From the "I thought feminism meant female equality with males" file and the interesting part was the bottom 'recommendation':
"The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home."
Ah, so when feminists talk about 'equality' what they really mean is, "we want special treatment so that we get equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity based on the same starting point". Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males in regards to the same starting point and a meritocratic system where skills and knowledge are the basis of advancement forward rather than the old boys network.
People wonder why I given feminists as much credibility has hearing Saudi Arabia preach about human rights, tolerance and respect.
Quite simply getting access to some of the finest German shizer films on the web!
What? you'd claiming that the internet is used for more than just fulfilling the fetish desires of lonely men in their basement?! heresy! heresy I say!
Mate, there is a reason why the tranmission towers are turned off when being serviced; I don't know what shit box operation you're running in the US but in most other countries they don't subject employee's to radio waves that can kill birds.
Lets remember that as part of becoming integrated into the economy - Vietnam will be told taht they have to crack down on piracy.
Do they crack down on piracy and push up the cost of doing business in Vietnam by having all departments use Windows + Office, and thus all those who interact with the government having to have said software - or is it smarted to start off using opensource software now given that they are pretty much starting from a clean slate? They've made a good move - and I'll put money on it people will be looking in and asking their own government why Microsoft is given multi-billion dollar contracts when Vietnam's public service is just as productive (if not more) using Linux/OpenOffice.org as they would using Windows.
yeap, we're the great fudgers - we avoid confrontation, heck, recent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.
Sure, there will be a few loud people who will kick up a stink, but the rest of NZ will comtinue moving. The anti-smacking bill isn't going to get removed, nor any of the other reforms introduced by Labour. Both parties talk about change but the reality is that they keep the status quo once they get it - then add more of their own laws to the sporgusboard.
Its unfortunate that the green's are the only part who have their IT sorted out - and yet their economic and social policy royally sucks. How come there are so many idiots on the right - specifically, complete ludites when it comes to IT?
How about a much simpler reason - it plain well sucks giant donkey balls.
We're talking about a device which only works with Windows, only available in a small mumber of countries (I don't give a shit about the music service - you can put music on it without a fucking music service so the need to 'roll out the service' is a bullshit excuse) and the software sucks balls.
Its a top to bottom epic failure - and its in the mold of Microsoft NEVER to learn from these failures or more correctly, learn from its rivals who are making gains. Then again, Microsoft is kinda like a mini-America, the world uses metric, the US uses imperial. The world uses 240V, and the uses 110V etc. etc.
Mate, its going to suck and its going to suck badly just like every other Linux attempt.
If you look at those who claim they support Linux, and provide Linux on their laptops - have a good look at the list of 'pic failure' when it comes to properly supporting putting the laptop to sleep or find the power management is worse than Windows XP/Windows Vista.
What Linux requires to get working on the laptop and desktop is serious money - not only spent on hardware support but the quality of that hardware support. There is no use going on about how great the number of hardware devices are supported - if bugger all of them are written to take advantage of the tickless kernel.
This goes for any operating system that is attempting to unseat the Microsoft juggernaut.
PS> I'd love to see OpenSolaris succeed - too bad it lacks the money, man power and the leadership in Sun to turn it into a success that it could be.
The price gouging will continue and we'll have idiots in these SSD manufacturing companies wondering why people don't have $1000 laying around their house to by a SSD drive.
I have around 100gigs of music; yes, I like to haul the whole damn lot with me when I take my laptop - thank you very much. No, I don't want to ponk it on an external hard disk either.
The day when I start seeing 250gb SSD's that perform faster than traditional hard disks for radon writes and cost around NZ$150 - then I'll consider moving. Until that day, SSD will remain that unjustified luxury which I'll never be able to afford.
"Really, it makes sense. Imagine 2 million people download "punch a monkey" via the Google store. The malware, not surprisingly, racks up data access fees for customers. Who will get blamed by customers? Google. Seems like a good idea to have a way to kill it, particularly if customers are free to install from other, more "risky" repositories if they wish."
And you know mate, we have metered internet down here. When I worked at an ISP we had a customer who had a stupid kid who left a pair to pair application running - it racked up a high bill; our response? tough shit. We had another lady who was hacked and her computer was being used as a spam relay - same response to her; tough shit.
Its time end users pulled their head out of their ass and made sure their computer isn't getting compromised. If they're installing shit from unknown sources, opening any damn mail that comes through, and is pathetic ignorant about computers as not to install updates - I say tough shit. If they can't be bothered even learning the basics - they shouldn't even own a fucking computer to begin with. Stick with a typewriter and snail mail; leave the internet to people who have a fucking clue.
Same can be applied to mobile phones or any other damn device.
darkmeridian has a great point, too--we can always break Microsoft up if the monopolistic policies do not stop. It would likely even be easier to separate than Ma Bell was in the 80s--Microsoft peripherals, Microsoft software, Microsoft gaming, etc etc.
Not even that, three companies; Operating system, Middleware and services. The three would no longer be reliant on each other; services and middleware would realise the world doesn't revolve around Windows, and Windows would finally focus on producing a better OS rather than being used as a leverage point for all of Microsofts middleware. Hell, we might even get a MSSQL for Solaris! Media Player for Linux!
We can hate Microsoft but as a libertarian, I find this development scary. Getting the federal government involved in the design and manufacture of a product is unwarranted and is akin to precrime. The US Government should leave Microsoft's development of Windows 7 alone. If it turns out to have anti-competitive effects, then the government can punish Microsoft for it. Everyone may say that would be too little, too late, but preemptive strikes are un-American. (And besides, we can always break MS up if it keeps pushing out monopolistic products.)
I'm in the libertarian camp. Although I do agree there needs to be enforcement to ensure that marketfailure (normally due to large government, and its influence over the economy, but thats a different matter entirely), there needs to be a body to uphold the law. The problem is that it is has gone from unclogging the market to the government almost defacto-nationalising Microsoft through its interference in the day to day running design of Microsofts products. Given that approach, it might as well just become a state owned enterprise (NZ jargon for a business owned by the government, but along business lines).
If they really do wish to 'unclog' it, they should make specifications for their products open and available for third parties to implement - royalty free and no NDA. For those Microsoft fanboys, that doesn't mean source code, just specifications. That alone would fix the mountain of problems stop competitors competing with Microsoft based on product quality and price. Given the size of government (there is no way to decrease it once it gets to the size of the US's one), force that all companies who tender for software supply agreements with the government must provide their software on atleast 4 other platforms; Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD (As well as Windows).
Not only would that unclog the specifications issue but also ensure that there is a level playing field for consumers to choose what they want rather than being forced into a particular decison because a given application vendor is too fucking lazy to make their software available on more than just Windows.
Microsoft did no such thing; I can't believe on a tech site like this, filled with nerds and geeks, that someone would fall into the kool aide consuming lie that is "Microsoft created the PC revolution". If Microsoft wasn't around, it could have been amstrad, acorn, amiga, atari etc. etc. Microsoft was simply at the right place at the right time with the right product for the market - and found a big name to tag along with. That is the reality, not this retelling of history I see you conduct.
Unh, I'm not studying law, and also, I'm not raging against the system. Furthermore, if someone is scantily clad, no matter what they've done, their dress sense shouldn't be the basis for deciding a court case. You're way off topic - grow up, and stop over-signifying the content of people's discussions.
And here you are being a fucking idiot making the assumption that decides guilt or innocence! what the fuck is the jury for then? flower arranging?! Please, shut your trap, and keep it shut until you know what the fuck you're talking about. The case was NOT decided by the fucking juge, you fucking well know that. The clothes she was wearing was as an example of her character. I'm sorry, but if someone wears scantly cladded clothes - what does it say about the individual. He made an observation, but the jury decided guilt or innocence.
Please, learn the two. You never mentioned the specifics of the case. Do you even know what rape is? rape isn't 'violence', rape is defined where by one person is having sexual intercourse with another, and the other party has not voluntarily entered into the arrangement. Rape can occur not only in terms of 'violence' but marriage as well - when one partner imposes themselves on their spouse.
Getting back to the issue of "if you were wearing clothes like that, then you were asking for it" statement, what is the context to the discussion? are we talking about a female who went out to a club in a scantly clad dress, gets a little tispey, starts flirting with a guy, she goes home with the guy, has sex, regrets it, then claims that it was 'rape' because the male took advantage of her in a drunken state?
Please, don't use isolated cases with zero context to some how 'rage against the system' - you're as pathetic as Sue Bradford who tried to blame the law because of child abuse in New Zealand when it is the jury who decides (through guilt or innocence) whether the given action that took place could be classified as suiting the definition of 'reasonable force' as set out by the now repealed section 59 of the Crimes Act.
For a person who is supposedly studying law, you don't seem to have a clue on how the law operates let alone the substance of how how cases are judged.
I hope you realise that the point of the damn post was; it was the ability to say what YOU were part of, would you want to say you're part of the most successful Mp3 player in history or claim you worked on an mp3 which couldn't even break 5 percent? its all about wanting to be associated with the winning team. I feel sorry for those who work on Zune, they're got buckley's chance of getting a job once they leave given the stigma of Zune seems to linger on.
I agree about the pay; I was in a job being paid around $20 per hour - the job was pretty easy (non-IT related btw), but the boss was an asshole. Now sure, for the first few months I could do the old thing of "lay back, and think of the queen", but that only works for so longer. The extra pay, no matter how great it may be, will never offset in the long run a crappy work environment. The work environment is where one spends at least 1/3 of their life, all the money in the world isn't going to make the work environment better.
I went from that job to another job (again, non-IT related), I earned less money BUT at the same time, I had alot more perks. I was head of a department in an section of the retail sector which provides stable long term employment. My co-workers were down to earth genuine people rather than egotistical pricks like I've seen in the IT world. Sales representatives giving the ability to get things at wholesale prices (for my own person consumption etc).
Believe me, before I went back to University, I had a pretty sweet time in that job.
By the same measure, Win32, Microsoft Office formats, and numerous other formats out there aren't proprietary because you can implement it.
Sorry mate, it is proprietary. Until the day that I see Adobe not only make the specification available without needing to sign an NDA (which they've done just recently), but also completely opensource the whole plugin (without any exceptions) and licence it under something like CDDL or BSD, I'd sooner cheer lead for Microsoft and Silverlight.
Adobe have screwed the *NIX community over for years, and buggered if I know why you seem to be hell bent by slobbering at the mouth over 'promises' which Adobe have made. Heck, they can't even make a Plugin for non-Microsoft platforms that doesn't suck!
Quite frankly, if Adobe fell off the edge of the cliff tomorrow, along with all its employee's and management, it would a net benefit to the computing world and the environment.
-- Fucking bloody fucking firefox not fucking keeping the fucking passwords; fuck, prime example of shit programmers doing a shit job checking their software.
In New Zealand there is no favourable tax treatment for Telecom's - they're told to compete; too bad that the resource management act makes it difficult for new players like Woosh to expand their wireless network fast enough to meet demand.
If you want to use it 24/7, then you will have to be charged the full cost of having a complete end to end 1.5mbps connection. IN the case of New Zealand, it would mean having a dedicated 1.5mbps connection via the southcross cable - I'm not too sure how much that could cost, but it sure as heck would be alot higher than the prices they charge now.
The prices they charge now is on the basis that you DON'T use it all the time, thus, they have less bandwidth than what they would need if all were going 24/7, and thus, the lower requirement for overseas bandwidth means that they can charge a lower rate to customers.
People who download content 24/7 is fucking up the whole system - in New Zealand, all the content is puleld from overseas, which means it is incredibly expensive to maintain a huge amount of international bandwidth.
Incorrect; when there was a rise in internet usage in New Zealand, the infrastructure couldn't handle it, so they created the 0867 number which shunted the connection onto a lower priority network - meaning, if higher priority services needed access, such as 111 calls, your connection would be dropped.
Even with generic usage of flat rate, it was worked on the basis that the longest call would be 3 1/2 minutes; heck, even recently, we used to have $5 STD calls for unlimited time, but has now be capped at maximum of 2 hours per call.
Slashdot Mirror
From the "I thought feminism meant female equality with males" file and the interesting part was the bottom 'recommendation':
"The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home."
Ah, so when feminists talk about 'equality' what they really mean is, "we want special treatment so that we get equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity based on the same starting point". Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males in regards to the same starting point and a meritocratic system where skills and knowledge are the basis of advancement forward rather than the old boys network.
People wonder why I given feminists as much credibility has hearing Saudi Arabia preach about human rights, tolerance and respect.
Quite simply getting access to some of the finest German shizer films on the web!
What? you'd claiming that the internet is used for more than just fulfilling the fetish desires of lonely men in their basement?! heresy! heresy I say!
Mate, there is a reason why the tranmission towers are turned off when being serviced; I don't know what shit box operation you're running in the US but in most other countries they don't subject employee's to radio waves that can kill birds.
Lets remember that as part of becoming integrated into the economy - Vietnam will be told taht they have to crack down on piracy.
Do they crack down on piracy and push up the cost of doing business in Vietnam by having all departments use Windows + Office, and thus all those who interact with the government having to have said software - or is it smarted to start off using opensource software now given that they are pretty much starting from a clean slate? They've made a good move - and I'll put money on it people will be looking in and asking their own government why Microsoft is given multi-billion dollar contracts when Vietnam's public service is just as productive (if not more) using Linux/OpenOffice.org as they would using Windows.
Believe it mate. New Zealand is in the current sorry state thanks to the two major parties doing very little to improve on the status quo.
yeap, we're the great fudgers - we avoid confrontation, heck, recent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.
Sure, there will be a few loud people who will kick up a stink, but the rest of NZ will comtinue moving. The anti-smacking bill isn't going to get removed, nor any of the other reforms introduced by Labour. Both parties talk about change but the reality is that they keep the status quo once they get it - then add more of their own laws to the sporgusboard.
Its unfortunate that the green's are the only part who have their IT sorted out - and yet their economic and social policy royally sucks. How come there are so many idiots on the right - specifically, complete ludites when it comes to IT?
How about a much simpler reason - it plain well sucks giant donkey balls.
We're talking about a device which only works with Windows, only available in a small mumber of countries (I don't give a shit about the music service - you can put music on it without a fucking music service so the need to 'roll out the service' is a bullshit excuse) and the software sucks balls.
Its a top to bottom epic failure - and its in the mold of Microsoft NEVER to learn from these failures or more correctly, learn from its rivals who are making gains. Then again, Microsoft is kinda like a mini-America, the world uses metric, the US uses imperial. The world uses 240V, and the uses 110V etc. etc.
Mate, its going to suck and its going to suck badly just like every other Linux attempt. If you look at those who claim they support Linux, and provide Linux on their laptops - have a good look at the list of 'pic failure' when it comes to properly supporting putting the laptop to sleep or find the power management is worse than Windows XP/Windows Vista. What Linux requires to get working on the laptop and desktop is serious money - not only spent on hardware support but the quality of that hardware support. There is no use going on about how great the number of hardware devices are supported - if bugger all of them are written to take advantage of the tickless kernel. This goes for any operating system that is attempting to unseat the Microsoft juggernaut. PS> I'd love to see OpenSolaris succeed - too bad it lacks the money, man power and the leadership in Sun to turn it into a success that it could be.
The price gouging will continue and we'll have idiots in these SSD manufacturing companies wondering why people don't have $1000 laying around their house to by a SSD drive.
I have around 100gigs of music; yes, I like to haul the whole damn lot with me when I take my laptop - thank you very much. No, I don't want to ponk it on an external hard disk either.
The day when I start seeing 250gb SSD's that perform faster than traditional hard disks for radon writes and cost around NZ$150 - then I'll consider moving. Until that day, SSD will remain that unjustified luxury which I'll never be able to afford.
You must acquire a taste for free form jazz to prove your maturity credentials :)
"Really, it makes sense. Imagine 2 million people download "punch a monkey" via the Google store. The malware, not surprisingly, racks up data access fees for customers. Who will get blamed by customers? Google. Seems like a good idea to have a way to kill it, particularly if customers are free to install from other, more "risky" repositories if they wish."
And you know mate, we have metered internet down here. When I worked at an ISP we had a customer who had a stupid kid who left a pair to pair application running - it racked up a high bill; our response? tough shit. We had another lady who was hacked and her computer was being used as a spam relay - same response to her; tough shit.
Its time end users pulled their head out of their ass and made sure their computer isn't getting compromised. If they're installing shit from unknown sources, opening any damn mail that comes through, and is pathetic ignorant about computers as not to install updates - I say tough shit. If they can't be bothered even learning the basics - they shouldn't even own a fucking computer to begin with. Stick with a typewriter and snail mail; leave the internet to people who have a fucking clue.
Same can be applied to mobile phones or any other damn device.
If I own 4 houses, can I replace them with a hotel? I wonder who is unfortunate enough to live on kent road :)
This administration couldn't even monitor 15 hijackers; you're saying that these idiots can some how monitor 200million pc's?
Not even that, three companies; Operating system, Middleware and services. The three would no longer be reliant on each other; services and middleware would realise the world doesn't revolve around Windows, and Windows would finally focus on producing a better OS rather than being used as a leverage point for all of Microsofts middleware. Hell, we might even get a MSSQL for Solaris! Media Player for Linux!
I'm in the libertarian camp. Although I do agree there needs to be enforcement to ensure that marketfailure (normally due to large government, and its influence over the economy, but thats a different matter entirely), there needs to be a body to uphold the law. The problem is that it is has gone from unclogging the market to the government almost defacto-nationalising Microsoft through its interference in the day to day running design of Microsofts products. Given that approach, it might as well just become a state owned enterprise (NZ jargon for a business owned by the government, but along business lines).
If they really do wish to 'unclog' it, they should make specifications for their products open and available for third parties to implement - royalty free and no NDA. For those Microsoft fanboys, that doesn't mean source code, just specifications. That alone would fix the mountain of problems stop competitors competing with Microsoft based on product quality and price. Given the size of government (there is no way to decrease it once it gets to the size of the US's one), force that all companies who tender for software supply agreements with the government must provide their software on atleast 4 other platforms; Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD (As well as Windows).
Not only would that unclog the specifications issue but also ensure that there is a level playing field for consumers to choose what they want rather than being forced into a particular decison because a given application vendor is too fucking lazy to make their software available on more than just Windows.
Microsoft did no such thing; I can't believe on a tech site like this, filled with nerds and geeks, that someone would fall into the kool aide consuming lie that is "Microsoft created the PC revolution". If Microsoft wasn't around, it could have been amstrad, acorn, amiga, atari etc. etc. Microsoft was simply at the right place at the right time with the right product for the market - and found a big name to tag along with. That is the reality, not this retelling of history I see you conduct.
And here you are being a fucking idiot making the assumption that decides guilt or innocence! what the fuck is the jury for then? flower arranging?! Please, shut your trap, and keep it shut until you know what the fuck you're talking about. The case was NOT decided by the fucking juge, you fucking well know that. The clothes she was wearing was as an example of her character. I'm sorry, but if someone wears scantly cladded clothes - what does it say about the individual. He made an observation, but the jury decided guilt or innocence.
Please, learn the two. You never mentioned the specifics of the case. Do you even know what rape is? rape isn't 'violence', rape is defined where by one person is having sexual intercourse with another, and the other party has not voluntarily entered into the arrangement. Rape can occur not only in terms of 'violence' but marriage as well - when one partner imposes themselves on their spouse.
Getting back to the issue of "if you were wearing clothes like that, then you were asking for it" statement, what is the context to the discussion? are we talking about a female who went out to a club in a scantly clad dress, gets a little tispey, starts flirting with a guy, she goes home with the guy, has sex, regrets it, then claims that it was 'rape' because the male took advantage of her in a drunken state?
Please, don't use isolated cases with zero context to some how 'rage against the system' - you're as pathetic as Sue Bradford who tried to blame the law because of child abuse in New Zealand when it is the jury who decides (through guilt or innocence) whether the given action that took place could be classified as suiting the definition of 'reasonable force' as set out by the now repealed section 59 of the Crimes Act.
For a person who is supposedly studying law, you don't seem to have a clue on how the law operates let alone the substance of how how cases are judged.
I hope you realise that the point of the damn post was; it was the ability to say what YOU were part of, would you want to say you're part of the most successful Mp3 player in history or claim you worked on an mp3 which couldn't even break 5 percent? its all about wanting to be associated with the winning team. I feel sorry for those who work on Zune, they're got buckley's chance of getting a job once they leave given the stigma of Zune seems to linger on.
I agree about the pay; I was in a job being paid around $20 per hour - the job was pretty easy (non-IT related btw), but the boss was an asshole. Now sure, for the first few months I could do the old thing of "lay back, and think of the queen", but that only works for so longer. The extra pay, no matter how great it may be, will never offset in the long run a crappy work environment. The work environment is where one spends at least 1/3 of their life, all the money in the world isn't going to make the work environment better.
I went from that job to another job (again, non-IT related), I earned less money BUT at the same time, I had alot more perks. I was head of a department in an section of the retail sector which provides stable long term employment. My co-workers were down to earth genuine people rather than egotistical pricks like I've seen in the IT world. Sales representatives giving the ability to get things at wholesale prices (for my own person consumption etc).
Believe me, before I went back to University, I had a pretty sweet time in that job.
"Maybe after you finish slotting that ram into me, I can do likewise to you"
"I have many enhancements which we can both find out later"
Reply by anonymous was actually mine:
By the same measure, Win32, Microsoft Office formats, and numerous other formats out there aren't proprietary because you can implement it.
Sorry mate, it is proprietary. Until the day that I see Adobe not only make the specification available without needing to sign an NDA (which they've done just recently), but also completely opensource the whole plugin (without any exceptions) and licence it under something like CDDL or BSD, I'd sooner cheer lead for Microsoft and Silverlight.
Adobe have screwed the *NIX community over for years, and buggered if I know why you seem to be hell bent by slobbering at the mouth over 'promises' which Adobe have made. Heck, they can't even make a Plugin for non-Microsoft platforms that doesn't suck!
Quite frankly, if Adobe fell off the edge of the cliff tomorrow, along with all its employee's and management, it would a net benefit to the computing world and the environment.
-- Fucking bloody fucking firefox not fucking keeping the fucking passwords; fuck, prime example of shit programmers doing a shit job checking their software.
In New Zealand there is no favourable tax treatment for Telecom's - they're told to compete; too bad that the resource management act makes it difficult for new players like Woosh to expand their wireless network fast enough to meet demand.
If you want to use it 24/7, then you will have to be charged the full cost of having a complete end to end 1.5mbps connection. IN the case of New Zealand, it would mean having a dedicated 1.5mbps connection via the southcross cable - I'm not too sure how much that could cost, but it sure as heck would be alot higher than the prices they charge now.
The prices they charge now is on the basis that you DON'T use it all the time, thus, they have less bandwidth than what they would need if all were going 24/7, and thus, the lower requirement for overseas bandwidth means that they can charge a lower rate to customers.
People who download content 24/7 is fucking up the whole system - in New Zealand, all the content is puleld from overseas, which means it is incredibly expensive to maintain a huge amount of international bandwidth.
Incorrect; when there was a rise in internet usage in New Zealand, the infrastructure couldn't handle it, so they created the 0867 number which shunted the connection onto a lower priority network - meaning, if higher priority services needed access, such as 111 calls, your connection would be dropped.
Even with generic usage of flat rate, it was worked on the basis that the longest call would be 3 1/2 minutes; heck, even recently, we used to have $5 STD calls for unlimited time, but has now be capped at maximum of 2 hours per call.