I do agree with you entirely, but there are many more issues here than you state. Two major ones (in my mind):
- The bills in congress are large lumps of legislation. Sure, the media calls it "The Iraq War bill", but the reality is a large number of projects get attached. (This implies a presidential line-item veto is needed, btw).
- People prioritize lofty issues over boring minor issues. So a politician says "I believe in god" or "I believe in a women's right to choose", and we pick that person even if they are accepting money from land developers, telecom companies, etc. (This to me is a cultural issue.)
Whatever, I think it is more complex than you state. The volume of available data is just one issue.
The problem is that people abuse the so-called complexities and ignore the very obvious facts - people eat more and do less in american society, when they should eat less and do more.
If you really want to be positive rather than giving people excuses to lay around, you can point out that if they put on more muscle mass they will burn more energy at all times a day. You can also point out the research showing carbohydrates as the culprit, not fat.
But that's besides the main point. The main point, at the most basic level, is that Americans are lazy and indulgent, when they should be more active and a bit more disciplined.
"metabolism" and "genes" are buzzwords thrown around by people too lazy to exercise.
Physics works. Anytime someone tells me physics doesn't work, I know they're off in their little candyland corner and can ignore them.
Calories, calories out. It really does work.
To bridge the gap a bit - yes, I know some people naturally burn more than others. I knew this hot chick who never exercised, ate a standard junk-food diet with abandon, and got angry when she had gained a pound or so over a period of 10 years. So yes, "genes" covers some.
But the truth is that most of the population can affect these areas by exercise and diet. It might be a tiny bit harder for some than others. Maybe some people are gifted with not having to work for it at all (the hot chick), but in the end the vast majority of americans suffer from a very simple malady - they do less and eat more, rather than eating less and doing more.
Reading the story preview and responses shows how insular slashdot is:
1) Bill Gates is responsible for making the field nerdy? What, the rest of us are smooth-talking jocks, and that Gates guy is dragging the average down? Get serious, please.
2) Most people do not like to work on logic problems all day. It's boring to them. You can spin this however you like, but in the end dealing with computers is cold and dry - no people skills, no art, no expression. It's all 1s and 0s. The exceptional areas (e.g. web page designer) are the ones where we see too many people, as it seems to make IT more exciting.
3) Like many other posters have said or alluded to: jobs are boring. There aren't enough fun jobs to go around, and even the fun ones have very large boring sides to them. Do you know how the basketball greats stay great? Hundreds of shots a day. Hundreds. From all parts of the court. That's sports - you can pull examples from whatever job you want, they all get boring.
finally, like many posters have said - fine by me. I get a rich field to pick from.
If that hierarchy is in a corporation, there's nothing the public can do about it. Corporations only have power because we treat them like people and give them a voice. Corporate money should be entirely illegal in the political process. A corporation should have absolutely no say in the political process. NONE.
People? Sure. I'm fine if someone takes his golden parachute and spends it on politics. It's his money, fleeced fairly. But taking corporate money to do the same? That's wrong.
"I hate to say it, but in this circumstance the correct thing to do was probably to hit the guy, if you can do it in a controlled manner."
Sorry, but that is ridiculous. You never, ever, should intentionally get into an accident. Now, if you're chosing between which objects to hit (e.g. wall or car), then that's a no-win choice and you do your best. But if you can take action to avoid an accident, you should do so.
Let's see...bodily harm in one hand, or bruised feelings in another. I know which I'll take. Especially with a 4-year old in the car along with me.
No, it wasn't in 2001. Yes, the congress with Newt in charge was a different beast at the start then the one you saw in 2000.
Please understand that I'm not saying the red team is better than the blue team. I'm saying that the budge surpluses in Clinton's admin was due to a number of factors, including Clinton's willingness to keep a budget (something I think comes from being a governor), a congress all fired up to cut waste (read about newt's congress, he may be evil but his congress was fiscally conservative), and the relaxing of certain rules that paid short-run dividends but screwed us in the long run.
From where I'm sitting, they both want to take my money and spend it for me.
From where you're sitting, you think it's important where the money goes after they take it from you. I really don't care at that point - I just want them to stop taking my money.
"Last week, the Clinton administration presented its broad outline for a relaxation of banking rules designed to increase commercial lending to small businesses."
It was Clinton who started the process. He was faced with a so-called credit crunch and bowed to the pressure.
Once he lowered the bar, money became easier to get, and real-estate prices started shooting up.
Btw, don't think I'm absolving GWB. But it started with BC.
It wasn't the same congress. Republican yes, but absolutely not fiscally conservative (by definition).
Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of Bush (not by a longshot). I'm one of those who dreams of a weak federal government letting people live their lives. But the post I replied to was only telling a part of the story.
"Under a Rhode Scholar president, our GDP grew faster than any time since the 60s."
Way to cherry-pick the information. The Rhode scholar had a tight-fisted congress to deal with, forcing him to play ball.
Also, that wonderful Rhode Scholar loosened the rules leading to our current housing crisis, so all he really did was steal money from the future to give the illusion that his term was nice and placid.
Being social is not the same thing as being cooperative. Competitive behavior is also social behavior, and has existed as well for the 2 million years of human evolutionary success.
It's the people who turn their back on that aspect of humanity who are the unnatural ones.
You didn't review any C either, yet we all know that the language is out there and being used. Same with perl.
I think your field of work is too narrow to be completely explanatory.
Btw, I do agree with your general point - I don't see python or ruby bumping aside java. But your personal experience, extensive as it appears, is not enough to derive that conclusion
-Jeff
P.S. I really wish java would go. I hate the upper/lower case thing in all the names.
" To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there."
--------------
Yes, roll roll craps and die is infinetly more meaningfull to me as well. Boy, that sounds like hoot!
Seriously, you're just changing grinding levels with grinding characters until one of them is lucky enough to achieve ultimate power. Then you put that character on a pedastel somewhere and he never comes out for fear of death anyways.
***What's the big deal? Stupid teachers still wouldn't be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" anyway, since -- according to the summary -- the information still has to be scientific (and "ID" fails at that).***
Say this bill passes, and you're a school principal, and your teacher decides to teach ID. You say "no, that's not scientific". She then brings in a group of legal beagles funded by whatever conspiracy group to fight this out in court, and it goes on for a few years costing the school system millions in legal fees.
Or you just say "whatever", let her teach, and then some group of legal beagles from some other group jump in to sue your butt.
That's nice and all, but the clip shows him admitting that he skipped his meds before speaking to congress. It has nothing to do with the political ad that Rush commented on.
As an independent (color me libertarian, if you like), I see Clinton's and Obama's stated platforms as essentially identical. However, I view Clinton's debate and campaign tactics with such disgust that I really hope Obama cleans her clock. At least Obama works to be civil and consistant, and presents himself relatively as-is.
On a sidenote, I'm also amused at the whole affair. The democrats, supposedly the party of equal rights, free thinkers, intellectuals, are actually robotically lining up along gender/racial lines. I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning after a primary.:-)
-Jeff
P.S. Do not infer from this that I consider the republicans any better. Their primary is proceeding along different, but equally amusing lines.
a) It probably depends on the state - I'm no expert on each state's specific requirements.
b) Only 2 major parties. If we had more parties with representatives, this would be much harder to pull off.
c) Our culture. In america, people want the news *now*. Hence machines.
d) Money. I'm just guessing, but I bet real corruption takes real money, and we got that here, nice and concentrated.
I am frustrated too. I see no reason for machines. I see no reason to allow the media to discuss exit polls until the last poling station closes. I have no problem waiting a week for official results - I want them right, not fast.
It's sad. People in America really don't value the freedoms given to them by the founders. They would rather vote away their rights one by one, give control of their lives bit by bit to one big government entity, and in the end they will lose it all.
I divide programmers into 3 groups: hackers, academics, and professionals. Imagine you try to read someone's code, and can't figure it out after a reasonable effort. You complain to the author, and they respond with:
academic - "Take a class." hacker - "You're stupid." professional - "I'll clean it up."
I know that's not a bullet-proof division, and of course this being slashdot someone will give me a lesson on "hacker" vs "cracker" and the general beauty of the programming art and whatnot. But I find these divisions tend to hold up a lot at work.
Yes, real life-and-death is not a something easy to simulate in a lab experiment (an least not legally ).
Obligatory anecdote:
I was in a car accident in college. I was driving north ~40mph, and someone driving south had a seizure, stomped the gas pedal, and jumped the median going ~60mph. I had the proverbial split-second, and managed to turn just enough so he hit above the tire rather than directly head-on (which would have certainly killed me). He then went careening on down the road and ultimately hit another 4 cars (per the police report).
Later on the cop interviewed me, and I gave my description of the events. They then asked me to identify the car. I replied that I had only glimpsed it for split second, and I wasn't a car-guy anyways so there's no way I would know what it was that I saw. The police insisted, and exasperated I said "fine, it was a white, 4-door, ford fairmont sedan". A few days later I checked the police report and found that I was entirely accurate on all points, even though I couldn't conjure a mental image of the car, and even though I couldn't tell a ford fairmont from any other sedan without reading the label.
Anyways, I have no doubt that life-and-death *can* bring about massive chemical changes that affect our perceptions, memory, and reactions. I've experienced the feeling first-hand.
People work hard to improve their golf game - are you going to play semantic games with them too?
Some forms of entertainment are easy (TV); some require effort if you want to play well (golf). This isn't a "right vs wrong" scenario here, it's all a question of what you personally enjoy.
Two people in california hacked a machine in utah. So that's how the feds got called in.
So I think there's really no story here - they did something that brought a federal charge. Nobody's been sentenced yet, let's see what the judge says before they get punished.
Don't be silly, it's not the packaging that counts, it's the official support for the "ports". It's one thing to hack at eve after every build to make it work under cedega - it's another to have the company try it out for you before release.
Slashdot Mirror
I do agree with you entirely, but there are many more issues here than you state. Two major ones (in my mind):
- The bills in congress are large lumps of legislation. Sure, the media calls it "The Iraq War bill", but the reality is a large number of projects get attached. (This implies a presidential line-item veto is needed, btw).
- People prioritize lofty issues over boring minor issues. So a politician says "I believe in god" or "I believe in a women's right to choose", and we pick that person even if they are accepting money from land developers, telecom companies, etc. (This to me is a cultural issue.)
Whatever, I think it is more complex than you state. The volume of available data is just one issue.
-Jeff
The problem is that people abuse the so-called complexities and ignore the very obvious facts - people eat more and do less in american society, when they should eat less and do more.
If you really want to be positive rather than giving people excuses to lay around, you can point out that if they put on more muscle mass they will burn more energy at all times a day. You can also point out the research showing carbohydrates as the culprit, not fat.
But that's besides the main point. The main point, at the most basic level, is that Americans are lazy and indulgent, when they should be more active and a bit more disciplined.
-Jeff
"metabolism" and "genes" are buzzwords thrown around by people too lazy to exercise.
Physics works. Anytime someone tells me physics doesn't work, I know they're off in their little candyland corner and can ignore them.
Calories, calories out. It really does work.
To bridge the gap a bit - yes, I know some people naturally burn more than others. I knew this hot chick who never exercised, ate a standard junk-food diet with abandon, and got angry when she had gained a pound or so over a period of 10 years. So yes, "genes" covers some.
But the truth is that most of the population can affect these areas by exercise and diet. It might be a tiny bit harder for some than others. Maybe some people are gifted with not having to work for it at all (the hot chick), but in the end the vast majority of americans suffer from a very simple malady - they do less and eat more, rather than eating less and doing more.
Calories in, calories out. Physics really works.
-jeff
Reading the story preview and responses shows how insular slashdot is:
1) Bill Gates is responsible for making the field nerdy? What, the rest of us are smooth-talking jocks, and that Gates guy is dragging the average down? Get serious, please.
2) Most people do not like to work on logic problems all day. It's boring to them. You can spin this however you like, but in the end dealing with computers is cold and dry - no people skills, no art, no expression. It's all 1s and 0s. The exceptional areas (e.g. web page designer) are the ones where we see too many people, as it seems to make IT more exciting.
3) Like many other posters have said or alluded to: jobs are boring. There aren't enough fun jobs to go around, and even the fun ones have very large boring sides to them. Do you know how the basketball greats stay great? Hundreds of shots a day. Hundreds. From all parts of the court. That's sports - you can pull examples from whatever job you want, they all get boring.
finally, like many posters have said - fine by me. I get a rich field to pick from.
-Jeff
People? Sure. I'm fine if someone takes his golden parachute and spends it on politics. It's his money, fleeced fairly. But taking corporate money to do the same? That's wrong.
-Jeff
"I hate to say it, but in this circumstance the correct thing to do was probably to hit the guy, if you can do it in a controlled manner."
Sorry, but that is ridiculous. You never, ever, should intentionally get into an accident. Now, if you're chosing between which objects to hit (e.g. wall or car), then that's a no-win choice and you do your best. But if you can take action to avoid an accident, you should do so.
Let's see...bodily harm in one hand, or bruised feelings in another. I know which I'll take. Especially with a 4-year old in the car along with me.
-Jeff
No, it wasn't in 2001. Yes, the congress with Newt in charge was a different beast at the start then the one you saw in 2000.
Please understand that I'm not saying the red team is better than the blue team. I'm saying that the budge surpluses in Clinton's admin was due to a number of factors, including Clinton's willingness to keep a budget (something I think comes from being a governor), a congress all fired up to cut waste (read about newt's congress, he may be evil but his congress was fiscally conservative), and the relaxing of certain rules that paid short-run dividends but screwed us in the long run.
-Jeff
This is all a matter of perspective, right?
From where I'm sitting, they both want to take my money and spend it for me.
From where you're sitting, you think it's important where the money goes after they take it from you. I really don't care at that point - I just want them to stop taking my money.
-Jeff
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_n31_v39/ai_13651221
"Last week, the Clinton administration presented its broad outline for a relaxation of banking rules designed to increase commercial lending to small businesses."
It was Clinton who started the process. He was faced with a so-called credit crunch and bowed to the pressure.
Once he lowered the bar, money became easier to get, and real-estate prices started shooting up.
Btw, don't think I'm absolving GWB. But it started with BC.
-Jeff
It wasn't the same congress. Republican yes, but absolutely not fiscally conservative (by definition).
Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of Bush (not by a longshot). I'm one of those who dreams of a weak federal government letting people live their lives. But the post I replied to was only telling a part of the story.
-Jeff
"Under a Rhode Scholar president, our GDP grew faster than any time since the 60s."
Way to cherry-pick the information. The Rhode scholar had a tight-fisted congress to deal with, forcing him to play ball.
Also, that wonderful Rhode Scholar loosened the rules leading to our current housing crisis, so all he really did was steal money from the future to give the illusion that his term was nice and placid.
-Jeff
Being social is not the same thing as being cooperative. Competitive behavior is also social behavior, and has existed as well for the 2 million years of human evolutionary success.
It's the people who turn their back on that aspect of humanity who are the unnatural ones.
-Jeff
You didn't review any C either, yet we all know that the language is out there and being used. Same with perl.
I think your field of work is too narrow to be completely explanatory.
Btw, I do agree with your general point - I don't see python or ruby bumping aside java. But your personal experience, extensive as it appears, is not enough to derive that conclusion
-Jeff
P.S. I really wish java would go. I hate the upper/lower case thing in all the names.
" To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there."
--------------
Yes, roll roll craps and die is infinetly more meaningfull to me as well. Boy, that sounds like hoot!
Seriously, you're just changing grinding levels with grinding characters until one of them is lucky enough to achieve ultimate power. Then you put that character on a pedastel somewhere and he never comes out for fear of death anyways.
-Jeff
This isn't hard - you may not make copies unless they are for specific purposes (e.g. backups), or are otherwise allowed by the author.
-Jeff
***What's the big deal? Stupid teachers still wouldn't be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" anyway, since -- according to the summary -- the information still has to be scientific (and "ID" fails at that).***
Say this bill passes, and you're a school principal, and your teacher decides to teach ID. You say "no, that's not scientific". She then brings in a group of legal beagles funded by whatever conspiracy group to fight this out in court, and it goes on for a few years costing the school system millions in legal fees.
Or you just say "whatever", let her teach, and then some group of legal beagles from some other group jump in to sue your butt.
You make this sound easy. It's not.
-Jeff
That's nice and all, but the clip shows him admitting that he skipped his meds before speaking to congress. It has nothing to do with the political ad that Rush commented on.
-Jeff
As an independent (color me libertarian, if you like), I see Clinton's and Obama's stated platforms as essentially identical. However, I view Clinton's debate and campaign tactics with such disgust that I really hope Obama cleans her clock. At least Obama works to be civil and consistant, and presents himself relatively as-is.
:-)
On a sidenote, I'm also amused at the whole affair. The democrats, supposedly the party of equal rights, free thinkers, intellectuals, are actually robotically lining up along gender/racial lines. I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning after a primary.
-Jeff
P.S. Do not infer from this that I consider the republicans any better. Their primary is proceeding along different, but equally amusing lines.
Why do we have such a bad system?
a) It probably depends on the state - I'm no expert on each state's specific requirements.
b) Only 2 major parties. If we had more parties with representatives, this would be much harder to pull off.
c) Our culture. In america, people want the news *now*. Hence machines.
d) Money. I'm just guessing, but I bet real corruption takes real money, and we got that here, nice and concentrated.
I am frustrated too. I see no reason for machines. I see no reason to allow the media to discuss exit polls until the last poling station closes. I have no problem waiting a week for official results - I want them right, not fast.
It's sad. People in America really don't value the freedoms given to them by the founders. They would rather vote away their rights one by one, give control of their lives bit by bit to one big government entity, and in the end they will lose it all.
Melodrama time is over,
-Jeff
I divide programmers into 3 groups: hackers, academics, and professionals. Imagine you try to read someone's code, and can't figure it out after a reasonable effort. You complain to the author, and they respond with:
academic - "Take a class."
hacker - "You're stupid."
professional - "I'll clean it up."
I know that's not a bullet-proof division, and of course this being slashdot someone will give me a lesson on "hacker" vs "cracker" and the general beauty of the programming art and whatnot. But I find these divisions tend to hold up a lot at work.
-Jeff
Yes, real life-and-death is not a something easy to simulate in a lab experiment (an least not legally ).
Obligatory anecdote:
I was in a car accident in college. I was driving north ~40mph, and someone driving south had a seizure, stomped the gas pedal, and jumped the median going ~60mph. I had the proverbial split-second, and managed to turn just enough so he hit above the tire rather than directly head-on (which would have certainly killed me). He then went careening on down the road and ultimately hit another 4 cars (per the police report).
Later on the cop interviewed me, and I gave my description of the events. They then asked me to identify the car. I replied that I had only glimpsed it for split second, and I wasn't a car-guy anyways so there's no way I would know what it was that I saw. The police insisted, and exasperated I said "fine, it was a white, 4-door, ford fairmont sedan". A few days later I checked the police report and found that I was entirely accurate on all points, even though I couldn't conjure a mental image of the car, and even though I couldn't tell a ford fairmont from any other sedan without reading the label.
Anyways, I have no doubt that life-and-death *can* bring about massive chemical changes that affect our perceptions, memory, and reactions. I've experienced the feeling first-hand.
-Jeff
Or we could just dig for oil ourselves and stop with all the silly kvetching.
-Jeff
People work hard to improve their golf game - are you going to play semantic games with them too?
Some forms of entertainment are easy (TV); some require effort if you want to play well (golf). This isn't a "right vs wrong" scenario here, it's all a question of what you personally enjoy.
-Jeff
If I'm reading the article they linked to:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/02/Two-charged-with-hacking-PeopleSoft-to-fix-grades_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/02/Two-charged-with-hacking-PeopleSoft-to-fix-grades_1.html
Two people in california hacked a machine in utah. So that's how the feds got called in.
So I think there's really no story here - they did something that brought a federal charge. Nobody's been sentenced yet, let's see what the judge says before they get punished.
-Jeff
Don't be silly, it's not the packaging that counts, it's the official support for the "ports". It's one thing to hack at eve after every build to make it work under cedega - it's another to have the company try it out for you before release.
-Jeff