganda can be presented through video just as well as live in a physical classroom.
---
seumas.com
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. -- Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort.
---
seumas.com
Sagan is one man who was taken from us far too soon.
---
seumas.com
That's why it's so funny! I really doubt they included a Mac because they thought it really was some 31337 haxor machine.
All the graphical "matrix-ish" (Gibson's matrix, not the Wachowski Bros) stuff used to show them "hacking" the mainframe. Either they should've left that stupid crap out, or they should've stuck "somewhere in the late 21st century" at the beginning of the movie so that we weren't expected to view that stuff as current tech.
I think that was along the same lines of the Mac intention. It must have been tongue-in-cheek. I had the same complaints the first couple times I watched it. Then I finally realized "Wait a second... This has to be intentional" -- and now I can really enjoy it. It's almost... campy.
Besides, I'd watch grass grow if Angelina Jolie was sitting on it.
---
seumas.com
And this was on the black an white screen all-in-one-box Mac IIe's (I think that's what they were called?) from the very early 80's.
I still recall writing my first computer program (a graphical slot-machine game) in Pascal. It earned me an A+, even though I skipped 95% of the classes. Hell, nobody (including the instructor) even knew how to install and configure the Pascal compiler until I walked through it. And it was never used by anyone else but myself.
Now, I wasn't some gee-whiz high-brained computer kid either. My experience with computers was very limited at the time -- though my desire was strong.
It's nice to know that there may be some teachers out there who not only know more about computers than how to type up a school report or use Yahoo!, but teach their classes on these alternative subjects.
My brother just turned thirteen and his seventh-grade class is learning a little bit about HTML, but that's it. I'm hoping that they will actually provide some UNIX experience before highschool for him (or at least, in highschool if nothing else). Unfortunately, his current computer class contains nothing but iMacs and a few older Apple machines.
---
seumas.com
A bad hollywood portrayal? Hackers was anything but that. Hackers was actually a well-written movie with a lot of undertoned parody and 'inside jokes'. Saying it was a bad portrayal is like saying that The Weekend Update (on Saturday Night Live) is a bad portrayal of a news cast. Of course it is! That's the intention and the charm!
---
seumas.com
Last time I installed Debian (lastnight in fact), I installed from a half-full cd burned from the downloaded disk image. With Zope, Postgresql, ftp, xwindows, gnome and kde, games, emacs and just about everything else including sendmail and apache, the final size was under 500mb.
Last time I installed Windows98, it was around 500mb, without any servers or much software (notepad, solitaire, minesweeper... that's about it).
Last time I had to reinstall Debian because of an OS problem? Never. Last time I had to reinstall Windows98? About every 90 days.
And the complaints in the article that "Linux is too bountiful for the average user"... What the fuck is that? This, written by a guy who lives in America -- where we order Big Macs, drive Cadilacs, buy in bulk and wipe our asses with double-rolls of double-ply toilet-paper?
The argument that there are "so many packages, tools and choices that it's baffling" is rediculous, too. If you're using RedHat -- just choose the 'Desktop' installation. A relatively reasonable desktop system configuration is selected with that choice that will suit most users. And if you're using Debian, just select 'simple' from the packages menu and choose 'Gnome, XWindows, Newbie Help' and you'll have a an equally useful desktop system.
Installing Debian is faster, easier and more precise than installing Windows, if you ask me. So most of the articles claims fall flat. I'm sorry, but while this article would have been mostly on target three years ago, it is simply untrue today.
Consumers need to wake up and realize that they are never going to have their cake and eat it too. The closest they'll come to user-friendly might be a Mac or Windows box -- but they'll suffer a lot of reliability loss (especially on Windows). They'll suffer some financial expenses every time they want to add a game, word processor, network utility... And if they want a highly reliable, extremely configurable, very affordable system like Linux, they're going to have to sit down and thumb through a manual or read a few introductions to the operating system online. To say that it should be as simple to operate as a toaster is just plain stupid. People will pay $13 for a toaster and read the manual that comes with it, but they won't bother to read the manual that comes with their $2000 computer?
---
seumas.com
Or maybe not. Because as we all know, nothing before 1970 was offensive. *cough*.
---
seumas.com
By the way, nobody would ever implement a 13 month calendar to make human time/biological cycles more synchronous. The only thing that matters is how much it will help industry. This is the same reason America still has almost no paid vacation time compared to the rest of the world.
---
seumas.com
Some expenses are a necessity and are the responsibitily accepted under the circumstances. People may use your restroom in your restaurant, but you can't charge for it and you can't deny access to it from the public. It is an accepted expense, whether or not it is used.
---
seumas.com
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/15/00282 11). I was a bit disgruntled that this article was kicked off to the side like that where it only received about six comments when it was a bigger issue than 'Read To Your Kids, Go To Jail' and the like which were on the main page at the time.
Glad to see Taco realizes this is news deserving o a broader range of discussion. :)
---
seumas.com
Open him up to all the available sources. I didn't have anyone to point me toward all the things that are out there when I was about twelve and I think that stifled my computer experience and knowledge by at least six years. If I had known I could learn to program something other than BASIC and actually install my own Unix server when I was a kid, I would be far beyond where I am now. Instead, I didn't find this stuff out until I hooked up with the right friends after highschoool.
Show him the people, groups, books, online guides and other resources are and offer to assist with anything that piques his curiosity. Help provide the hardware resources that he needs to tool around with things that he is intrigued by. He'll find his own path -- you need to be the machete he whacks the clutter away with -- not his compass. His natural intellect and insatiable desire for knowledge will be his compass.
Pushing a kid in math or technology is just as disasterous as pushing a kid in football or wrestling. They need a foundation and companion -- not a booster rocket strapped to their ass, shoving them toward things.
---
seumas.com
Gee, and after only about 4,000 deaths during the cleanup process.
---
seumas.com
Just seems that this would be an article best posted on the main page of Slashdot. This is of interest to everyone and deserved more than half dozen posts of discussion. It's certainly more widely interesting than Fandom Vs. Fandom or Read To Your Childre, Go To Jail.
---
seumas.com
I somehow doubt that the penalty of infringing the agreement imposed by a third-party on a public domain piece of literature is imprisonment.
---
seumas.com
Now, if themes.org or someone else where charging for the Apple-like theme, there would be a very legitimate complaint -- but nobody is profiting directly off of the theme.
---
seumas.com
Bring out the GIMP! ;)
I'm sorry. It had to be said. Please subtract the nominal karma fee for such a blatant outburst. :)
---
seumas.com
There certainly is an uneven playing field in most companies which discourages a lot of valuable employees from putting in the effort. They bust their butts as much as anyone else and put in the 100 hour work weeks routinely, but at the end of the year, their 5% pay increase is nothing compared to the extra $20 million the CEO takes above and beyond his previous year.
This is why a lot of people snicker when management indulges in company-wide propaganda pushing us to help the company succeed and grow. I could not possibly care less about the revenue of the company I work for because I don't care about helping management buy another house in a foreign retreat.
Big pay increases don't come from helping your current company succeed -- they come from jumping ship and joining another company who sees your value and wants to employ you at a salary more accurately reflecting your contributions.
---
seumas.com
And as you'll notice, the mention of cubicles was not directly attributed to the environment at Microsoft but in the industry in general, referring to CEO's, VP's and others also in general.
---
seumas.com
If he were stuck as a permatemp employee with a so-so wage, few or no benefits, working in a cubical on insane deadlines, battling the average office-woes -- all the time knowing the guy down the hall doing the same thing you're doing is making double your salary and earning full benefits because he is technically a 'full time employee' (despite the fact that you may very well have worked for the company longer as a temp employee than the other guy has at all) -- and he might be compelled to revise his statement.
CEO's, VP's and other upper-management types always think things are rosey -- easy to do when you spend your day on the golf course bragging about your new yacht. Quite another when you actually WORK for a living.
---
seumas.com
I would assert that the chances of life everywhere in the universe being relatively paralell to our own on this planet (humanoid, mamallian, reptilian, etc) or life being radically different in form and survival throughout are about equal. With only our own planet as a base for the time being, it is difficult to establish accurate foresight.
---
seumas.com
Even if there were life -- intelligent life and for the sake of this post, let's say intelligent enough to have civilizations and technology -- would it even be possible for them to build something powerful enough to escape their own gravity and ever travel through their solar system?
I know -- pointless questions -- but they are the first things that came to my mind when I saw that. I'm no Hubble, okay? :)
---
seumas.com
Outside of specific groups like Slashdot and a few scientific journals, I have heard ZERO conversation on this in meat-space or meat-media.
Come on people -- real life makes The 6th Day look like a fucking walk through Disneyland.
---
seumas.com