Interesting, the ones that I looked into that were clearly frivolous where tossed out immediatly
But some of these suits are brought against companies that only employ 20 or 50 people. Even if the court throws out the suit, it can cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get their outside lawyers ready just in case. Many times, that's the purpose of the suit - just to cost money, to hurt the company. And it's not just companies - similar suits are brought against non-profit organizations, schools, and individuals, too.
Bear in mind that they are the only recourse the people have against corporations, short of blood shed.
You're forgetting about two other recourses:
1) media coverage - it can be very powerful
2) just don't do business with the company - if they don't sell anything, they have no resources
Isn't the problem really exacerbated by the punitive damages?
Sure, but plenty of lawyers would happily sue for their 30% of the "actual" damages.
If those damages had to be given to a charity in toto wouldn't these lawsuits come to a halt fairly quickly?
Not really, because many of these suits are brought by activists who can't solve their perceived problems legislatively. For example, people who don't think you should be able to own big kitchen knives (don't laugh! there's a movement in Britain to ban them!), or people who don't like SUVs or pickup trucks, or people who don't like guns, or petrolium products, or don't think people should eat cheeseburgers. They're happy if the "proceeds" of the suit go anywhere as long as the entity they're trying to beat up has to part with a big pile of money. In fact, if a jury knew that the output might go to a charity, they might be even MORE inclined to rule insanely. Because, you know, who doesn't like charities, blah blah.
This really depends on what they manufacture. If you knowingly manufacture something dangerous, say a toy that is a choking hazard for young children, you may be held responsible (if you don't label, etc).
Right... we're talking about products and services that do what they are supposed to (say, knives that cut, cars that go 60mph where you point them, internet connections that carry packets, etc), but which are still sued just for being "involved" in a crime that a criminal chooses to commit. Oily lawyers and dumb juries too often draw the wrong causal relationships.
They would probably manage to get a settlement out of at least one of them too.
Which is why it's so important to have legislation that shields people like manufacturers from the actions of their products' users. It doesn't occur to too many people to sue GM over the actions of a drunk driver, but political correctness makes it attractive to sue, say, gun makers when someone decides to commit a crime. There's legislation pending right now to prevent frivalous suits like that, and we can only hope that equal doses of rationality kick in for router manufacturers, coffeeshop owners, and so on. The "it's everyone's fault except the person who actually did the bad thing" nonsense has got to stop, and there's a little light at the end of the tunnel.
Because if you're a sysadmin that actually lives in the U.S. and gets a paycheck, then you're really being appreciated (as opposed to being outsourced).
Come on, all you operations types: don't act whiny and expect Your Special Day - just be indispensible and be glad every time direct deposit works correctly.
Re:That's just what our accounting system VAR told
on
The Future of the Net
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· Score: 1
Out of curiosity, what does 'data mining' mean to you?
Two flavors, really. First, a very structured, planned-out-in-advance process that pulls together data from a particularly large, or particularly disparate pile of data, and presents some sort of meaningful insight or digest of that data for an audience (such as management). Secondly, and increasingly the more common usage, would be the ad hoc querying of pre-digested indexes ("cubes") of data that allow the researcher to do some what-iffing while looking for trends or other meaning in data that isn't already bundled up into a pre-fab report of some sort.
The second example still relies (especially when the databases are large) on pre-processing of the source data into an engine that specifically lends itself to that sort of querying. So-called "BI" (business intelligence) products are pretty good at this, but only as good as the well trained (in both the tech and the business use) consultant or pro that sets it up for the mangement to play with.
Classic exmaples... you know how many left handed widgets you sold, and you know to whom you sold them, and you've got some canned report that says what state they're in and when they were purchased, and you've thus got some summary numbers of left-handed widget sales per month, per state. But say you've also got some other data on your customers, and some other data on your stores, and for some reason (say, a marketing campaign), you want to know how many of your widget buyers walk, as opposed to drive, to your stores. You may have all the data, but that's info you're going to have to mine for. If you knew you were going to need that new report every month, you'd approach it the first way. If you knew your managers were going to ask unexpected questions like that all the time, you'd invest in data cube building, and would pile up and pre-process pretty much everything, all the time. Hardware, hardware, hardware! Consultants, consultants, consultants!
You've got to sell a lot of widgets to make paying the big bucks for that horsepower improve your margins by enough to cover the costs. Probably in the big-wheel financial sector, that really works better. Mid sized businesses are just getting around to doing this stuff in depth, and typically still try to can reports using more traditional methods.
Instant messaging is in almost every way analogous to telephones. Do you actually use IM? It seems you have a very poor understanding of how it's actually used.
All day. I've got three sessions going right now. Remember: the original headline was about how e-mail is for "old people" and that most teenagers prefer IM over e-mail. My point is that it's a poor comparison - it's apples and oranges. People who prefer not to use e-mail are essentially giving up on a great asynchronous form communication, and are stuck only swapping notes with other people who are hanging out near a computer or other appliance with an IM client.
It's like saying that voice mail is for "old" people, and that the cool kids only use phones when they know that their friends are willing to answer each and every call. It's just not a valid comparison, but to the extent that kids are actually shunning e-mail, they're going to get worse and worse at more thoughtful communication, period. Is that more clear?
Right! And the original post was about a study of a group of people who prefer it over e-mail, and this thread went off into a discussion of those people... recall that the original headline referred to e-mail being for "old people" - so you can imagine how the discussion started out a little prickly.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. The tone (and brief substance) of my original comment was inspired by the original posting "E-mail Is For Old People"). Of course, that headline is meant to be provocative, and in the spirit of the tone, I created the "teenager" class, as differentiated from the "old people" class. Anyone who took my comment out of that context wasn't seeing the whole thread, obviously.
I use IM all the time, and in the same general mode that you describe. I think the gist of my comment was simply that any poll indicating a teenage preference for IM over e-mail suggests another step away from thoughtful communication. Yes, a casual conversation should never be subjected to the rules of grammar, etc., but I like to fret just a little about the old slippery slope. The kids that are hooked on it today (at the expense of more structured communication, a little more often) will have a harder time in a professional setting later, and will have difficulty digesting the structurally complex communication that us "old" people will sometimes expect them to take in. It's not about IQ, it's about regular exposure to something a little more complex than is usually seen in a chat. Those opportunities are fading, and some real skills are being lost with them.
As opposed to the addled-brained nitwit running hte country right now?
Luckily the president doesn't run the country. At least he got better grades at Yale than his opponent, but that's another conversation.
No, it's the congress, and the people running the countries business and classrooms that I'm most worried about. Not to mention the ones producing and raising children.
"Ashley u go clean yor room rite now! OMG its teh total sux!"
Cool it, kid. However much you may complain about your peer's crappy writing skills, has anyone ever bitched at you about your having trouble picking up on a little satire? Some sarcasm can be a useful rhetorical device.
I've been communicating through channels like this, and IM, and IRC, and e-mail, and dial-up bulletin boards (WAY before your time) and freakin' stone tablets for 20+ years. The steady decline in communication skills, across the board, has always been apparent... but in the last, say, 3-4 years (coincident with broadband? probably) it's become epidemic.
If you're one of those rare 18-year-olds that can actually string together some meaningful concepts, and use the language with all off its grace, depth and persuasive power, then I couldn't be happier. There are way, way too few of you. I'll even let you slide on "retard," but I'll probably disagree that the crappy typing is age-agnostic. It's definitely worse with the kids coming out of junior high right now than I've ever seen it.
The teenagers who you are talking about will not rule the world in 20 years when people like you finally leave the Earth (thank heaven).
Heaven won't have much to do with it, either way. I do hope you enjoy using the networks and systems that people like me build and maintain every day, though. Regardless, the can't-communicate-to-save-their-lives crowd may not be the ones to directly run the show... but they'll be the ones that vote for the first person cynical enough to use 1337-speak in their political campaign. Watch. It'll happen. It won't be as bad as "Don't vote for my opponent, he is teh suxx0r" but it will be transparent pandering, that's for sure.
We are simply a less vocal minority, mostly because we don't have our heads up our asses like they and you do.
I don't know, you're pretty loud so far. I mean, being a retard with my head up my ass and all, I'm still able to hear you. Any chance that the large majority of the population that's quite a bit older than you would be less inclined to lump you in with the morons of the world if you actually spoke up a little more often, and in a less corrosive way?
Wow, I hope I don't have have stuff like that coming out of my ass when I get old.
You don't count. You're using actual punctuation and two (count 'em TWO) instances of markup in your brief comment. You are not the people I'm talking about, and you know it. If you're not "old" than you have to know who I'm referring to. And you also know that the vast majority of people under 20 (hey, under 25, really) don't have an intellectual interest in sustained, rational, coherent communication in any form, let alone in grammatically reasonable written form. IM is their comfort zone because it's considered acceptable to spell things horribly, and to attempt to express yourself in sequences of half a dozen words (grunts, acronyms, what have you) at a time.
That crowd is allergic to e-mail because the dodgy nature of their writing, and of their ability to convey complex ideas, leaves a trail behind. Sure, some IMs are logged, but most communication sins are washed away as soon as the chat is over. The fact that you're reading and posting on/. suggests that you're already so far beyond the curve that you can't be considered in the conversation. Not, of course, that there aren't plenty of illiterate dumbasses here, too, but they're not really representational.
Of course, there could not possibly be a correlation between the extensive use of IM and the absolutely horrible state of our public education system. Have you ever seen someone raised on IM try to write a coherent longhand letter with proper spelling, structure and punctuation?
omg u r teh sux 4 saing that
Seriously, though, you're not kidding. This isn't just about writing skills, this is about the overall cognitive framework required for critical thought, and for holding something abstract in your brain long enough to communicate it across multiple sentences. It's scary out there: these are the addled-brained nitwits that are going to be running the country in a few years. Of course, really good private schools don't let you get away with communicating that poorly (and neither do the parents who would send them there in the first place), so those will be the people running the country, and the people who can't think clearly are just going to resent it that much more. And thus we get more class envy, and message boards entries about being pwned by corporate amerika blah blah all three of your remaining brain cells are belong to us blah blah.
I don't think anyone really just waits around for idle chat to happen though.
Ah! But that (and back to my original point) is exactly what a lot of teens I've seen actually do. They more or less set aside time expressly for that purpose. Now, that's not much different than meeting up at the mall, etc., to shoot the same BS, but you're doing it from inside your basement... just a different thing, though sort of isolationist.
And preferring the phone over writing letters means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the ring of their phone.
Actually, that's what voicemail is for. Phones have remained useful because they have become a mechanism for asynchronous communication, just like e-mail. I answer far fewer phone calls than actually ring on my phone - just like most people I know.
Should we forsake the telephone for the Pony Express? I don't think so
I'd say that the only way that the telephone has remained useful for many businesses is through the presence of voicemail. Most people I know consider the phone to be an aynchronous tool (like e-mail) unless they've explicitly set up a call, or are dealing with someone who, when appearing on their caller id, is one of the few people they want hear from.
I use IM all the time. But only when it's completely convenient. Any real substance still gets sent via e-mail. Can't tell you how often I've sent this IM message: "Check your email. I just sent your [whatever]."
I'm actually not worried about IM "speeding up" the culture, I'm worried about it chaining people to networked appliances so that they can have spontaneous social contact. I think that actually slows us down, not the opposite. The Pony Express arrived when it arrived... but in order to use the telegraph in those same years, someone had to be sitting right there, that moment, in case communication happened. Not the best analogy, but you get my drift. I'm just worried that a lot of kids are going to grow up incapable of thoughtful, asynchronous communication, and minus the cognitive skills that require them to keep social context and history in mind as they write.
Pleased, I am, to know that there is indeed an exception to every rule and/or stereotype. I'll stick to my guns though - the people that said they preferred IM over mail (you're not in that group, it seems) imply, however indirectly, that they prefer to communicate with people that are hovering about in their mutual IM orbit waiting for that sort of communication. I think that just says some things about their priorities and perspective, that's all.
Congrats on the savings account and exhausted card supply, though. You're obviously a freakish aberration, and will soon be ejected from the tribe. Oh wait, you're on/. - you already have! Welcome to Sherwood Forest.
In other news: You haven't grown out of being a shortsighted twit as much as you think you have
Wow! You have got a fantastic ability to miss the point!
Talking on the phone or face-to-face is probably preferrable to all of this. The IM issue implies a certain amount of hovering around waiting to chit-chat without any of that proximity or intimacy.
I guess I should have added: "no sense of humor" to my list, too, just in case of irritable, perspectiveless responses from anonymous cowards. Oh well, that was short-sighted.
You're completely missing the point. Prefering IM over e-mail implies a preference for lifestyle and culture that has everyone you care about sitting around waiting for you to message them. It's a sign of people with not enough to do.
I use IM all the time. ButI understand the need for it to be used within a certain context. To say that you prefer it over e-mail means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the beep of their IM client.
Sure, because teenagers are shortsighted twits
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E-mail Is For Old People
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Don't get me wrong, I was a shortsighted twit when I was a teenager, too. What an ass! But all this does is document that teenagers:
1) Think the whole world revolves around them,
2) that is does, or should do so right now,
3) that anyone who isn't talking to them right now is a loser,
4) and that MTV has further reduced their attention span to that of a gnat.
In other news: teenagers think belts, savings accounts, and employers are also for Old People.
"Timmy, write your grandmother a thank you note for paying your tuition this semester."
"I can't - she's not online. What an old loser!"
That's just what our accounting system VAR told us
on
The Future of the Net
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· Score: 1
I believe it was just about 10 years ago when the consultants pitching my management team on a new accounting system said essentially the same thing, and that was only limited to running a $10M retail business. If we're only now getting around to decision management systems and data mining that hardcore experts have to spoon feed, I think we're a leeeeetle ways more than 10 years from The Internets knowing when I'll have a hankering for General Tso's Chicken.
It's far enough back to not be as critical as it might have been. I know they've got gear on board, and some training, that might allow them to do some repairs along those lines... but they've had entire tiles come away before without trouble... and this time they'll have people onboard the ISS taking hi-res pictures before they dock. The robo-arm is also able now to take a look under the craft, so they've got more information than they've EVER had before (which will probably just freak everyone out - sometimes ignorance really is bliss).
We're talking about several things here. First, the bird that was hit by the EFT (oh well). Second (and is this what everyone's fussing about?) two vent covers on the dorsal section of the shuttle were covered with pieces of Tyvek material (same people that make the waterproofing wrap for houses). Those fabric covers were designed to fall off as soon as the craft started moving. During today's briefing, NASA indicated, IIRC, that the two covers even had small parachutes to let them down slowly. The briefer said that these two bright-colored objects were clearly seen doing just what they were supposed to do: sliding down during the first moment of the launch.
Completely unrelated would be the hunk of whatever it was that sloughed off of the EFT just before separation, but which would have not struck the orbiter. Also unrelated was the apparent sheering off of a small, perhaps 2-3 inch chunk of a tile near the nose gear cover (just aft). They may deploy the arm to check that one out, but the tiles get pitted all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, the ones that I looked into that were clearly frivolous where tossed out immediatly
But some of these suits are brought against companies that only employ 20 or 50 people. Even if the court throws out the suit, it can cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get their outside lawyers ready just in case. Many times, that's the purpose of the suit - just to cost money, to hurt the company. And it's not just companies - similar suits are brought against non-profit organizations, schools, and individuals, too.
Bear in mind that they are the only recourse the people have against corporations, short of blood shed.
You're forgetting about two other recourses:
1) media coverage - it can be very powerful
2) just don't do business with the company - if they don't sell anything, they have no resources
Damn latency!
Isn't the problem really exacerbated by the punitive damages?
Sure, but plenty of lawyers would happily sue for their 30% of the "actual" damages.
If those damages had to be given to a charity in toto wouldn't these lawsuits come to a halt fairly quickly?
Not really, because many of these suits are brought by activists who can't solve their perceived problems legislatively. For example, people who don't think you should be able to own big kitchen knives (don't laugh! there's a movement in Britain to ban them!), or people who don't like SUVs or pickup trucks, or people who don't like guns, or petrolium products, or don't think people should eat cheeseburgers. They're happy if the "proceeds" of the suit go anywhere as long as the entity they're trying to beat up has to part with a big pile of money. In fact, if a jury knew that the output might go to a charity, they might be even MORE inclined to rule insanely. Because, you know, who doesn't like charities, blah blah.
This really depends on what they manufacture. If you knowingly manufacture something dangerous, say a toy that is a choking hazard for young children, you may be held responsible (if you don't label, etc).
Right... we're talking about products and services that do what they are supposed to (say, knives that cut, cars that go 60mph where you point them, internet connections that carry packets, etc), but which are still sued just for being "involved" in a crime that a criminal chooses to commit. Oily lawyers and dumb juries too often draw the wrong causal relationships.
They would probably manage to get a settlement out of at least one of them too.
Which is why it's so important to have legislation that shields people like manufacturers from the actions of their products' users. It doesn't occur to too many people to sue GM over the actions of a drunk driver, but political correctness makes it attractive to sue, say, gun makers when someone decides to commit a crime. There's legislation pending right now to prevent frivalous suits like that, and we can only hope that equal doses of rationality kick in for router manufacturers, coffeeshop owners, and so on. The "it's everyone's fault except the person who actually did the bad thing" nonsense has got to stop, and there's a little light at the end of the tunnel.
Because if you're a sysadmin that actually lives in the U.S. and gets a paycheck, then you're really being appreciated (as opposed to being outsourced).
Come on, all you operations types: don't act whiny and expect Your Special Day - just be indispensible and be glad every time direct deposit works correctly.
Out of curiosity, what does 'data mining' mean to you?
Two flavors, really. First, a very structured, planned-out-in-advance process that pulls together data from a particularly large, or particularly disparate pile of data, and presents some sort of meaningful insight or digest of that data for an audience (such as management). Secondly, and increasingly the more common usage, would be the ad hoc querying of pre-digested indexes ("cubes") of data that allow the researcher to do some what-iffing while looking for trends or other meaning in data that isn't already bundled up into a pre-fab report of some sort.
The second example still relies (especially when the databases are large) on pre-processing of the source data into an engine that specifically lends itself to that sort of querying. So-called "BI" (business intelligence) products are pretty good at this, but only as good as the well trained (in both the tech and the business use) consultant or pro that sets it up for the mangement to play with.
Classic exmaples... you know how many left handed widgets you sold, and you know to whom you sold them, and you've got some canned report that says what state they're in and when they were purchased, and you've thus got some summary numbers of left-handed widget sales per month, per state. But say you've also got some other data on your customers, and some other data on your stores, and for some reason (say, a marketing campaign), you want to know how many of your widget buyers walk, as opposed to drive, to your stores. You may have all the data, but that's info you're going to have to mine for. If you knew you were going to need that new report every month, you'd approach it the first way. If you knew your managers were going to ask unexpected questions like that all the time, you'd invest in data cube building, and would pile up and pre-process pretty much everything, all the time. Hardware, hardware, hardware! Consultants, consultants, consultants!
You've got to sell a lot of widgets to make paying the big bucks for that horsepower improve your margins by enough to cover the costs. Probably in the big-wheel financial sector, that really works better. Mid sized businesses are just getting around to doing this stuff in depth, and typically still try to can reports using more traditional methods.
Hope that was lucid! It's been a long day.
Instant messaging is in almost every way analogous to telephones. Do you actually use IM? It seems you have a very poor understanding of how it's actually used.
All day. I've got three sessions going right now. Remember: the original headline was about how e-mail is for "old people" and that most teenagers prefer IM over e-mail. My point is that it's a poor comparison - it's apples and oranges. People who prefer not to use e-mail are essentially giving up on a great asynchronous form communication, and are stuck only swapping notes with other people who are hanging out near a computer or other appliance with an IM client.
It's like saying that voice mail is for "old" people, and that the cool kids only use phones when they know that their friends are willing to answer each and every call. It's just not a valid comparison, but to the extent that kids are actually shunning e-mail, they're going to get worse and worse at more thoughtful communication, period. Is that more clear?
It's not the medium, it's the people using it
Right! And the original post was about a study of a group of people who prefer it over e-mail, and this thread went off into a discussion of those people... recall that the original headline referred to e-mail being for "old people" - so you can imagine how the discussion started out a little prickly.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. The tone (and brief substance) of my original comment was inspired by the original posting "E-mail Is For Old People"). Of course, that headline is meant to be provocative, and in the spirit of the tone, I created the "teenager" class, as differentiated from the "old people" class. Anyone who took my comment out of that context wasn't seeing the whole thread, obviously.
I use IM all the time, and in the same general mode that you describe. I think the gist of my comment was simply that any poll indicating a teenage preference for IM over e-mail suggests another step away from thoughtful communication. Yes, a casual conversation should never be subjected to the rules of grammar, etc., but I like to fret just a little about the old slippery slope. The kids that are hooked on it today (at the expense of more structured communication, a little more often) will have a harder time in a professional setting later, and will have difficulty digesting the structurally complex communication that us "old" people will sometimes expect them to take in. It's not about IQ, it's about regular exposure to something a little more complex than is usually seen in a chat. Those opportunities are fading, and some real skills are being lost with them.
As opposed to the addled-brained nitwit running hte country right now?
Luckily the president doesn't run the country. At least he got better grades at Yale than his opponent, but that's another conversation.
No, it's the congress, and the people running the countries business and classrooms that I'm most worried about. Not to mention the ones producing and raising children.
"Ashley u go clean yor room rite now! OMG its teh total sux!"
Cool it, kid. However much you may complain about your peer's crappy writing skills, has anyone ever bitched at you about your having trouble picking up on a little satire? Some sarcasm can be a useful rhetorical device.
I've been communicating through channels like this, and IM, and IRC, and e-mail, and dial-up bulletin boards (WAY before your time) and freakin' stone tablets for 20+ years. The steady decline in communication skills, across the board, has always been apparent... but in the last, say, 3-4 years (coincident with broadband? probably) it's become epidemic.
If you're one of those rare 18-year-olds that can actually string together some meaningful concepts, and use the language with all off its grace, depth and persuasive power, then I couldn't be happier. There are way, way too few of you. I'll even let you slide on "retard," but I'll probably disagree that the crappy typing is age-agnostic. It's definitely worse with the kids coming out of junior high right now than I've ever seen it.
The teenagers who you are talking about will not rule the world in 20 years when people like you finally leave the Earth (thank heaven).
Heaven won't have much to do with it, either way. I do hope you enjoy using the networks and systems that people like me build and maintain every day, though. Regardless, the can't-communicate-to-save-their-lives crowd may not be the ones to directly run the show... but they'll be the ones that vote for the first person cynical enough to use 1337-speak in their political campaign. Watch. It'll happen. It won't be as bad as "Don't vote for my opponent, he is teh suxx0r" but it will be transparent pandering, that's for sure.
We are simply a less vocal minority, mostly because we don't have our heads up our asses like they and you do.
I don't know, you're pretty loud so far. I mean, being a retard with my head up my ass and all, I'm still able to hear you. Any chance that the large majority of the population that's quite a bit older than you would be less inclined to lump you in with the morons of the world if you actually spoke up a little more often, and in a less corrosive way?
Fuck off, grandpa
Way to earn that respect, though! You go, girl.
Wow, I hope I don't have have stuff like that coming out of my ass when I get old.
/. suggests that you're already so far beyond the curve that you can't be considered in the conversation. Not, of course, that there aren't plenty of illiterate dumbasses here, too, but they're not really representational.
You don't count. You're using actual punctuation and two (count 'em TWO) instances of markup in your brief comment. You are not the people I'm talking about, and you know it. If you're not "old" than you have to know who I'm referring to. And you also know that the vast majority of people under 20 (hey, under 25, really) don't have an intellectual interest in sustained, rational, coherent communication in any form, let alone in grammatically reasonable written form. IM is their comfort zone because it's considered acceptable to spell things horribly, and to attempt to express yourself in sequences of half a dozen words (grunts, acronyms, what have you) at a time.
That crowd is allergic to e-mail because the dodgy nature of their writing, and of their ability to convey complex ideas, leaves a trail behind. Sure, some IMs are logged, but most communication sins are washed away as soon as the chat is over. The fact that you're reading and posting on
Of course, there could not possibly be a correlation between the extensive use of IM and the absolutely horrible state of our public education system. Have you ever seen someone raised on IM try to write a coherent longhand letter with proper spelling, structure and punctuation?
omg u r teh sux 4 saing that
Seriously, though, you're not kidding. This isn't just about writing skills, this is about the overall cognitive framework required for critical thought, and for holding something abstract in your brain long enough to communicate it across multiple sentences. It's scary out there: these are the addled-brained nitwits that are going to be running the country in a few years. Of course, really good private schools don't let you get away with communicating that poorly (and neither do the parents who would send them there in the first place), so those will be the people running the country, and the people who can't think clearly are just going to resent it that much more. And thus we get more class envy, and message boards entries about being pwned by corporate amerika blah blah all three of your remaining brain cells are belong to us blah blah.
Wow, I'm in a bad mood!
I don't think anyone really just waits around for idle chat to happen though.
Ah! But that (and back to my original point) is exactly what a lot of teens I've seen actually do. They more or less set aside time expressly for that purpose. Now, that's not much different than meeting up at the mall, etc., to shoot the same BS, but you're doing it from inside your basement... just a different thing, though sort of isolationist.
If I don't feel like talking to anyone, I just throw an away message up, answering only those messages that I want.
But isn't that still only useful if you're hanging around to see who pops up and tries you?
And preferring the phone over writing letters means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the ring of their phone.
Actually, that's what voicemail is for. Phones have remained useful because they have become a mechanism for asynchronous communication, just like e-mail. I answer far fewer phone calls than actually ring on my phone - just like most people I know.
Should we forsake the telephone for the Pony Express? I don't think so
I'd say that the only way that the telephone has remained useful for many businesses is through the presence of voicemail. Most people I know consider the phone to be an aynchronous tool (like e-mail) unless they've explicitly set up a call, or are dealing with someone who, when appearing on their caller id, is one of the few people they want hear from.
I use IM all the time. But only when it's completely convenient. Any real substance still gets sent via e-mail. Can't tell you how often I've sent this IM message: "Check your email. I just sent your [whatever]."
I'm actually not worried about IM "speeding up" the culture, I'm worried about it chaining people to networked appliances so that they can have spontaneous social contact. I think that actually slows us down, not the opposite. The Pony Express arrived when it arrived... but in order to use the telegraph in those same years, someone had to be sitting right there, that moment, in case communication happened. Not the best analogy, but you get my drift. I'm just worried that a lot of kids are going to grow up incapable of thoughtful, asynchronous communication, and minus the cognitive skills that require them to keep social context and history in mind as they write.
Pleased, I am, to know that there is indeed an exception to every rule and/or stereotype. I'll stick to my guns though - the people that said they preferred IM over mail (you're not in that group, it seems) imply, however indirectly, that they prefer to communicate with people that are hovering about in their mutual IM orbit waiting for that sort of communication. I think that just says some things about their priorities and perspective, that's all.
/. - you already have! Welcome to Sherwood Forest.
Congrats on the savings account and exhausted card supply, though. You're obviously a freakish aberration, and will soon be ejected from the tribe. Oh wait, you're on
In other news: You haven't grown out of being a shortsighted twit as much as you think you have
Wow! You have got a fantastic ability to miss the point!
Talking on the phone or face-to-face is probably preferrable to all of this. The IM issue implies a certain amount of hovering around waiting to chit-chat without any of that proximity or intimacy.
I guess I should have added: "no sense of humor" to my list, too, just in case of irritable, perspectiveless responses from anonymous cowards. Oh well, that was short-sighted.
You're completely missing the point. Prefering IM over e-mail implies a preference for lifestyle and culture that has everyone you care about sitting around waiting for you to message them. It's a sign of people with not enough to do.
I use IM all the time. ButI understand the need for it to be used within a certain context. To say that you prefer it over e-mail means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the beep of their IM client.
Don't get me wrong, I was a shortsighted twit when I was a teenager, too. What an ass! But all this does is document that teenagers:
1) Think the whole world revolves around them,
2) that is does, or should do so right now,
3) that anyone who isn't talking to them right now is a loser,
4) and that MTV has further reduced their attention span to that of a gnat.
In other news: teenagers think belts, savings accounts, and employers are also for Old People.
"Timmy, write your grandmother a thank you note for paying your tuition this semester."
"I can't - she's not online. What an old loser!"
I believe it was just about 10 years ago when the consultants pitching my management team on a new accounting system said essentially the same thing, and that was only limited to running a $10M retail business. If we're only now getting around to decision management systems and data mining that hardcore experts have to spoon feed, I think we're a leeeeetle ways more than 10 years from The Internets knowing when I'll have a hankering for General Tso's Chicken.
It's far enough back to not be as critical as it might have been. I know they've got gear on board, and some training, that might allow them to do some repairs along those lines... but they've had entire tiles come away before without trouble... and this time they'll have people onboard the ISS taking hi-res pictures before they dock. The robo-arm is also able now to take a look under the craft, so they've got more information than they've EVER had before (which will probably just freak everyone out - sometimes ignorance really is bliss).
We're talking about several things here. First, the bird that was hit by the EFT (oh well). Second (and is this what everyone's fussing about?) two vent covers on the dorsal section of the shuttle were covered with pieces of Tyvek material (same people that make the waterproofing wrap for houses). Those fabric covers were designed to fall off as soon as the craft started moving. During today's briefing, NASA indicated, IIRC, that the two covers even had small parachutes to let them down slowly. The briefer said that these two bright-colored objects were clearly seen doing just what they were supposed to do: sliding down during the first moment of the launch.
Completely unrelated would be the hunk of whatever it was that sloughed off of the EFT just before separation, but which would have not struck the orbiter. Also unrelated was the apparent sheering off of a small, perhaps 2-3 inch chunk of a tile near the nose gear cover (just aft). They may deploy the arm to check that one out, but the tiles get pitted all the time.