We just recieved an ammended version of our employee contract, which had new articles stating that it was against policy to use any of your paid off time to interview for or pursue a position with a different company. The clause specifically stated that it was against policy to look for a job with sick time, vacation time, company holidays, or floating holidays.
Not that I'd adhere to that policy at all, but it was a shock that they had the stones put it in there.
ID is a product of fundamentalism and should only be accepted by those people who also believe the Earth is 6000 years old and the devil interferes with radioactivity measurements to make things look older than that. at the ID trial many Christians testified against ID.
Then how exactly do I classify myself, a person that believes the scientific evidence behind evolution, but still believes that the process itself was triggered by a benevolent being, and perhaps was even guided by that being? Not ID, not pure evolutionist...?
Hell, a bishop with the Vatican even accepted that evolution was not the exact opposite of creationism. So what exactly am I, being both?
Many atheists are every bit as nasty as some fundamentalist. Instead of you declaring you an sinner and immoral they declare you an idiot, fool, and yes evil.
Yup. My expression of my freedom to worship as I choose apparently makes me an idiot in the eyes of many, including a decent portion of the Slashdot crowd.
I do not believe in creationism. I do believe in ID but at the cosmic level I.E. the prime cause and designer of the universe. I believe in evolution because I see the evidence and believe that the universe was set up to allow it.
This is the one thing that kills me. I am an IDist, but to the point that I believe that evolution was possible, just that it wasn't necessarily triggered... well... accidentally. I don't proport that evolution is false, but I do still hold on to the belief that there is a plan and a God and - most importantly to me, and thus the crux of my faith - a life after that on earth. Does this make me an idiot? To those atheists who are as radical as the Christian Right, I'm sure.
and you're left with drek like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
Quite a legitimate fear. One of the reasons that Pixar does so well is the culture of the shop, developed by Jobs and run by Jobs. Take his somewhat psychotic nature out of the mix and allow Pixar to become just another Disney department overseen by the Disney corporate machine, and the brilliance that launced Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles may be lost forever.
There is exactly one space after a dot or a comma - and none before it!
As off-topic as this is, actually, proper writing requires TWO spaces after any punctuation ending a sentence. Just because HTML doesn't support this doesn't mean it's been striken from proper writing rules.
This is a tough egg to crack because everything revolves around money. Research requires money, and unless there is measured output, money invested is considered lost by the enterprises that supply said money.
Add on to that that much of the research money comes from private or public for-profit agencies, and you have a real connundrum on your hands.
Unfortunately, pure science and pure investors often clash when it comes to desired outcome. Scientists are often happy to take years and years to develop therapies or make discoveries to be sure that the science itself is rock-solid. However, investors require that their investments - often not all their own money - yields dividends and results in made money.
Until we have some system in place that supports scientific research without requiring an immediate return on ivestment, this crisis will continue unabated.
I totally agree , and I am extremely proud,(though I don't think I am better than anyone else).
I've always wondered if this is more hurtful to race relations than help. This country is relatively unique in that almost no one counts themselves as simply "American", but as African American, or Irish American, or Jewish American, etc.
This culture of seperation and self-segregation may contribute to a cliquiness that perpeutates the still prevelant race issues we face in the US today. Perhaps if we all just stopped concerning ourselves so much with where our great-great-grandfather originated from and counted ourselves lucky to live in this country to begin with, it would help things.
That said, I know I constantly find myself speaking with others about my Italian heritage. Oh well...
Simply amazing that Google does continue to do what I believe is "the right thing" in just about every case that comes to my attention.
Yahoo, AOL, and MSN all just roll over for the DOJ without a single nod towards customer privacy. I feel cheated by all of them, and will probably use Google exclusively now. Is there no one in those giant organizations that even stopped for a second to consider the possible ramifications of just giving up massive databases to the federal government, especially after it's become quite clear that they have been involved in illegal spying activities as it is?
I have to hand it to Google here. I know it's probably not my interests they have in mind but their own, but I still applaud them for sticking to the "do no evil" mantra.
Or coupons. I agree with "the chao goes mu" - I hate that any discount that I used to get as a customer now requires that I allow them to track my purchasing habits. Back off.
I'm sick of the "it's the parents' responsibility, so nothing else should be done" arguement. Personally, I doubt the arguement is often used by people who are actually parents, or have given it much thought.
Well, it's used by me, and I'm a parent.
There are already enough options available to parents, and direct supervision is probably the best one available. The "parental responsibility" argument comes from the laziness that I see in other parents and read about, even here on Slashdot.
Moving slightly from the internet porn argument, take for instance the mother that sued because she wasn't aware GTA was violent in nature after she bought it for her child. Is the "Mature" rating not enough? Do we need more regulation because someone can't read the front of the jewel case? What did she assume "mature" meant?
This person demanding that the government do more is basically passing on her responsibility as parent to the government. Being a parent is not a mindless job, and each decision I make I don't want a governing body standing there going "is that what you REALLY want to do?"
That's my thought, anyway. So yeah, as a parent and a libertarian, stop trying to regulate in the name of the "poor children."
First, my comment was not meant as an affront - it was merely a followup to your comment. If you took it personally, it was never meant to be that way, and I apologize.
Further, yeah, I know what it's like to raise children (to a certain age, that is.) And you're right about "peripheral hazards." Just because they do make it through filter software doesn't mean I don't want to use said filter software.
Heck, email is worse - 10 years old or 50, if you have an email account you're gonna get spam.
This points out the main point though - what good will MORE government regulation do? Most offensive spam doesn't originate from the US, so US regulations mean nothing. And even putting aside the obvious hidden nature of wanting Google's log files, pronography is completely legitimate for adults, so regulating it off of search engines is really an invasion of rights.
Sigh... it's all so complicated, and just as work and life seem to be getting faster and more complicated all the time, so does raising children. The more positive there is available to children, like the internet or certain forms of entertainment, the more likely it is that they will be exposed to an abuse of that particular enhancement.
So we do the best we can, but I'd rather not have Bush over my shoulder telling me that I could do better.
But isn't relying on a software to control/block access to what your kids do online a lack of responsible parental education ?
I don't know about that. Growing up, below certain ages, my parents blocked me from watching SNL, Dirty Dancing, and other violent or adult-suggestive content. It was without question a "not in my house" policy.
The same policy went for girls in my room - door open, or not in the bedroom at all. I was certainly educated on the risks that went along with sexual experimentation, but that didn't mean that rules and expectations were not put in to place.
So similarly would I place cybernanny on a computer that my 5, 10, or 15 year old is using. Perhaps not my 15 year old... but that just points back to the differences in parental monitoring based on age.
I know my son or even daughter will look at pornography or "artistic nude" photographs long before they move out, but that doesn't mean it will be in my house, or under my watch. If I choose to use cybernanny, it is merely an enforcement of the rules.
Besides, if they're anything like yours truely, they'll figure out ways around it right quickly.:)
Which do you want: personal freedom, or government control? You can't have it both ways. I know the idea of someone saying to all the horrible parents out there "Don't have more kids you idiots" is brilliant in theory, but just take a second and think about President Bush controlling who can have children.
Yeah, my comments were more of an ongoing rant. I am concerned about the complete lack of parental responsibility in this country - and so I'd like to see less unfit people procreating (and licensing is the first "right to breed" thought that came to mind.)
I picked up on my obvious oxymoronic ranting post-comment-submit, and hoped people would miss it;)
Here's what I AM for - less government, less unfit parents. Do I know how to go about it? Hell no.
the government is correct in its assertion that finding pr0n is childishly simple
Um... oh well?
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario. This is a parental issue through and through. If parents haphazardly allow their youngsters onto computers without knowing jack about them, it's like allowing your child to watch TV without any idea as to the content of the programming.
If I subscribe (this is only hypothetical) to the Spice channel and don't lock the TV, my child has access to that channel whenever. If I don't use CyberNanny or the like, my child has access to pornography on the internet.
Parental responsibility is failing, and I'm tired of the government trying to clean up the pieces. This is why I'm all for having to have a license to have a child.
Unfortunately, this seems to me to be quite obviously a ploy to try to get at the most massive user-habit database on the planet. Oh, they want it for porn research - my ass. You think once they are done looking for "tits" they're not going to look up "impeach bush" and place a NSA watch on the IP address that the search came from?
Slashdot used to interest me. Now it more scares me than anything...
Charge either provider or subscriber for a higher bandwidth cap on a site. A subscriber could have a list of sites they would like as "premium" - maybe even submit a bookmark list on a micropayment per address scheme. The provider would of course pay for their sites or even individual files to be "premium".
In the scenario where the Bells charge the customer more for a select couple of sites, if I were Google or Yahoo!, I'd be pretty pissed that a Bell thought it could charge more for MY services.
"We'll give you better Google" assumes that they have the right to mess with Google at all.
So does this mean a small website could sue for extortion or sabotage if the network performance is poor?
I have to hope so. Also, those users who see poor performance on a website should sue as well, because users DO pay for the use of the lines. This is without a question extortion. Bell South says "they don't pay for the lines" as if no one at all pays for them. But you and I pay for the lines - so Bell South wants to be paid twice for the same slice of cake.
I hope this gets challenged in court and Bell South gets the spanking it deserves. This makes me so sick.
I'm sure he "means" to, but how many scientific studies have to point to the good that comes from gaming, how many different rating systems do we need, and how DO we protect children from parents too ignroant to understand that perhaps a 6 year old shouldn't be shooting cops?
I know the OSS mods are waiting patiently to karma-kill anyone who dares say so, but...
I know they aren't open source, but is no one concerned that MS SQL or Oracle or DB2 weren't purchased? MySQL is good for what it is, but these are government agencies hording millions if not billions of records of sensitive information. MySQL is good, but it's no DB2, and never will be. You want enterprise level? DB2 is enterprise level. Oracle is enterprise level. How can a government agency function without basics like multiple replication schemes, data transformation services (in lower case, so as to not confuse with DTS in MS SQL), foreign key relationships, stored procedures, etc?
Yeah, I know those things exist in v5, but they are BRAND new, and so barely tested in an agency the size of a government agency.
Patents do, and they're what's relevant to this discussion. Next?
Yeah, after 20 years, and then maybe a continuation. 2 years is enough to completely stifle innovation. 20? PCs were barely around 20 years ago and look at the world today. Imagine someone buying and hording the patent to a Personal Computer (which could happen in today's world.) Is that 20 years enough to kill innovation? Um, yeah.
That's funny...I've never had a problem with my Yast Online Update...
Nor have I had any issues with Windows Update on XP or Windows 2000/2003 Server or Professional. While patches may be a little lacking in expediency (sp?) it couldn't be easier to do. I love that I can have my office XP computer patch itself while my servers download but do not install patches without my explicit command. I can't imagine Windows Update - and especially automatic Windows Update being easier to use, even for non-power users.
Right now, I think that OSX and Windows XP/2000/2003 really have the best in patching, with certain Linux distros being up there as well. Easily getting updates to users is no longer an issue, it's the speed/efficiency with which said patches become available that is to be compared.
Slashdot Mirror
We just recieved an ammended version of our employee contract, which had new articles stating that it was against policy to use any of your paid off time to interview for or pursue a position with a different company. The clause specifically stated that it was against policy to look for a job with sick time, vacation time, company holidays, or floating holidays.
Not that I'd adhere to that policy at all, but it was a shock that they had the stones put it in there.
Then how exactly do I classify myself, a person that believes the scientific evidence behind evolution, but still believes that the process itself was triggered by a benevolent being, and perhaps was even guided by that being? Not ID, not pure evolutionist...?
Hell, a bishop with the Vatican even accepted that evolution was not the exact opposite of creationism. So what exactly am I, being both?
but we're all well educated athiests
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
Many atheists are every bit as nasty as some fundamentalist. Instead of you declaring you an sinner and immoral they declare you an idiot, fool, and yes evil.
Yup. My expression of my freedom to worship as I choose apparently makes me an idiot in the eyes of many, including a decent portion of the Slashdot crowd.
I do not believe in creationism. I do believe in ID but at the cosmic level I.E. the prime cause and designer of the universe. I believe in evolution because I see the evidence and believe that the universe was set up to allow it.
This is the one thing that kills me. I am an IDist, but to the point that I believe that evolution was possible, just that it wasn't necessarily triggered... well... accidentally. I don't proport that evolution is false, but I do still hold on to the belief that there is a plan and a God and - most importantly to me, and thus the crux of my faith - a life after that on earth. Does this make me an idiot? To those atheists who are as radical as the Christian Right, I'm sure.
Sorry, I don't play WoW - what's this AQ gate thingy, and why is it bad?
Quite a legitimate fear. One of the reasons that Pixar does so well is the culture of the shop, developed by Jobs and run by Jobs. Take his somewhat psychotic nature out of the mix and allow Pixar to become just another Disney department overseen by the Disney corporate machine, and the brilliance that launced Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles may be lost forever.
As off-topic as this is, actually, proper writing requires TWO spaces after any punctuation ending a sentence. Just because HTML doesn't support this doesn't mean it's been striken from proper writing rules.
This is a tough egg to crack because everything revolves around money. Research requires money, and unless there is measured output, money invested is considered lost by the enterprises that supply said money.
Add on to that that much of the research money comes from private or public for-profit agencies, and you have a real connundrum on your hands.
Unfortunately, pure science and pure investors often clash when it comes to desired outcome. Scientists are often happy to take years and years to develop therapies or make discoveries to be sure that the science itself is rock-solid. However, investors require that their investments - often not all their own money - yields dividends and results in made money.
Until we have some system in place that supports scientific research without requiring an immediate return on ivestment, this crisis will continue unabated.
I've always wondered if this is more hurtful to race relations than help. This country is relatively unique in that almost no one counts themselves as simply "American", but as African American, or Irish American, or Jewish American, etc.
This culture of seperation and self-segregation may contribute to a cliquiness that perpeutates the still prevelant race issues we face in the US today. Perhaps if we all just stopped concerning ourselves so much with where our great-great-grandfather originated from and counted ourselves lucky to live in this country to begin with, it would help things.
That said, I know I constantly find myself speaking with others about my Italian heritage. Oh well...
Simply amazing that Google does continue to do what I believe is "the right thing" in just about every case that comes to my attention.
Yahoo, AOL, and MSN all just roll over for the DOJ without a single nod towards customer privacy. I feel cheated by all of them, and will probably use Google exclusively now. Is there no one in those giant organizations that even stopped for a second to consider the possible ramifications of just giving up massive databases to the federal government, especially after it's become quite clear that they have been involved in illegal spying activities as it is?
I have to hand it to Google here. I know it's probably not my interests they have in mind but their own, but I still applaud them for sticking to the "do no evil" mantra.
Or coupons. I agree with "the chao goes mu" - I hate that any discount that I used to get as a customer now requires that I allow them to track my purchasing habits. Back off.
Well, it's used by me, and I'm a parent.
There are already enough options available to parents, and direct supervision is probably the best one available. The "parental responsibility" argument comes from the laziness that I see in other parents and read about, even here on Slashdot.
Moving slightly from the internet porn argument, take for instance the mother that sued because she wasn't aware GTA was violent in nature after she bought it for her child. Is the "Mature" rating not enough? Do we need more regulation because someone can't read the front of the jewel case? What did she assume "mature" meant?
This person demanding that the government do more is basically passing on her responsibility as parent to the government. Being a parent is not a mindless job, and each decision I make I don't want a governing body standing there going "is that what you REALLY want to do?"
That's my thought, anyway. So yeah, as a parent and a libertarian, stop trying to regulate in the name of the "poor children."
First, my comment was not meant as an affront - it was merely a followup to your comment. If you took it personally, it was never meant to be that way, and I apologize.
Further, yeah, I know what it's like to raise children (to a certain age, that is.) And you're right about "peripheral hazards." Just because they do make it through filter software doesn't mean I don't want to use said filter software.
Heck, email is worse - 10 years old or 50, if you have an email account you're gonna get spam.
This points out the main point though - what good will MORE government regulation do? Most offensive spam doesn't originate from the US, so US regulations mean nothing. And even putting aside the obvious hidden nature of wanting Google's log files, pronography is completely legitimate for adults, so regulating it off of search engines is really an invasion of rights.
Sigh... it's all so complicated, and just as work and life seem to be getting faster and more complicated all the time, so does raising children. The more positive there is available to children, like the internet or certain forms of entertainment, the more likely it is that they will be exposed to an abuse of that particular enhancement.
So we do the best we can, but I'd rather not have Bush over my shoulder telling me that I could do better.
I don't know about that. Growing up, below certain ages, my parents blocked me from watching SNL, Dirty Dancing, and other violent or adult-suggestive content. It was without question a "not in my house" policy.
The same policy went for girls in my room - door open, or not in the bedroom at all. I was certainly educated on the risks that went along with sexual experimentation, but that didn't mean that rules and expectations were not put in to place.
So similarly would I place cybernanny on a computer that my 5, 10, or 15 year old is using. Perhaps not my 15 year old... but that just points back to the differences in parental monitoring based on age.
I know my son or even daughter will look at pornography or "artistic nude" photographs long before they move out, but that doesn't mean it will be in my house, or under my watch. If I choose to use cybernanny, it is merely an enforcement of the rules.
Besides, if they're anything like yours truely, they'll figure out ways around it right quickly. :)
Yeah, my comments were more of an ongoing rant. I am concerned about the complete lack of parental responsibility in this country - and so I'd like to see less unfit people procreating (and licensing is the first "right to breed" thought that came to mind.)
I picked up on my obvious oxymoronic ranting post-comment-submit, and hoped people would miss it ;)
Here's what I AM for - less government, less unfit parents. Do I know how to go about it? Hell no.
Um... oh well?
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario. This is a parental issue through and through. If parents haphazardly allow their youngsters onto computers without knowing jack about them, it's like allowing your child to watch TV without any idea as to the content of the programming.
If I subscribe (this is only hypothetical) to the Spice channel and don't lock the TV, my child has access to that channel whenever. If I don't use CyberNanny or the like, my child has access to pornography on the internet.
Parental responsibility is failing, and I'm tired of the government trying to clean up the pieces. This is why I'm all for having to have a license to have a child.
Unfortunately, this seems to me to be quite obviously a ploy to try to get at the most massive user-habit database on the planet. Oh, they want it for porn research - my ass. You think once they are done looking for "tits" they're not going to look up "impeach bush" and place a NSA watch on the IP address that the search came from?
Slashdot used to interest me. Now it more scares me than anything...
<McCreevy>
Nooooo... no no no. Nooo... no...
Well... actually...
Fine. Yes. Yes we are. We really can't hear anything over BigCorp's money. Sweet, sweet money.
</McCreevy>
In the scenario where the Bells charge the customer more for a select couple of sites, if I were Google or Yahoo!, I'd be pretty pissed that a Bell thought it could charge more for MY services.
"We'll give you better Google" assumes that they have the right to mess with Google at all.
I have to hope so. Also, those users who see poor performance on a website should sue as well, because users DO pay for the use of the lines. This is without a question extortion. Bell South says "they don't pay for the lines" as if no one at all pays for them. But you and I pay for the lines - so Bell South wants to be paid twice for the same slice of cake.
I hope this gets challenged in court and Bell South gets the spanking it deserves. This makes me so sick.
I'm sure he "means" to, but how many scientific studies have to point to the good that comes from gaming, how many different rating systems do we need, and how DO we protect children from parents too ignroant to understand that perhaps a 6 year old shouldn't be shooting cops?
If I recall correctly, wasn't Hotmail originally run on UNIX boxes?
I know the OSS mods are waiting patiently to karma-kill anyone who dares say so, but...
I know they aren't open source, but is no one concerned that MS SQL or Oracle or DB2 weren't purchased? MySQL is good for what it is, but these are government agencies hording millions if not billions of records of sensitive information. MySQL is good, but it's no DB2, and never will be. You want enterprise level? DB2 is enterprise level. Oracle is enterprise level. How can a government agency function without basics like multiple replication schemes, data transformation services (in lower case, so as to not confuse with DTS in MS SQL), foreign key relationships, stored procedures, etc?
Yeah, I know those things exist in v5, but they are BRAND new, and so barely tested in an agency the size of a government agency.
Yeah, after 20 years, and then maybe a continuation. 2 years is enough to completely stifle innovation. 20? PCs were barely around 20 years ago and look at the world today. Imagine someone buying and hording the patent to a Personal Computer (which could happen in today's world.) Is that 20 years enough to kill innovation? Um, yeah.
Not to mention everyone on the train listening in on your music. Would that be punishable for broadcasting music in a public forum without permission?
And a complete digital TV mandate by Congress set to go into effect in 2025...
Nor have I had any issues with Windows Update on XP or Windows 2000/2003 Server or Professional. While patches may be a little lacking in expediency (sp?) it couldn't be easier to do. I love that I can have my office XP computer patch itself while my servers download but do not install patches without my explicit command. I can't imagine Windows Update - and especially automatic Windows Update being easier to use, even for non-power users.
Right now, I think that OSX and Windows XP/2000/2003 really have the best in patching, with certain Linux distros being up there as well. Easily getting updates to users is no longer an issue, it's the speed/efficiency with which said patches become available that is to be compared.