If you have something in writting, you should be able to hold them to it. Of course, you have to wonder about the company if their first offical act is to screw you over.
Then who provides a check on the press? A shield law for the press isn't a good idea because it gives the press a free ride. If you think there aren't reporters on the right and left that would take advantage of a shield law you are crazy.
The way it works now, a reporter had better make sure he/she has multiple good sources, and are willing to go to jail if necessary before going forward with a story. Is it perfect? No, but nothing ever is. Is it a good compromise? I think so, and it's one I don't think should be changed.
I think you need to modify your statement that "But engineers always do whatever they have to get the job done." I think it should read 'But good engineers always do whatever they have to get the job done.'
I manage an R&D lab, and I'm astounded at the number of engineers that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. A lot of them aren't more than drafters with a degree. They sit at their desks designing things with their CAD packages, but can't be bothered to go down to the production line to see how their designs translate into real products. Are they even manufacturability? Have they heard of the phrase 'design for ease of manufacturability?' Did they even bother to do a tolerance stack on all the parts to check for interference? The answer is usual no to all of those questions.
God forbid they have even a passing knowledge of the industry and regulatory standards their designs have to meet! In my industry it takes 1 - 3 months to get customer and regulatory approval if everything goes right. I can't count the number of times I've had an engineer come to me 2 weeks before they expect to launch a product with a handful of FDM parts, expecting me to get them certified.
I had to send an engineer out alone on a field service call on a prototype piece of equipment that he was the SOLE designer for. We had installed a few of his devices in stores, and one wasn't reporting data back the way it should. He showed up at the store without a single tool. Not even a simple screwdriver. If he had a screwdriver, I'm not sure he would have know which end to use, but we could have talked him through it over the phone. To this day, I have no idea how he thought he was going to troubleshoot his product, and unfortunately I think he's more the norm of what a lot of colleges are graduating as engineers now days.
I've heard that the reason has more to do with the fact that historically (up until WWII at least), women weren't in the work force in large numbers and didn't have to put up with that additional source of stress (yes I know staying at home with children is stressful, and is a real job even if most people don't think of it that way). There are also other social factors that have contributed to women having longer life spans. For instance, it's always been socially acceptable for men to smoke, but if a woman smoked there was something morally wrong with her. I'm too lazy to Google for the facts, but I believe that as women have gained equal rights, as compared to men, the life span difference has started to shrink.
I'm always telling my wife to get in the kitchen and make me a turkey pot pie, and fetch me a beer. I'm just looking out for her health.
Actually, I do call them FCB's... mainly because I work for a company that manufactures these machines. FCB and FUB (Frozen Uncarbonated Beverage) are words I hear on almost a daily basis.
What are you doing posting to Slashdot? Your comment made perfect sense. Don't you know you are only supposed to beat old jokes to death, and bash Microsoft here?
Seriously, I think you are exactly right. Kids don't need internet access in their rooms. I don't have kids yet, but when I do I certainly don't want them thinking Tubgirl is normal. I don't think I would mind having a computer in their bedroom to write papers with, upgrade, etc..., but it certainly won't have access to the net.
As for laptops, I don't think kids ever need them. When they are young, they probably won't take very good care of it. When they get older and go off to college, a desktop is much safer. A laptop is just begging to get stolen. When I was in college I knew too many people who had text books stolen because they left their rooms unlocked while they went down the hall for 2 minutes. A laptop is just as easy to slip into a backpack as a text book.
It's also not localized to teachers. I manage an R&D lab, and when we try to hire mechanical or electrical techs, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the applications are from biologists.
You are assuming that the people ordering the new charts know how to read the old charts correctly. Which is not something I would bet on. From my experience, a lot of teachers tend to teach from the text book, and may not fully understand the subject they are teaching.
I was taught high school Physics by a Biologist, and while he was a good teacher, he didn't have a clue about Physics. He was a good enough teacher to admit he wasn't an expert, and if you found an error in the text book and pointed it out, he would make sure everyone knew the correct information.
I'm sure there are still plenty of teachers like him out there ordering the new charts because it looks cool, but not realizing what "hidden" information is actually being left out.
2. Guns are generally promoted for legal purposes (hunting, self defense, preventing the King of England from invading Massachussets, etc.)
That's the ad I want to see!
A Prince Charles look a like (he'll be King one day) sauntering into the Massachusetts state house declaring that from now on erasers shall be called rubbers, color shall be spelled colour, and the coup de gras... that Carling Lager will be the new official drink of the state.
Suddenly, a drunken cry comes out of the crowd, and a Ted Kennedy look a like jumps up and fires off a few rounds from his.357 Smith and Wesson (yeah I know he's a US Senator, but I assume he would fly back home if the King of England was invading).
(start voice over) Smith & Wesson, keeping the King of England at bay for over 200 years.
My wife works for an ophthalmologist, and it seems like every few months she's telling me about some new procedure or surgery to improve someone's eyesight. If you haven't been to an ophthalmologist (not optometist) recently, you really should make an appointment.
I can't give you any specifics on the new treatments (other than there's some contact lens you can wear at night that reshapes your eyes as your sleep so you don't have to wear any glasses, contacts, etc... during the day). The whole idea of putting something in my eyes, or having someone cut my eyes or even get near my eyes really FREAKS the bajesus out of me, and yes my wife loves to tell me all of the gory details about her job.
Well... it's SUPOSSED to be a secret. I'm trusting that everyone on Slashdot will keep that secret. We're also supposed to just watch television "normally" without thinking of our effects on the ratings. I have to confess that I tape shows that are reruns of shows I like to give them a ratings boost even though I don't watch what I tape (the show still gets credit). I also fiercely avoid shows that I wish would die even if there is a 5 minute segment that I would normally watch.
Actually, they do have such devices. I'm a Nielson family right now for overnight ratings. When Nielson came out there were about 12 techs that came out and put boxes on every TV, VCR, DVD player, video game console in the house (had to open all the cases and tap into the tuner chips). They ran cable to a central modem, and every night (around 2 or 3 am) it calls into the central office and reports what we watched during the previous day.
I believe one reason for this could be due to the fact that Bush did much better among Jewish Democrats this time around when compared to 2000. I remember one network pointing this out, and attributing it to how much Lieberman helped Gore, and how little credit he got for it.
And I agree with your assessment, except for CBS calling FL long before everyone else did. I don't know if it was Rather trying to prove he didn't have a beef with the Bush family, or the network trying to be carefull AND first at the same time.
No, I don't think we would fight. Both sides do very nasty things to win elections. Things I'm not proud of as an American. 2000 just brought all of the bad things to the surface, and shined a million TV cameras on the process and beamed the results around the world. I'm glad this year wasn't a repeat, and I hope that we never have another election like 2000.
We are all taught in school how great a democracy is, but they never tell us about the warts. Now everyone knows about the warts. What really amazes me is the number of people that STILL didn't vote or even register. I know it was a record turn out, but the number of people who just don't care or don't think it matters is amazing.
I think it was Winston Churchill that said something like 'A democracy is a horrible form of government, but it's better than all of the alternatives'.
Actually, I don't fault Gore for wanting a recount in FL. I do fault him for the way he went about it. He should have asked for a recount in the entire state, instead of just the heavily Dem. counties. That being said, as soon as Gore asked for a partial recount, Bush should have asked for a total recount.
I also blame Gore for the way the votes were recounted, and recounted again in the Dem. counties. It really left a bad taste in my mouth when the first recount was stopped after it was obvious that Gore couldn't get enough votes and a different method for counting "pregnant chads" was used. If you don't punch any type of hole in the ballot, there is NO WAY your vote should be counted. At the time there was even talk about using an intent to vote rule, which meant that if you voted for all Dem's on the rest of the ballot, then you obviously wanted to vote for Gore too.
While I don't live in FL, I know some Dems who REALLY didn't like Gore. They voted for all Dems on the rest of their ballot, and then just didn't vote for Pres. Trying to guess what a voter wanted to do after the ballot has been cast is a subversion of the system, and that is turned a lot of people off to Gore after the 2000 election.
If Kerry had a chance of winning OH, I would support his waiting for the provisional ballots to be counted, and even asking for a recount. My support for him would stop as soon as he started pulling the stuff that Gore did in 2000. I give Kerry credit for realizing that he couldn't win, and not going down the same road Gore did.
If the situations had been reversed in 2000, I would be preaching about how whoever was running against Gore this time shouldn't do what Bush did. I'm not saying that I think the Reps are better or more honorable than the Dems. I'm saying I don't like what Gore did, and I'm glad Kerry didn't follow that path.
No, he's not saying that 200,000 people shouldn't have bothered. 200,000 people cast provisional ballots (actually more like 140,000, but I'll use the posters numbers for the sake of argument). Bush's lead in Ohio is something like 130,000. In the past elections less than 10% of provisional ballots turn out to be real votes. Remember provisional ballots are given to people who don't show up on the voter registration lists. Just because you are given a provisional ballot doesn't mean that your vote should be counted. Maybe you didn't register, maybe you don't live where you claim to live, maybe you don't even live in the state.
Even if 100% of the provisional ballots were legitamate votes, you are assuming that 100% would go for Kerry. That's just not the case. It would more than likely be a 50/50 or 60/40 split, and Bush would still win.
Kerry is just standing up, recognizing he lost, and acting like a man. If you want to get upset, get upset at Kerry for not energizing his base better, or not running a better campaign, or all the college kids that registered but didn't actually vote, or the 50% of America that can't be bothered to even register to vote!
Slashdot Mirror
...Deathstar!
I guess I'll have to pick a new country to live out my CowboyNeal-bot / goatse fantasy. I wonder if Soviet Russia will sign on to this "code"?
If you have something in writting, you should be able to hold them to it. Of course, you have to wonder about the company if their first offical act is to screw you over.
Astro Tit
Then who provides a check on the press? A shield law for the press isn't a good idea because it gives the press a free ride. If you think there aren't reporters on the right and left that would take advantage of a shield law you are crazy.
The way it works now, a reporter had better make sure he/she has multiple good sources, and are willing to go to jail if necessary before going forward with a story. Is it perfect? No, but nothing ever is. Is it a good compromise? I think so, and it's one I don't think should be changed.
I think you need to modify your statement that "But engineers always do whatever they have to get the job done." I think it should read 'But good engineers always do whatever they have to get the job done.'
I manage an R&D lab, and I'm astounded at the number of engineers that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. A lot of them aren't more than drafters with a degree. They sit at their desks designing things with their CAD packages, but can't be bothered to go down to the production line to see how their designs translate into real products. Are they even manufacturability? Have they heard of the phrase 'design for ease of manufacturability?' Did they even bother to do a tolerance stack on all the parts to check for interference? The answer is usual no to all of those questions.
God forbid they have even a passing knowledge of the industry and regulatory standards their designs have to meet! In my industry it takes 1 - 3 months to get customer and regulatory approval if everything goes right. I can't count the number of times I've had an engineer come to me 2 weeks before they expect to launch a product with a handful of FDM parts, expecting me to get them certified.
I had to send an engineer out alone on a field service call on a prototype piece of equipment that he was the SOLE designer for. We had installed a few of his devices in stores, and one wasn't reporting data back the way it should. He showed up at the store without a single tool. Not even a simple screwdriver. If he had a screwdriver, I'm not sure he would have know which end to use, but we could have talked him through it over the phone. To this day, I have no idea how he thought he was going to troubleshoot his product, and unfortunately I think he's more the norm of what a lot of colleges are graduating as engineers now days.
I've heard that the reason has more to do with the fact that historically (up until WWII at least), women weren't in the work force in large numbers and didn't have to put up with that additional source of stress (yes I know staying at home with children is stressful, and is a real job even if most people don't think of it that way). There are also other social factors that have contributed to women having longer life spans. For instance, it's always been socially acceptable for men to smoke, but if a woman smoked there was something morally wrong with her. I'm too lazy to Google for the facts, but I believe that as women have gained equal rights, as compared to men, the life span difference has started to shrink.
I'm always telling my wife to get in the kitchen and make me a turkey pot pie, and fetch me a beer. I'm just looking out for her health.
Actually, I do call them FCB's... mainly because I work for a company that manufactures these machines. FCB and FUB (Frozen Uncarbonated Beverage) are words I hear on almost a daily basis.
What are you doing posting to Slashdot? Your comment made perfect sense. Don't you know you are only supposed to beat old jokes to death, and bash Microsoft here?
Seriously, I think you are exactly right. Kids don't need internet access in their rooms. I don't have kids yet, but when I do I certainly don't want them thinking Tubgirl is normal. I don't think I would mind having a computer in their bedroom to write papers with, upgrade, etc..., but it certainly won't have access to the net.
As for laptops, I don't think kids ever need them. When they are young, they probably won't take very good care of it. When they get older and go off to college, a desktop is much safer. A laptop is just begging to get stolen. When I was in college I knew too many people who had text books stolen because they left their rooms unlocked while they went down the hall for 2 minutes. A laptop is just as easy to slip into a backpack as a text book.
It's also not localized to teachers. I manage an R&D lab, and when we try to hire mechanical or electrical techs, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the applications are from biologists.
You are assuming that the people ordering the new charts know how to read the old charts correctly. Which is not something I would bet on. From my experience, a lot of teachers tend to teach from the text book, and may not fully understand the subject they are teaching.
I was taught high school Physics by a Biologist, and while he was a good teacher, he didn't have a clue about Physics. He was a good enough teacher to admit he wasn't an expert, and if you found an error in the text book and pointed it out, he would make sure everyone knew the correct information.
I'm sure there are still plenty of teachers like him out there ordering the new charts because it looks cool, but not realizing what "hidden" information is actually being left out.
That's the ad I want to see!
A Prince Charles look a like (he'll be King one day) sauntering into the Massachusetts state house declaring that from now on erasers shall be called rubbers, color shall be spelled colour, and the coup de gras... that Carling Lager will be the new official drink of the state.
Suddenly, a drunken cry comes out of the crowd, and a Ted Kennedy look a like jumps up and fires off a few rounds from his .357 Smith and Wesson (yeah I know he's a US Senator, but I assume he would fly back home if the King of England was invading).
(start voice over) Smith & Wesson, keeping the King of England at bay for over 200 years.
"We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."
I'm sure a post to Slashdot is going to help.
My wife works for an ophthalmologist, and it seems like every few months she's telling me about some new procedure or surgery to improve someone's eyesight. If you haven't been to an ophthalmologist (not optometist) recently, you really should make an appointment. I can't give you any specifics on the new treatments (other than there's some contact lens you can wear at night that reshapes your eyes as your sleep so you don't have to wear any glasses, contacts, etc... during the day). The whole idea of putting something in my eyes, or having someone cut my eyes or even get near my eyes really FREAKS the bajesus out of me, and yes my wife loves to tell me all of the gory details about her job.
Too late. Legislation has been out of hand for a LONG time.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Canada is a country??? I thought it was just another state like Mexico!
Dam US publick skool education failed me again.
Well... it's SUPOSSED to be a secret. I'm trusting that everyone on Slashdot will keep that secret. We're also supposed to just watch television "normally" without thinking of our effects on the ratings. I have to confess that I tape shows that are reruns of shows I like to give them a ratings boost even though I don't watch what I tape (the show still gets credit). I also fiercely avoid shows that I wish would die even if there is a 5 minute segment that I would normally watch.
Actually, they do have such devices. I'm a Nielson family right now for overnight ratings. When Nielson came out there were about 12 techs that came out and put boxes on every TV, VCR, DVD player, video game console in the house (had to open all the cases and tap into the tuner chips). They ran cable to a central modem, and every night (around 2 or 3 am) it calls into the central office and reports what we watched during the previous day.
Ball peen hammer to the temple = instant sleep (possible forever with a chance of red spray on clothing)
I'm getting me one and modifying it so it shoots saw blades instead of foam disks. Ain't NOBODY getting near my stack of porn!
I believe one reason for this could be due to the fact that Bush did much better among Jewish Democrats this time around when compared to 2000. I remember one network pointing this out, and attributing it to how much Lieberman helped Gore, and how little credit he got for it.
And I agree with your assessment, except for CBS calling FL long before everyone else did. I don't know if it was Rather trying to prove he didn't have a beef with the Bush family, or the network trying to be carefull AND first at the same time.
No, I don't think we would fight. Both sides do very nasty things to win elections. Things I'm not proud of as an American. 2000 just brought all of the bad things to the surface, and shined a million TV cameras on the process and beamed the results around the world. I'm glad this year wasn't a repeat, and I hope that we never have another election like 2000.
We are all taught in school how great a democracy is, but they never tell us about the warts. Now everyone knows about the warts. What really amazes me is the number of people that STILL didn't vote or even register. I know it was a record turn out, but the number of people who just don't care or don't think it matters is amazing.
I think it was Winston Churchill that said something like 'A democracy is a horrible form of government, but it's better than all of the alternatives'.
Actually, I don't fault Gore for wanting a recount in FL. I do fault him for the way he went about it. He should have asked for a recount in the entire state, instead of just the heavily Dem. counties. That being said, as soon as Gore asked for a partial recount, Bush should have asked for a total recount. I also blame Gore for the way the votes were recounted, and recounted again in the Dem. counties. It really left a bad taste in my mouth when the first recount was stopped after it was obvious that Gore couldn't get enough votes and a different method for counting "pregnant chads" was used. If you don't punch any type of hole in the ballot, there is NO WAY your vote should be counted. At the time there was even talk about using an intent to vote rule, which meant that if you voted for all Dem's on the rest of the ballot, then you obviously wanted to vote for Gore too. While I don't live in FL, I know some Dems who REALLY didn't like Gore. They voted for all Dems on the rest of their ballot, and then just didn't vote for Pres. Trying to guess what a voter wanted to do after the ballot has been cast is a subversion of the system, and that is turned a lot of people off to Gore after the 2000 election. If Kerry had a chance of winning OH, I would support his waiting for the provisional ballots to be counted, and even asking for a recount. My support for him would stop as soon as he started pulling the stuff that Gore did in 2000. I give Kerry credit for realizing that he couldn't win, and not going down the same road Gore did. If the situations had been reversed in 2000, I would be preaching about how whoever was running against Gore this time shouldn't do what Bush did. I'm not saying that I think the Reps are better or more honorable than the Dems. I'm saying I don't like what Gore did, and I'm glad Kerry didn't follow that path.
No, he's not saying that 200,000 people shouldn't have bothered. 200,000 people cast provisional ballots (actually more like 140,000, but I'll use the posters numbers for the sake of argument). Bush's lead in Ohio is something like 130,000. In the past elections less than 10% of provisional ballots turn out to be real votes. Remember provisional ballots are given to people who don't show up on the voter registration lists. Just because you are given a provisional ballot doesn't mean that your vote should be counted. Maybe you didn't register, maybe you don't live where you claim to live, maybe you don't even live in the state. Even if 100% of the provisional ballots were legitamate votes, you are assuming that 100% would go for Kerry. That's just not the case. It would more than likely be a 50/50 or 60/40 split, and Bush would still win. Kerry is just standing up, recognizing he lost, and acting like a man. If you want to get upset, get upset at Kerry for not energizing his base better, or not running a better campaign, or all the college kids that registered but didn't actually vote, or the 50% of America that can't be bothered to even register to vote!