The best help a parent can offer is to kick the kid out. Stop giving people things to fall back on and when the only option left is to get a job, work hard, and take care of your own damn self, you will quickly get a job, work hard, and take care of your damn self.
Whatever happened to kicking your kids out at 18 so they can go forth on their own in life? They had to plan and prepare for it as they neared the age and didn't just figure "I'll stick around until I'm 20 or 22".
I had to walk away from a conversation with a twenty-seven year old a couple weeks ago, because he wouldn't shut up about how hard it was to find a job and how expensive an apartment was and this was why he was still living with his parents and primarily on their dime . . . at almost thirty. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be uncommon at all - especially in people from teens to twenties these days.
When I was a kid, in the 90s, the expectation was that you were out of the house by the age of 18. You're an adult and you're on your own. Hell, most kids couldn't wait -- and many (like myself) were out by the age of 16 or 17. If you had to get a shitty low-paying job that left you with no pocket money at the end of the month and you had to share a shitty apartment or rented house with five other guys and work long hours and have to make due with taking the bus downtown to meet your dates and go on cheap coffee dates or trips to the park for dates, you didn't mind. It was all worth it for the benefits of BEING ON YOUR OWN and MASTER OF YOUR OWN DESTINY.
From discussions I've had in recent years, it sounds like kids basically throw their hands up. Life is just too hard. They're not willing to move out of mom and dad's place (or stop letting them fund their living expenses, either) until they have gone to college, paid off college, gotten a well-paying job, saved up enough money for a down on a house, and moved into said house.
I don't think it is a cultural thing. Have you ever visited reddit? It's just a bunch of twenty-somethings whining about how hard it is to find a job, how much work sucks, how expensive things are, how little vacation Americans get, how expensive school is, blah blah blah... all while justifying to each other in lengthy circle jerks about why they're almost thirty (or, in some cases, over thirty) and still living at home with their parents...
It seems one of these happens every six to eight weeks. Have to keep the population frightened, after all.
Of course, this won't do for very long. We're already at the point that people who are of voting age don't remember anything about 9/11 and certainly don't have any concept of a pre-war/pre-terrorism America. To just about anyone who is wasting away on Reddit, 9/11 is just this thing their parents and the government talk about. This means that something big will have to really happen (not just supposedly be about to happen and then stopped by the FBI at the last second). Something to rattle them and keep them subservient at least as much as most of society has been the last dozen years.
And just think about all those baristas who are culpable for our current surveillance state, because they made sweet expensive coffee-based drinks for people in the government and tech geeks during their commute to these jobs! The horror!
Yeah, there haven't been any suspicious planes crashing into the sides of mountains, people dying of heart attacks in hot tubs, or sudden strokes of anyone of any significants in the last twenty years or anything.... oh wait...:D
People like you make me fucking sick. Go to the grocery store. Tell me, how many different types and brands of sodas are on the shelf. Now, try telling me we don't got freedom, you fucking godless commie.
I don't understand ANY of this. We have known, since the 90s, that Echelon existed and monitored everything everywhere for keywords. The only new information is "now we can do it in real time and we also archive everything". We even knew this went for the NSA and CIA spying (illegally, by obligation of the agencies) on our own people. We have also known that we still spy on other nations. And other nations spy on us. And we all spy on each other. It is actually astonishing to me that the general consensus seems to be that it's horrible that we are spying on other countries, because I thought everyone knew we were doing this the whole time. Spying is just something every nation does and, frankly, it seems to be almost an obligation for their own protection. How does the Central Intelligence Agency gather Intelligence without spies and spying?
And, of course, when it comes to spying on our own citizens, we have known about this for the last couple of decades and we've tried making a big deal about it and nobody has given two shits. It wasn't even until a few years ago that the general media started to even reference Echelon and most people who had any concern about the government spying on its own citizens were dismissed as being paranoid.
Now, it is suddenly trendy, and people who didn't give two shits six months ago or two decades ago are all getting major boners over on Reddit as they all pretend to be revolutionaries fighting for freedom and against surveillance etc etc and now that all these little kids give two fucks, the rest of us are supposed to tag along and act like they're the first to acknowledge this and want to do something about it. Sort of like when you keep posing an idea to your boss and he keeps ignoring you, until he finally brings the idea up and claims it was his.
Fortunately, I think most of us on Slashdot are halfway through our life (or more -- some of you guys are real old bastards), so I think we can pragmatically say "have fun with things, kids - we're going to be dead soon". And so, I can't be assed to give much of a fuck anymore. I exhausted all my giving a fucks over the last two decades. I say, bring on the surveillance state. Bring on the dystopian future. Bring on Mother America and government involvement in everything. Big monolithic buildings being erectic. Futuristic all encompassing surveillance systems. The whole boat load. It'll be fun to watch. And by the time it really crushes the absolute spirit of man, we old timers will be ashes in the dirt.
You're only now thinking that Obama is just as bad?
The rest of us were telling you that bad during the first election. And guess what? The next guy isn't going to be much better -- regardless of whether he's Mr. Red State or Mr. Blue State. Might even be worse. Unfortunately, these rah-rah Reddit teenagers that get little baby chubbies in their pants as soon as they're old enough to vote, because "if we just vote Obama/Romney/Whoever this time, we will finally make a change to the world because this will totally be different than the past 230 years!" keep coming in thinking shit is just on the verge of turning around. Naive idiots.
You know, instead of advertising geek.com all over this submission, you could have just linked directly to microsoft's webpage with the Ballmer letter.
The question isn't about daggers, but about the efficacy of Ballmer picking up from here through to and after the launch. With Don's departure so swift, it strikes me a little like losing your head coach just before going to your championship game. It brings uncertainty and interrupts a certain flow and expectation at a crucial moment. I'm actually a bit shocked they wouldn't force him to stay til the end of the year (if for no other reason than to readily finger him for any failures in final numbers).
More than half of the discussion I hear recently is about how awful it is that the US is spying on other countries. I'm baffled by this. Of course we spy on other countries. And they spy on us. And each other. That's what the CIA/NSA/KGB/etc are for. That's their role, am I incorrect?
The issue isn't "ermagherd, we're spyin' on other countries!". It's "holy fuck, our own government is spying on its own citizens, even though they are expressly forbidden from doing so".
You're doing something wrong, if it takes five minutes for your Win7 system to boot.
My system running Win7 with Samsung 830 SSD and 16gb RAM (no point going to 32gb unless you want to accept the much lower memory timings that come with it) and it takes about fifteen or twenty seconds to get to desktop.
So you're "sheeple" (what a really unoriginal and meaningless way to refer to people) if you play either of the consoles. Be a man and play PC (yes, my preferred gaming system, of course). But if you play games on the PC with Windows, you're still sheeple...
I guess the only way to be a 1337 d00d is to play all those amazing to notch big-budget games that are put out on the linux platform (yes, there are a bunch of linux games and many decent ones, but seriously this is not sufficient if you're an avid gamer).
Unfortunately, you have to bite the bullet if you're much of a gamer. There is no platform that doesn't come without some gross feeling of ickiness.
That isn't always the case. You need to inquire as to the policy of your VPN service. For example, ProXPN (a service I've been looking into) makes the following statements about their policy:
"proXPN, B.V. will only use personally identifiable information collected through our web site to contact users regarding only products and services offered by proXPN, B.V. We will NOT share this information with anyone. Period."
Our system only monitors a connection if a user is having connection issues so that we can improve our services to you.
Information about users that is maintained on our systems is protected using industry standard security measures.
We do not monitor or record activity on our network (not that we even could, as the connection is encrypted).
We log which proXPN IP is assigned when a user connects. These logs are kept for 2 weeks and then deleted. We use these logs for internal server administration and IP provisioning.
Of course, I'm sure that if the government knew you were using a particular VPN service (easily identified by your billing records), they could just contact the company and say "from today on, you must monitor and retain all records for this user" and they would.
The truth is that everyone wants to manipulate science and engineering to do their bidding and see things their way king of the same way religious people keep trying to equate science to religion or creationism to scientific theory.
Some will insist scientists and engineers should take philosophy. Some will insist on law. Some will insist on theology. Some will insist on women's studies. Some will insist on green-studies/eco-whateverism (ie, not the science focused one). Some will insist on basket weaving.
This is where networking comes in. Cold-calling hiring managers (per se) is partially to weed out people who don't have any "in" to the company, already. That, and maybe die your hair. It sucks, but in a world where everything but your actual work-ethic and capability is secondary to things like youth, height, attractiveness, and diploma, you have to manipulate the game to your favor so you can get your foot in the door.
I also think there tends to be a problem where most people assume that if you're over a certain age and you are not seeking a management position, there must be something wrong with you. After all, if you have put in your years, why would you want to do anything other than manage people, right? . . . Right?
This is all more bullshit attempts by the FTC to remain relevant by asserting themselves where they aren't needed.
Here's what you do if a search engine uses shady practices: Use another search engine. When everyone stops using the shady websites, they'll go away and services people want to use will replace them.
I don't really see how bullshit FTC regulations and involvement are helping anyone but the FTC, here.
Didn't they do that a long time ago? For at least a decade, they have basically been nothing but yes-men to the executive branch. There may as well not even fucking BE a legislative branch.
The OATH of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES that he takes before the entire world during his inauguration clearly states that his duty in that position is "to protect and uphold the constitution of the United States".
However, George Bush stated that his job was to be "The Decider".
And Obama repeatedly states at every interview and speech that his "first priority and duty as president" is "to protect the American people".
So.. no, they don't have "the law" (ie, the Constitution) anywhere in their realm of concern.
Even though Obama is a fucking Constitutional lawyer, I believe.
Slashdot Mirror
The best help a parent can offer is to kick the kid out. Stop giving people things to fall back on and when the only option left is to get a job, work hard, and take care of your own damn self, you will quickly get a job, work hard, and take care of your damn self.
Whatever happened to kicking your kids out at 18 so they can go forth on their own in life? They had to plan and prepare for it as they neared the age and didn't just figure "I'll stick around until I'm 20 or 22".
I had to walk away from a conversation with a twenty-seven year old a couple weeks ago, because he wouldn't shut up about how hard it was to find a job and how expensive an apartment was and this was why he was still living with his parents and primarily on their dime . . . at almost thirty. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be uncommon at all - especially in people from teens to twenties these days.
When I was a kid, in the 90s, the expectation was that you were out of the house by the age of 18. You're an adult and you're on your own. Hell, most kids couldn't wait -- and many (like myself) were out by the age of 16 or 17. If you had to get a shitty low-paying job that left you with no pocket money at the end of the month and you had to share a shitty apartment or rented house with five other guys and work long hours and have to make due with taking the bus downtown to meet your dates and go on cheap coffee dates or trips to the park for dates, you didn't mind. It was all worth it for the benefits of BEING ON YOUR OWN and MASTER OF YOUR OWN DESTINY.
From discussions I've had in recent years, it sounds like kids basically throw their hands up. Life is just too hard. They're not willing to move out of mom and dad's place (or stop letting them fund their living expenses, either) until they have gone to college, paid off college, gotten a well-paying job, saved up enough money for a down on a house, and moved into said house.
I don't think it is a cultural thing. Have you ever visited reddit? It's just a bunch of twenty-somethings whining about how hard it is to find a job, how much work sucks, how expensive things are, how little vacation Americans get, how expensive school is, blah blah blah... all while justifying to each other in lengthy circle jerks about why they're almost thirty (or, in some cases, over thirty) and still living at home with their parents...
This is Slashdot. None of us even have an armchair affiliation with intelligence!
It seems one of these happens every six to eight weeks. Have to keep the population frightened, after all.
Of course, this won't do for very long. We're already at the point that people who are of voting age don't remember anything about 9/11 and certainly don't have any concept of a pre-war/pre-terrorism America. To just about anyone who is wasting away on Reddit, 9/11 is just this thing their parents and the government talk about. This means that something big will have to really happen (not just supposedly be about to happen and then stopped by the FBI at the last second). Something to rattle them and keep them subservient at least as much as most of society has been the last dozen years.
And just think about all those baristas who are culpable for our current surveillance state, because they made sweet expensive coffee-based drinks for people in the government and tech geeks during their commute to these jobs! The horror!
Yeah, there haven't been any suspicious planes crashing into the sides of mountains, people dying of heart attacks in hot tubs, or sudden strokes of anyone of any significants in the last twenty years or anything.... oh wait... :D
People like you make me fucking sick. Go to the grocery store. Tell me, how many different types and brands of sodas are on the shelf. Now, try telling me we don't got freedom, you fucking godless commie.
I don't understand ANY of this. We have known, since the 90s, that Echelon existed and monitored everything everywhere for keywords. The only new information is "now we can do it in real time and we also archive everything". We even knew this went for the NSA and CIA spying (illegally, by obligation of the agencies) on our own people. We have also known that we still spy on other nations. And other nations spy on us. And we all spy on each other. It is actually astonishing to me that the general consensus seems to be that it's horrible that we are spying on other countries, because I thought everyone knew we were doing this the whole time. Spying is just something every nation does and, frankly, it seems to be almost an obligation for their own protection. How does the Central Intelligence Agency gather Intelligence without spies and spying?
And, of course, when it comes to spying on our own citizens, we have known about this for the last couple of decades and we've tried making a big deal about it and nobody has given two shits. It wasn't even until a few years ago that the general media started to even reference Echelon and most people who had any concern about the government spying on its own citizens were dismissed as being paranoid.
Now, it is suddenly trendy, and people who didn't give two shits six months ago or two decades ago are all getting major boners over on Reddit as they all pretend to be revolutionaries fighting for freedom and against surveillance etc etc and now that all these little kids give two fucks, the rest of us are supposed to tag along and act like they're the first to acknowledge this and want to do something about it. Sort of like when you keep posing an idea to your boss and he keeps ignoring you, until he finally brings the idea up and claims it was his.
Fortunately, I think most of us on Slashdot are halfway through our life (or more -- some of you guys are real old bastards), so I think we can pragmatically say "have fun with things, kids - we're going to be dead soon". And so, I can't be assed to give much of a fuck anymore. I exhausted all my giving a fucks over the last two decades. I say, bring on the surveillance state. Bring on the dystopian future. Bring on Mother America and government involvement in everything. Big monolithic buildings being erectic. Futuristic all encompassing surveillance systems. The whole boat load. It'll be fun to watch. And by the time it really crushes the absolute spirit of man, we old timers will be ashes in the dirt.
You're only now thinking that Obama is just as bad?
The rest of us were telling you that bad during the first election. And guess what? The next guy isn't going to be much better -- regardless of whether he's Mr. Red State or Mr. Blue State. Might even be worse. Unfortunately, these rah-rah Reddit teenagers that get little baby chubbies in their pants as soon as they're old enough to vote, because "if we just vote Obama/Romney/Whoever this time, we will finally make a change to the world because this will totally be different than the past 230 years!" keep coming in thinking shit is just on the verge of turning around. Naive idiots.
You know, instead of advertising geek.com all over this submission, you could have just linked directly to microsoft's webpage with the Ballmer letter.
... that the dying industry of print news media publishes the opinion that the internet should not exist.
The question isn't about daggers, but about the efficacy of Ballmer picking up from here through to and after the launch. With Don's departure so swift, it strikes me a little like losing your head coach just before going to your championship game. It brings uncertainty and interrupts a certain flow and expectation at a crucial moment. I'm actually a bit shocked they wouldn't force him to stay til the end of the year (if for no other reason than to readily finger him for any failures in final numbers).
Ballmer issued a statement which included a comment that all Don's former employees now report to Ballmer through the holiday for the XBOX ONE.. Hm...
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jul13/07-01steveb-mail.aspx
More than half of the discussion I hear recently is about how awful it is that the US is spying on other countries. I'm baffled by this. Of course we spy on other countries. And they spy on us. And each other. That's what the CIA/NSA/KGB/etc are for. That's their role, am I incorrect?
The issue isn't "ermagherd, we're spyin' on other countries!". It's "holy fuck, our own government is spying on its own citizens, even though they are expressly forbidden from doing so".
You're doing something wrong, if it takes five minutes for your Win7 system to boot.
My system running Win7 with Samsung 830 SSD and 16gb RAM (no point going to 32gb unless you want to accept the much lower memory timings that come with it) and it takes about fifteen or twenty seconds to get to desktop.
So you're "sheeple" (what a really unoriginal and meaningless way to refer to people) if you play either of the consoles. Be a man and play PC (yes, my preferred gaming system, of course). But if you play games on the PC with Windows, you're still sheeple...
I guess the only way to be a 1337 d00d is to play all those amazing to notch big-budget games that are put out on the linux platform (yes, there are a bunch of linux games and many decent ones, but seriously this is not sufficient if you're an avid gamer).
Unfortunately, you have to bite the bullet if you're much of a gamer. There is no platform that doesn't come without some gross feeling of ickiness.
That isn't always the case. You need to inquire as to the policy of your VPN service. For example, ProXPN (a service I've been looking into) makes the following statements about their policy:
"proXPN, B.V. will only use personally identifiable information collected through our web site to contact users regarding only products and services offered by proXPN, B.V. We will NOT share this information with anyone. Period."
Our system only monitors a connection if a user is having connection issues so that we can improve our services to you.
Information about users that is maintained on our systems is protected using industry standard security measures.
We do not monitor or record activity on our network (not that we even could, as the connection is encrypted).
We log which proXPN IP is assigned when a user connects. These logs are kept for 2 weeks and then deleted. We use these logs for internal server administration and IP provisioning.
Of course, I'm sure that if the government knew you were using a particular VPN service (easily identified by your billing records), they could just contact the company and say "from today on, you must monitor and retain all records for this user" and they would.
The truth is that everyone wants to manipulate science and engineering to do their bidding and see things their way king of the same way religious people keep trying to equate science to religion or creationism to scientific theory.
Some will insist scientists and engineers should take philosophy.
Some will insist on law.
Some will insist on theology.
Some will insist on women's studies.
Some will insist on green-studies/eco-whateverism (ie, not the science focused one).
Some will insist on basket weaving.
This is where networking comes in. Cold-calling hiring managers (per se) is partially to weed out people who don't have any "in" to the company, already. That, and maybe die your hair. It sucks, but in a world where everything but your actual work-ethic and capability is secondary to things like youth, height, attractiveness, and diploma, you have to manipulate the game to your favor so you can get your foot in the door.
I also think there tends to be a problem where most people assume that if you're over a certain age and you are not seeking a management position, there must be something wrong with you. After all, if you have put in your years, why would you want to do anything other than manage people, right? . . . Right?
This is all more bullshit attempts by the FTC to remain relevant by asserting themselves where they aren't needed.
Here's what you do if a search engine uses shady practices: Use another search engine. When everyone stops using the shady websites, they'll go away and services people want to use will replace them.
I don't really see how bullshit FTC regulations and involvement are helping anyone but the FTC, here.
I think you misread the poster. He was talking about *America*.
Didn't they do that a long time ago? For at least a decade, they have basically been nothing but yes-men to the executive branch. There may as well not even fucking BE a legislative branch.
Or The USA PATRIOT Act of 200X.
Well, there's an important decision to be made.
The OATH of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES that he takes before the entire world during his inauguration clearly states that his duty in that position is "to protect and uphold the constitution of the United States".
However, George Bush stated that his job was to be "The Decider".
And Obama repeatedly states at every interview and speech that his "first priority and duty as president" is "to protect the American people".
So.. no, they don't have "the law" (ie, the Constitution) anywhere in their realm of concern.
Even though Obama is a fucking Constitutional lawyer, I believe.