I always found the key to taking notes was to only jot out very quick ideas that strike you as important, that you might not be able to remember later. Don't try to capture everything, just capture an outline of the most important things that you won't remember on your own.
Then after that, after class, immediately go somewhere and type up your notes. Flesh them out a bit-- give more detail of what you can remember, explain to yourself why you thought the things you wrote down were important. This after-class session gives you a chance to reorganize your notes and add to them while things are still fresh in your mind. It also will help you remember things later. Even write yourself a little report afterwards if that helps.
I've watched too many people takes notes where they seem intent on copying down all the information being presented. This is a bad idea. You get so focused on capturing it all that you aren't paying attention and aren't thinking about what is being presented. If you really need all the information for later, then see if you can record the lecture. However, it generally shouldn't be necessary. Along with everything else, when you take so many notes, they're basically useless later. There's too much. It's much better to keep your notes to the bare essentials.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
Even if that's true, still, part of the reason people have been buying those low-end bad Android phones is because they're free, while iPhones have been expensive. Basically, many of those people want iPhones, but are going with the cheaper option. Those people will not be buying the high-end Android phones anyway.
I feel the same way. Of course, whenever I set up a new computer for myself, I always forget to add Slashdot to my Adblock exclusions, so I don't see the ads anyway.
A few bad apples have spoiled the bunch for everyone. If ads weren't so annoying on a few sites, I'd forget to install Adblock.
I will qualify that by saying I am a BES admin so maybe a little blinded by that, which is why I'd like fellow technical people to let me know what the real issues with RIM are and how the competition is superior.
I'd like to respond by asking what security/management features of Blackberry/BES you actually use. Whenever the topic comes up, somebody touts the Blackberry platform for security/control, but for all the business I've worked for (including a few large corporations) and all the IT people I've worked with, I think that the only features I've seen in use are push email/calendar/contacts, remote wipe, and password requirements. All of those things are available through ActiveSync.
I'll tell you why I don't like Blackberry. First, BES ends up being an expensive and unnecessary complication in situations where ActiveSync is sufficient. It breaks a lot, and things stop syncing. I'm constantly having to repush service books, have users pull their batteries, and deactivate/wipe/reactivate enterprise accounts on Blackberries. With Android/iOS devices, I can just set up IMAP/Activesync accounts without extra servers operating in-between, and this setup ends up being simpler and more reliable.
It's also important to note that in creating this big complex system, RIM also created a single point of failure, so that every once in a while *every* Blackberry in the world stops working. This doesn't happen with iOS or Android devices.
You're assuming that product placement and advertising would have fixed the problem, but there's a bigger problem: RIM devices are crappy and outdated. No, I don't want a Blackberry Curve any more than I want a Palm Treo 650. Sticking it in a scene from my favorite TV show isn't going to fix that.
Yeah, it might be a year since everyone realized that RIM was screwed, but really they were in trouble starting with the advent of the iPhone. Really, that was the moment when the entire cell phone industry should have changed course. Many companies did. RIM did not.
Yeah, many of the petitions that have reached 25,000 have gotten a response that amounts to "no comment". It's too bad the media doesn't pick up on these petitions.
It's mostly because of 2 reasons. First, the connectors are big, which makes them bad for skinny portable devices. Second, there's been a general move away from interfaces with pins, partially because they're too easy to damage.
Of course, phasing out VGA and DVI are not going to happen on the proposed timetable. There are too many legacy devices. The first step is to get manufacturers to adopt a standard instead of being split between HDMI, DP, mini DP, and Thunderbolt. Then just wait while old legacy devices get replaced. We don't even have a standard yet.
Not all Android phones even have the same physical buttons along the bottom of the screen, and they're in different order sometimes. The procedure that you have to use to get to a list of applications can be different from one phone to another. Older Androids didn't even have Exchange support, though there's a generation of Android models where the manufacturer added in Exchange support before Google did, which I believe also leads to other possible variations in options.
Now I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not all simple and uniform. A lot of people I support aren't that tech savvy, and I need to give them instructions that are exact, i.e. "Press this button, scroll down halfway through the page until you see something labelled [whatever]. The third option on the next menu will be [whatever]..." If the placement in the list is different or the label is different, you may as well be speaking German.
And I don't say this because I'm intimately familiar with every model of Android, but I've had the experience of looking at an Android phone and saying, "OK, click this button, scroll down and look for an option that says [whatever]," and having the person on the other end go, "There is no option called [whatever]." Because they had a different model and the settings had been reorganized someplace else.
Yup. I do IT support, and we support blackberries, iPhones, Android phones, etc. From my point of view, here's the breakdown:
Blackberry: People tell us they buy them because they're super-reliable business phones with lots of security features, but no one uses those security features and we get constant complaints about devices crashing, email not sending, and email not downloading. It's a headache to troubleshoot because of the weirdness of the setup-- resending service books, deactivating/reactivating phones is a hassle. Then every once in a while, every Blackberry in the world stops working because RIM essentially engineered a single point of failure for no apparent reason.
Android: Generally hard to support because there are so many models and they might be very different. How do you set up [x] on phone [y]? I don't know. I have to look it up because who knows which version of Android is installed or what UI customizations the manufacturer put on top of them? Most likely, I won't find good online instructions, so I'll need to get the phone in my hands and fiddle with it myself before I can say how to do anything with it. Other than that, they're kind of mostly fine. Some are good, but some are crap.
iPhone: If you don't have a specific reason to get a different kind of smartphone, just get an iPhone. They work. They're stable. There's a lot of development for the platform, and lots of things are well supported. I get very few complaints that aren't something obscure (e.g. why can't I sync Exchange public folders to my iPhone?), and most people are ultimately happy with them, even when they didn't think they would be ahead of time. I can tell you how to set up your email on an iPhone without looking it up, because it's the same on every iPhone and iPad. Email doesn't mysteriously stop syncing-- if it stopped syncing, you probably don't have reception or a Wifi connection. It's almost that simple.
Right. Essentially they aren't warning admins that they'll be forced to use Windows Server without a GUI. They're warning developers that Windows Server admins might be using Windows Server without a GUI.
Still, it's noteworthy because it shows that Microsoft is taking CLI server administration seriously.
So, how much of this swing away from Google is due to the seriously annoying things
My off-hand guess is that it's approximately 0%. I'd bet most of the reason people are moving to Bing is that people have bought new computers with Windows 7, and Bing is the default search. Also, Microsoft changed the selector to set a different search engine provider, and it's ultimately a bigger pain in the butt to change providers.
But doesn't that also mean people can hold the devices in more natural positions, making them far safer than PCs or laptops? Also the same argument could be made that books are dangerous because they can be accessed almost anywhere and in any position.
I think the point isn't that these devices will inherently and necessarily cause repetitive stress problems, but that if used without awareness and care, they *might*. Yes, it's only "might" and not "will", but understanding the potential for these kinds of injuries can lead you to taking proper preventative measures.
Hence the article. The article outlines some of the dangers and gives some ideas for preventative measures. If you are not aware of these possible injuries, then the article could be educational and therefore helpful in preventing problems. What's wrong with that?
They have the mindset of a computer, "do x, get y". What they lack is reading people and other things when it isn't presented to them in a straight, clear form.
I think this is one of the important issues that programmers and other technical people sometimes miss about jobs in sales (or similar). In fact, you gloss over the idea casually enough that I think you're not completely identifying it, which is telling. What I'm talking about is that programmers and engineers tend to think of things in terms of reproducible problems for which you develop systematic solutions. So, for example, when you put them into sales/management/marketing situations, they want to nail it down to "these are the things that I say and do to complete this work."
However, this approach often fails because it has the wrong aim. The sorts of jobs that you're talking about often require building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, which are not straight-forward. It's not just about having a set of social skills and reading people well, or at least that would be an oversimplification. It's not about developing a checklist of, "Say this, smile, give this bit of information, present a certain body language, if they seem unsure, tell them that other thing. Done."
It's about taking the time and care to develop a relationship, learn about the other person, gain trust, negotiate boundaries, and be convincing. These things happen even in short interactions that only last a few minutes, and they must be improvised based on the person you're talking to and the context of the situation. It requires give and take. To do it very well, it requires more than learning a set of skills and routines.
That's a little like saying, "Mmm, Windows Vista. Letting programmers program has been a freaking disaster, because they always seem to pick bloat over efficiency."
When really that's not the problem. It's not UI designers per se, but it's bad UI designers functioning under misguided management and unreasonable demands. A good UI designer will use some "Ooooo, shiney" when it can be use appropriately, but not for the sake of itself. Shininess can actually be used to enhance usability.
I don't read the Daily Kos. I do read the NYT and watch PBS, which you probably think makes me a communist, but I pay attention to various news sources.
If you read through the comments on his blog you find that he eventually admits that nearly 100% of his paying customers tried the free version before paying, thus the first part of his premise is wrong. Most people who tried the free service didn't pay him, but enough did that he was considering keeping the site going as a pay only site.
Like you say, this sounds like is kind of did work as intended. He snagged enough paying customers with "free" that the paying customers would possibly make a working customer base.
But here's where I think a lot of people go wrong in thinking about these things: They create a "free" thing, note that lots of people take the "free" thing, but nobody pays. They conclude from this that people like their product, but won't pay *because* they have the free version.
The truth is more complicated. People may like the free version, but the free version offers them everything they like and the premium version isn't a meaningful upgrade. In this case, redo your marketing. Find a way to make the premium version more compelling.
Another possibility is that people tried your product, liked it, but didn't like it enough to pay or to be harassed by follow-up emails. Yet another possibility is that they tried it and didn't actually like it. In either case, your product isn't good enough to support a business. Whoops!
Sorry, I can't gather information that doesn't exist. I understand that you'd prefer that I be poorly informed so that I'd agree with you (which is an amazing argument to make), but I don't have any desire to be a political shill for any party.
The Tea Party has made no difference. They're now just the fake grassroots (organized by lobbyists, politicians, and FOX) movement that preaches xenophobia, the restriction of our rights (except the right to bear arms), and tax cuts without spending cuts (and if they're in favor of spending cuts, it's all about cutting social programs). In short, they're neocons. If you're so great at "information gathering", go gather some information and tell me about their accomplishments.
Also, I'm not really interested in your defense of OWS. I never said that OWS was rapists, homeless people, and anarchists.......just that if you hung out with conservatives instead of liberals, you would have thought that way.
So if I hung out with conservatives, I would have a poor understanding of things?
Also, you're the first person I've ever heard say that the tea party is like anarchists. That's kind of hilarious.
Why? You do understand that anarchists and libertarians generally share many views, right? Both groups essentially want to minimize government and maximize personal freedom-- anarchists just go farther with the idea. And the Tea Party was originally a Libertarian movement. Not so much anymore.
I'll give you an example of how the tea-party has changed the Republican party, even the entire tone in Washington...It may be unfair to give the tea-party credit for all of that, since they are one small component of government.
So you'll give me an iron-clad argument that even you think is unfair. Nice. Did it occur to you that the reason for the change in tone is that the world economy is falling apart, and not because some old lady attached tea bags to her hat?
Essentially, I think you misread me. I'm not saying that I love OWS or hate the Tea Party. I'm not saying that I love Democrats and hate Republicans. I'm saying that these types of social/political movements are delicate and unlikely to survive long enough to make a difference, because they're inherently threatening to the people in power, and the people in power are... well... powerful. The Tea Party is a failure because they were absorbed by the people in power as a tool to keep themselves in power. OWS looks to be failing in another direction; the people in power are waging a successful PR war against them.
The primary motivating ideas behind the tea party are "taxed too much" and to a lesser extent, "follow the literal interpretation of the constitution."
You mean "were". The primary motivating ideas *were* to have a small government with low taxes based on someone's interpretation of the Constitution. Now the primary motivating idea is to increase the political power of the Republican party, everything else be damned. It's now the astroturfing wing of the Republican party, and nothing more.
You must be hanging around with liberal democrats based on how you associate things. If you hung out with Republicans more often you would associate OWS not with nice hippies, but with rapists, anarchists, and homeless people (and I do believe your opinions are primarily based on who you hang out with or used to hang out with, you don't seem to be the type to do the research necessary to come up with reasonable opinions on your own).
Well first off, let's ignore the ad hominem attack that you're trying to mount on me, because it's obvious and boring. Let's jump instead to the charge of "anarchists and homeless people", and say that there's no doubt that there are anarchists and poor people participating in OWS. These anarchists, however, are not the bombing/assassinating sort. Their actual views are fairly close to the Libertarian views that were originally behind the Tea Party. The poor-- well what's wrong with that? Would you argue that the most economically disenfranchised people should *not* support a movement to reform the political and economic system that keeps them on the fringes?
And as for rapists, well I won't defend rape, but really you're proving my point here. All of this talk about rapists, homeless people, and anarchists are all politically motivated ad hominem attacks. It's not, "This movement has bad ideas" but "this movement is made up of bad people, so please don't even listen to their ideas." The Tea Party already went down the tubes because of multiple factors, this being one of them: they did a poor job distancing themselves from 'bad people'. Worse, they handed over the reigns to one of the major political parties, which has absolutely no interest in the old "primary motivating ideas", and then that political party actively courted the 'bad people'.
You're saying they shouldn't let people call them names?
No, that they associated with racist whack-jobs and didn't distance themselves from that crowd. For as bad as it is to be associated with hippies like OWS, the Tea Party is equally associated with the xenophobic, racist, uninformed crazy people.
Duh, of course you don't think so, you don't like the tea party ideas to begin with.
Depends on which "tea party ideas" you're talking about. Libertarianism, I don't mind it so much. I object more to the "Obama is evil, but we can't figure out if it's because he's black, because he's a Muslim, or because he's a communist," ideas.
if you think the tea party has had no effect on the Republican party, and on congress, you are either incredibly dense or don't pay attention.
It has had an effect, but not the effect the Tea Party was originally looking for. Bigger than the effect that the Tea Party had on the Republicans was the effect the Republicans had on the Tea Party-- they got the Tea Party to abandon their ideals and good sense in pursuit of political power.
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I always found the key to taking notes was to only jot out very quick ideas that strike you as important, that you might not be able to remember later. Don't try to capture everything, just capture an outline of the most important things that you won't remember on your own.
Then after that, after class, immediately go somewhere and type up your notes. Flesh them out a bit-- give more detail of what you can remember, explain to yourself why you thought the things you wrote down were important. This after-class session gives you a chance to reorganize your notes and add to them while things are still fresh in your mind. It also will help you remember things later. Even write yourself a little report afterwards if that helps.
I've watched too many people takes notes where they seem intent on copying down all the information being presented. This is a bad idea. You get so focused on capturing it all that you aren't paying attention and aren't thinking about what is being presented. If you really need all the information for later, then see if you can record the lecture. However, it generally shouldn't be necessary. Along with everything else, when you take so many notes, they're basically useless later. There's too much. It's much better to keep your notes to the bare essentials.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
Even if that's true, still, part of the reason people have been buying those low-end bad Android phones is because they're free, while iPhones have been expensive. Basically, many of those people want iPhones, but are going with the cheaper option. Those people will not be buying the high-end Android phones anyway.
I feel the same way. Of course, whenever I set up a new computer for myself, I always forget to add Slashdot to my Adblock exclusions, so I don't see the ads anyway.
A few bad apples have spoiled the bunch for everyone. If ads weren't so annoying on a few sites, I'd forget to install Adblock.
Certificate Authorities are not necessary for encryption. It's a racket. We could get rid of them.
I will qualify that by saying I am a BES admin so maybe a little blinded by that, which is why I'd like fellow technical people to let me know what the real issues with RIM are and how the competition is superior.
I'd like to respond by asking what security/management features of Blackberry/BES you actually use. Whenever the topic comes up, somebody touts the Blackberry platform for security/control, but for all the business I've worked for (including a few large corporations) and all the IT people I've worked with, I think that the only features I've seen in use are push email/calendar/contacts, remote wipe, and password requirements. All of those things are available through ActiveSync.
I'll tell you why I don't like Blackberry. First, BES ends up being an expensive and unnecessary complication in situations where ActiveSync is sufficient. It breaks a lot, and things stop syncing. I'm constantly having to repush service books, have users pull their batteries, and deactivate/wipe/reactivate enterprise accounts on Blackberries. With Android/iOS devices, I can just set up IMAP/Activesync accounts without extra servers operating in-between, and this setup ends up being simpler and more reliable.
It's also important to note that in creating this big complex system, RIM also created a single point of failure, so that every once in a while *every* Blackberry in the world stops working. This doesn't happen with iOS or Android devices.
You're assuming that product placement and advertising would have fixed the problem, but there's a bigger problem: RIM devices are crappy and outdated. No, I don't want a Blackberry Curve any more than I want a Palm Treo 650. Sticking it in a scene from my favorite TV show isn't going to fix that.
Yeah, it might be a year since everyone realized that RIM was screwed, but really they were in trouble starting with the advent of the iPhone. Really, that was the moment when the entire cell phone industry should have changed course. Many companies did. RIM did not.
Yeah, I hate when people say "30,000 times smaller" or "5 times slower". I know what they mean by it, but it doesn't really make sense.
Yeah, many of the petitions that have reached 25,000 have gotten a response that amounts to "no comment". It's too bad the media doesn't pick up on these petitions.
It's mostly because of 2 reasons. First, the connectors are big, which makes them bad for skinny portable devices. Second, there's been a general move away from interfaces with pins, partially because they're too easy to damage.
Of course, phasing out VGA and DVI are not going to happen on the proposed timetable. There are too many legacy devices. The first step is to get manufacturers to adopt a standard instead of being split between HDMI, DP, mini DP, and Thunderbolt. Then just wait while old legacy devices get replaced. We don't even have a standard yet.
Not all Android phones even have the same physical buttons along the bottom of the screen, and they're in different order sometimes. The procedure that you have to use to get to a list of applications can be different from one phone to another. Older Androids didn't even have Exchange support, though there's a generation of Android models where the manufacturer added in Exchange support before Google did, which I believe also leads to other possible variations in options.
Now I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not all simple and uniform. A lot of people I support aren't that tech savvy, and I need to give them instructions that are exact, i.e. "Press this button, scroll down halfway through the page until you see something labelled [whatever]. The third option on the next menu will be [whatever]..." If the placement in the list is different or the label is different, you may as well be speaking German.
And I don't say this because I'm intimately familiar with every model of Android, but I've had the experience of looking at an Android phone and saying, "OK, click this button, scroll down and look for an option that says [whatever]," and having the person on the other end go, "There is no option called [whatever]." Because they had a different model and the settings had been reorganized someplace else.
Yes, and we could also manage everything according to our internal clocks instead of relying on those mechanical and digital clocks. But why?
Yup. I do IT support, and we support blackberries, iPhones, Android phones, etc. From my point of view, here's the breakdown:
Blackberry: People tell us they buy them because they're super-reliable business phones with lots of security features, but no one uses those security features and we get constant complaints about devices crashing, email not sending, and email not downloading. It's a headache to troubleshoot because of the weirdness of the setup-- resending service books, deactivating/reactivating phones is a hassle. Then every once in a while, every Blackberry in the world stops working because RIM essentially engineered a single point of failure for no apparent reason.
Android: Generally hard to support because there are so many models and they might be very different. How do you set up [x] on phone [y]? I don't know. I have to look it up because who knows which version of Android is installed or what UI customizations the manufacturer put on top of them? Most likely, I won't find good online instructions, so I'll need to get the phone in my hands and fiddle with it myself before I can say how to do anything with it. Other than that, they're kind of mostly fine. Some are good, but some are crap.
iPhone: If you don't have a specific reason to get a different kind of smartphone, just get an iPhone. They work. They're stable. There's a lot of development for the platform, and lots of things are well supported. I get very few complaints that aren't something obscure (e.g. why can't I sync Exchange public folders to my iPhone?), and most people are ultimately happy with them, even when they didn't think they would be ahead of time. I can tell you how to set up your email on an iPhone without looking it up, because it's the same on every iPhone and iPad. Email doesn't mysteriously stop syncing-- if it stopped syncing, you probably don't have reception or a Wifi connection. It's almost that simple.
Right. Essentially they aren't warning admins that they'll be forced to use Windows Server without a GUI. They're warning developers that Windows Server admins might be using Windows Server without a GUI.
Still, it's noteworthy because it shows that Microsoft is taking CLI server administration seriously.
No, it can't go "ping". That's one of the requirements for the X-Prize for the Timey-Wimey detector: goes "ping" when there's stuff.
So, how much of this swing away from Google is due to the seriously annoying things
My off-hand guess is that it's approximately 0%. I'd bet most of the reason people are moving to Bing is that people have bought new computers with Windows 7, and Bing is the default search. Also, Microsoft changed the selector to set a different search engine provider, and it's ultimately a bigger pain in the butt to change providers.
But doesn't that also mean people can hold the devices in more natural positions, making them far safer than PCs or laptops? Also the same argument could be made that books are dangerous because they can be accessed almost anywhere and in any position.
I think the point isn't that these devices will inherently and necessarily cause repetitive stress problems, but that if used without awareness and care, they *might*. Yes, it's only "might" and not "will", but understanding the potential for these kinds of injuries can lead you to taking proper preventative measures.
Hence the article. The article outlines some of the dangers and gives some ideas for preventative measures. If you are not aware of these possible injuries, then the article could be educational and therefore helpful in preventing problems. What's wrong with that?
They have the mindset of a computer, "do x, get y". What they lack is reading people and other things when it isn't presented to them in a straight, clear form.
I think this is one of the important issues that programmers and other technical people sometimes miss about jobs in sales (or similar). In fact, you gloss over the idea casually enough that I think you're not completely identifying it, which is telling. What I'm talking about is that programmers and engineers tend to think of things in terms of reproducible problems for which you develop systematic solutions. So, for example, when you put them into sales/management/marketing situations, they want to nail it down to "these are the things that I say and do to complete this work."
However, this approach often fails because it has the wrong aim. The sorts of jobs that you're talking about often require building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, which are not straight-forward. It's not just about having a set of social skills and reading people well, or at least that would be an oversimplification. It's not about developing a checklist of, "Say this, smile, give this bit of information, present a certain body language, if they seem unsure, tell them that other thing. Done."
It's about taking the time and care to develop a relationship, learn about the other person, gain trust, negotiate boundaries, and be convincing. These things happen even in short interactions that only last a few minutes, and they must be improvised based on the person you're talking to and the context of the situation. It requires give and take. To do it very well, it requires more than learning a set of skills and routines.
That's a little like saying, "Mmm, Windows Vista. Letting programmers program has been a freaking disaster, because they always seem to pick bloat over efficiency."
When really that's not the problem. It's not UI designers per se, but it's bad UI designers functioning under misguided management and unreasonable demands. A good UI designer will use some "Ooooo, shiney" when it can be use appropriately, but not for the sake of itself. Shininess can actually be used to enhance usability.
I don't read the Daily Kos. I do read the NYT and watch PBS, which you probably think makes me a communist, but I pay attention to various news sources.
If you read through the comments on his blog you find that he eventually admits that nearly 100% of his paying customers tried the free version before paying, thus the first part of his premise is wrong. Most people who tried the free service didn't pay him, but enough did that he was considering keeping the site going as a pay only site.
Like you say, this sounds like is kind of did work as intended. He snagged enough paying customers with "free" that the paying customers would possibly make a working customer base.
But here's where I think a lot of people go wrong in thinking about these things: They create a "free" thing, note that lots of people take the "free" thing, but nobody pays. They conclude from this that people like their product, but won't pay *because* they have the free version.
The truth is more complicated. People may like the free version, but the free version offers them everything they like and the premium version isn't a meaningful upgrade. In this case, redo your marketing. Find a way to make the premium version more compelling.
Another possibility is that people tried your product, liked it, but didn't like it enough to pay or to be harassed by follow-up emails. Yet another possibility is that they tried it and didn't actually like it. In either case, your product isn't good enough to support a business. Whoops!
Sorry, I can't gather information that doesn't exist. I understand that you'd prefer that I be poorly informed so that I'd agree with you (which is an amazing argument to make), but I don't have any desire to be a political shill for any party.
The Tea Party has made no difference. They're now just the fake grassroots (organized by lobbyists, politicians, and FOX) movement that preaches xenophobia, the restriction of our rights (except the right to bear arms), and tax cuts without spending cuts (and if they're in favor of spending cuts, it's all about cutting social programs). In short, they're neocons. If you're so great at "information gathering", go gather some information and tell me about their accomplishments.
Also, I'm not really interested in your defense of OWS. I never said that OWS was rapists, homeless people, and anarchists.......just that if you hung out with conservatives instead of liberals, you would have thought that way.
So if I hung out with conservatives, I would have a poor understanding of things?
Also, you're the first person I've ever heard say that the tea party is like anarchists. That's kind of hilarious.
Why? You do understand that anarchists and libertarians generally share many views, right? Both groups essentially want to minimize government and maximize personal freedom-- anarchists just go farther with the idea. And the Tea Party was originally a Libertarian movement. Not so much anymore.
I'll give you an example of how the tea-party has changed the Republican party, even the entire tone in Washington...It may be unfair to give the tea-party credit for all of that, since they are one small component of government.
So you'll give me an iron-clad argument that even you think is unfair. Nice. Did it occur to you that the reason for the change in tone is that the world economy is falling apart, and not because some old lady attached tea bags to her hat?
Essentially, I think you misread me. I'm not saying that I love OWS or hate the Tea Party. I'm not saying that I love Democrats and hate Republicans. I'm saying that these types of social/political movements are delicate and unlikely to survive long enough to make a difference, because they're inherently threatening to the people in power, and the people in power are... well... powerful. The Tea Party is a failure because they were absorbed by the people in power as a tool to keep themselves in power. OWS looks to be failing in another direction; the people in power are waging a successful PR war against them.
The primary motivating ideas behind the tea party are "taxed too much" and to a lesser extent, "follow the literal interpretation of the constitution."
You mean "were". The primary motivating ideas *were* to have a small government with low taxes based on someone's interpretation of the Constitution. Now the primary motivating idea is to increase the political power of the Republican party, everything else be damned. It's now the astroturfing wing of the Republican party, and nothing more.
You must be hanging around with liberal democrats based on how you associate things. If you hung out with Republicans more often you would associate OWS not with nice hippies, but with rapists, anarchists, and homeless people (and I do believe your opinions are primarily based on who you hang out with or used to hang out with, you don't seem to be the type to do the research necessary to come up with reasonable opinions on your own).
Well first off, let's ignore the ad hominem attack that you're trying to mount on me, because it's obvious and boring. Let's jump instead to the charge of "anarchists and homeless people", and say that there's no doubt that there are anarchists and poor people participating in OWS. These anarchists, however, are not the bombing/assassinating sort. Their actual views are fairly close to the Libertarian views that were originally behind the Tea Party. The poor-- well what's wrong with that? Would you argue that the most economically disenfranchised people should *not* support a movement to reform the political and economic system that keeps them on the fringes?
And as for rapists, well I won't defend rape, but really you're proving my point here. All of this talk about rapists, homeless people, and anarchists are all politically motivated ad hominem attacks. It's not, "This movement has bad ideas" but "this movement is made up of bad people, so please don't even listen to their ideas." The Tea Party already went down the tubes because of multiple factors, this being one of them: they did a poor job distancing themselves from 'bad people'. Worse, they handed over the reigns to one of the major political parties, which has absolutely no interest in the old "primary motivating ideas", and then that political party actively courted the 'bad people'.
You're saying they shouldn't let people call them names?
No, that they associated with racist whack-jobs and didn't distance themselves from that crowd. For as bad as it is to be associated with hippies like OWS, the Tea Party is equally associated with the xenophobic, racist, uninformed crazy people.
Duh, of course you don't think so, you don't like the tea party ideas to begin with.
Depends on which "tea party ideas" you're talking about. Libertarianism, I don't mind it so much. I object more to the "Obama is evil, but we can't figure out if it's because he's black, because he's a Muslim, or because he's a communist," ideas.
if you think the tea party has had no effect on the Republican party, and on congress, you are either incredibly dense or don't pay attention.
It has had an effect, but not the effect the Tea Party was originally looking for. Bigger than the effect that the Tea Party had on the Republicans was the effect the Republicans had on the Tea Party-- they got the Tea Party to abandon their ideals and good sense in pursuit of political power.