Also- can anyone explain why data is still so damn expensive?
in addition to the observation already made that you simply need a much better plan (i'm on $80USD/month unlimited, and $60USD/month is available), data remains expensive because providing unlimited data is dangerous to most operators' business model. particularly operators looking to exact revenue from content, particularly on-portal content, giving cheap access to the open internet is a big risk. it's a manageable risk - my company, among others, works on ways to deal with it - but it's a risk regardless, and one that many operators are reluctant to take. the most frightening thing in the world to nearly every mobile operator on the planet is becoming simply a bit pipe.
i'm on Verizon's unlimited $80USD/month plan for their high speed (EV-DO) service. this gets me 150-300kbps in most major US metro areas (which, really, includes about half of the east coast from boston to DC), falling back to RTT at about ~60kbps when EV-DO isn't available, anywhere on Verizon's network nation-wide. it's the only internet connection i have when not at work. the price has recently come down to $60USD/month, and sprint has launched a service at $80USD/month unlimited or some lower rate ($40USD/month, i think) for capped usage (with per-MB charges over that). it's certainly steep just looking at the $/kbps compared to other services, but the mobility is a huge win. great service.
so the FBI can contact me and demand i provide them the ability to tap my VoIP communications. well, cool! sure, FBI, just let me know when you'd like to start listening and i'll open up the tap point, then close it when you're done. and wait 'till after to have all the interesting conversations.
(yes, i know that's not really what it's about, but it's how all the summaries read)
let's hear it for broad, sweeping generalizations! yay!
please. i know or have known lots of cops, and not one fits your mold. most cops would rather lock up criminals and leave the innocents alone. they've got a genuinely difficult job to do, and are competing with ever-increasingly advanced criminals. i think the wiretapping laws in the states are significantly more onerous than they should be, but painting cops as a bunch of fascists does absolutely nothing to help that problem, and in fact makes having an intelligent conversation about the issues more difficult. this certainly doesn't qualify as "Insightful".
Military governments never last for long in a modern society.
right. why is that again? when should we expect to see, say, the military governments in Pakistan or Mayanmar (both in Asia, you'll note) to collapse? been hanging out a good while now. and that's even before we get into countries where military-industrial structures exert undue influence over nominally civilian governments (like, say, China or the United States).
Asia does not have arbitrary boundaries. It is a geographical entity with clearly defined natural boundaries that set her apart as a separate continent from Europe and Africa.
really? okay, what are they, then? northern and eastern boundaries are easy, but what about western and southern (particularly south-western)? what's the clean, unequivocal boundary? and if it's anything like as clear as you imply, why do so many people disagree, even over how many continents there are?
Europe is also a geographically distinct entity, and is in the process of unification. To deny the same for Asia is racist.
oh, come off it. even if you were correct - and you most assuredly are not - were i wrong here it would be ignorance of geography, not racism. you're engaging in obvious ad-hominum attacks because the logic of your argument is abysmal. further, no, Europe most certainly does not have any cleaner-defined boundaries. most difficult is the boundary with asia, particularly in russia and turkey, but also problematic are the islands leading into north america and in the arctic circle.
Maybe if you actually WENT TO TIBET...
i would love to. very, very much. provided i could do it legally and without the restrictions typically imposed on visitors by the communist chinese government. i have friends who've been and have at least enough information to know that the oppression is real, even if the extent of it is misreported by the media on both sides. certainly more than your desire to limit it to religious believers.
Yes, the "White Man's Burden". I know of it. Those "half-child-half-devil" "oriental" people. Such savages, who 'kill each other' don't deserve to have their own independent states.
what the hell are you talking about? you got from my statement that asias have a history of killing each other more than europeans have of killing asians to this? you've totally gone. europeans have a longer history of killing europeans than asians do of europeans. it's, um, 'cuase they've been living with each other! i've never made any comments about the comparative merits of the peoples involved or that any shouldn't be able to self-govern.
Christianity is not part of Asian culture.
i'll ignore the fact that Christianity was born in Asia, and concede that most denominations of modern Christianity is much more a product of Rome (the Catholic variety) and north-western Europe (the Protestant varieties). but what about the various Orthodox varieties, which are generally based in Asia, and have been for the past, oh, 1900+ years? and now it gets "good":
Islam is also basically a white man's religion (it originated among Arabs, who are ethnically closer to Caucasians then they are to us) and is alien to Asian culture.
this is amusing since most people i know who you'd likely consider "white" - or would consider themselves such - would find this notion preposterous. and, of course, your racism and arbitrary delineation has just come home. who's the "us" that Arabs are farther from? "Asians"? Um, Arabia is in every classical construction of Asia. you are redefining your definition of things to exclude people you don't like, and declaring that your new definitions are obviously "the right ones".
oh, and the Spanish converted the Philippines, not the Americans. nice mastery of history there.
Yeah, right. An illiterate backward inbred racist redneck more intere
but really: i just don't get it! i've never heard this argument before. in what way do "these people" think the film is anti-christian? anti-semitic, i can understand. and i certainly don't think it gives any sort of useful or complete portrayal of christianity, and therefore makes a poor introduction to the religion, but what's anti-christian about it? even from a fundie's point of view?
There's hardly a distinction between the two, except the artificial one we're taught to answer when asked "what do you do?".
agreed whole-heartedly, and i think you've just helped me realize why i consistently have such a hard time answering that question any time someone asks me. the more interesting - that is, the more complex - my job becomes, the harder it gets. my title at work is even two jobs out of date because we can't come up with any way to summarize what i do that fits on a business card.
don't feed the troll... don't feed the troll... aw, fsck it.
these lines are very clear to you, aren't they? defining who's asian and who's not should be no problem. unfortunately, not everyone faced with this question comes to the same conclusions, so your premise that "a modern civilian government of an Asian country would not engage in random acts of genocide against their own people" is fundamentally flawed: what guarantees who they view as "their own people", and why do you expect that a military junta (which you already conceded was running Japan during WWII) would turn over power willingly to a civilian government? what examples of that happening do you have? (oh, right, that guy in Gladiator)
i'm all for global solidarity. building up to that, things like the EU are great in that they foster increased communication and whatnot. but basing such things on as flimsy a concept of being ethnically "asian" is totally bogus. hell, japanese are genetically more similar to native americans than they are to most asians. what, exactly, is it that's going to unify Han Chinese, Mongolian, Indian, Russian, and Japanese Asians (just to pick a few)? the fact that you (or someone like you) drew some arbitrary boundaries and called that "Asia"? haven't we all seen enough how well arbitrary boundaries work?
is the Chinese occupation of Tibet an example of the sort of "solidarity" you're looking for? forced migrations, exploitation of natural resources, and intentional destruction of distinct cultures? but, of course, China just striving for unity, so it's okay, right?
yeah, if you contrast the horrors committed by the French and the Germans and the British and the Americans against Asians over 300 years to the atrocities committed by just the Japanese over a few years, the later set doesn't compare. but WTF?!? compare like to like! compare the atrocities committed by europeans (heck, we'll lump in the Americans for you) over the past 300 years to the atrocities committed by all Asians against Asians in the same period, and we've got a much more even set. i'd even suggest that the Sino-Russian and Sino-Chinese wars in themselves tip the scales in "favor of" Asian-on-Asian violence. and the Asians have a much longer history of living with each other, trying to work this stuff out... why, exactly, should we expect to see major improvements overnight just because the Japanese get the upper hand? lacking any sort of built-in guarantees, neighboring Asians were right to mistrust Japanese supremacy, just as continental Europeans and British colonies eventually grew to mistrust unmetered British supremacy.
sounds to me like Christians wouldn't be welcomed in your Asian paradise, either. so, what, "sorry, Philippines?" not to mention the tons of Christians spread all over the rest of Asia. and what about Muslims? same religious family, after all, and they've engaged in just as many "absurd religious crusades" (okay, they didn't call 'em "crusades") as their Christian counterparts. but there's plenty of Muslims - whole countries, in fact - in what everyone agrees to be Asia.
and you're relying on anecdotal evidence to prove the "niceness" of Japanese military forces? good lord. have a chat with a WWII-era US Marine. particularly what the japanese did to US Marines with their swords (a large part of why Marines still talk about shooting the guy with the sword first). anecdotal "evidence" is totally useless here (as in most places).
"asian solidarity" as an ideology is somewhere between ignorant and impossible. who's "asian"? the asian american club in my high school got in trouble for trying to exclude indians. how 'bout russians? russia's in asia. but, of course, it's also in europe, with mostly the same people, ethnically. and of course, the belorussians are more or less the same people, certainly closer than Tibetans and Japanese. and how 'bout Asia Minor? they in? including the Jews? and the Turks? even if they end up in the EU? this
The "Byzantines" were a very sophisticated culture, a fusion of Greek and Roman influences
don't forget - and this is very important - that they also incorporated certain eastern (arab, persian) influences. this did wonderful things for their science and medicine (as it did for Venice and Sicily, other contemporary cultures with significant interaction with Asia Minor). things were going along just lovely until the Byzantine emperor at the time made the tremendous strategic mistake in asking the Pope in Rome for help in a comparatively minor territorial issue, thus sparking the influx of (by some estimates, up to) 100,000 mostly english and french western europeans who were, in many ways, barbarians by comparison. the incorporation of islamic-associated elements into Byzantine culture eventually resulted (combined with more mundane political scheming) in the sacking of Constantinople, thus ending the golden age of the region.
Venice on the other hand, was a powerful merchant empire based in their city-state.
which, unfortunately, also made it one of the most corrupt governments on the planet at the time (most western european governments at the time don't qualify as "corrupt" - they were openly dictatorial and absolutist). Mussolini was drawing on a long Italian tradition when he described fascism as the mixing of corporate and state interest. i wish we could manage to remember that lesson.
i couldn't agree more. the war between humanities and sciences is destroying both.
a very good friend of mine is teaching basic composition as part of her english PhD program. her first term, she loved it: obviously simple subject matter, but the students seemed mostly attentive and to want to be there and learn. second term, she was constantly upset by her class. i asked her what had changed. at first, she couldn't pinpoint it but we eventually came to "well, this term most of the kids are engineering students." seems the engineers, in general, didn't care about basic comp, didn't think this "stupid humanities class" was important to them, and were only there because it's in their core curriculum.
i wanted to fly out there and yell at her students. as a professional engineer (having spent time in various subsections of CS engineering), i can say, unequivocally, that the part of my education that's been most important to my professional development and success in my career has been my high school writing program. my school was heavy into writing; in english alone we had a minimum of one paper every two weeks, plus a few every term for history, plus about one a term for science (yeah, we did papers for science), plus whatever you had for language, and often some for electives, too (i tended to take writing-heavy electives). the process of researching your subject (even if that just meant pouring over a single text or notes), synthesizing findings into well-formed ideas, presenting them in a logical manner, and being evaluated on the quality of your conclusion and how you got there is something that the humanities excel at. the critical thinking skills available in these realms are invaluable in technical fields. and the more recent innovations of the PoMo and deconstructionist literary theory and philosophy impart whole new ways of understanding problems. they're helpful in actual programming, but they're critical in things like systems engineering and related fields where understanding complex problems, distilling them to their most salient points, and presenting them in a more manageable form is entirely the point.
i contrast my experiences here with another friend of mine who got through all of high school without ever being made to write a paper. his was (at least at the time, not sure about now) a fairly large, and very weak, public school where the teachers were concerned that they'd not have time to grade papers, but that's simply inexcusable in my book. while he doesn't recognize it as such (thinking, as many do, that writing would have been irrelevant to him), i'm convinced that this has been the source of many of his problems in college and professionally.
in the absense of the influence of the humanities, my experience with current undergraduate students in the sciences is that education in those fields is quickly turning (not everywhere, but on average) into vocational training. even ten years ago, CS education looked more like a liberal arts discipline. you learned some theory, some history, some philosophy of your discipline. more recently, corporations have given large sums of money to educational institutions to turn out programmers who can immediately enter into the workforce knowing [some random language]. when CS students learn C, C++, or Java as a first language, things are seriously buggered.
the humanities, for their part, are being hurt by their distance from majors with more direct "real-world" application. the lit theory and related folks, in particular, are really prone to increasing naval gazing and isolation even from the rest of academia. things like philosophy of science are obviously hurt (and their lack obviously hurts science), but humanities disciplines like linguistics are huge benefits for CS.
i work closely with a group of ~18 CS folks, including application and database developers, QA folks, integration engineers, and systems engineers; we've got as many non-CS undergrad degrees in the group as we do CS undergrad degrees, and i firmly believe that's an important part of our success.
whoa... you think the Passion of the Christ was part of a plot to induce people "into uncontrolled sex, drugs, and 'having fun'"? i'm fairly certain that Gibson didn't intend his film to suggest "christianity is a bogus religion", being something of a fundie himself. that film no more promotes hedonism and promiscuity than this post helps your credibility.
let's not overstate things. $70k/year in Manhattan isn't rolling in the dough, that's for sure, but it's still way above the poverty line. like, tens of thousands of dollars a year above the poverty line. i know people there who've lived much, much closer to the poverty line than $70k/year in Manhattan.
Captain America symbolizes what any one of us could become, if we persevere.
and, y'know, get injected with a super-soldier serum as part of a government experiment to create the ultimate weapon. don't forget the drugs. gotta have the drugs.
Homosexuals sue to get married, which is an act under GOD and not man.
two problems here. first, people are suing for civil marriage rights - the institution recognized by the courts and government. that is not only a institution of mankind, but is even more specific than saying an act under "society" or the like: it's an institution specific to the government in question. to the best of my knowledge, nobody is suing for rights to religious/ceremonial marriage, and certainly the people i know in the gay marriage fight loudly affirm religious institutions right to decide who they'll marry.
second, and more significantly (and thus where i'm really going to start pissing people off), religious marriage is not an act of god, either (or at least it's not understood that way in most denominations). in at least the vast majority of protestant denominations (Catholics differ here, i think), as well as Judaism, the marriage ceremony is a recognition or affirmation of God's blessing, not an event which confers God's blessing. the important theological point here is that God does what He will, blesses who He will, in whatever way He will, regardless of whether any particular collection of humans recognizes it or not. this is true even among denominations which don't recognize homosexual marriage: they simply don't believe God would convey that kind of blessing, or wouldn't make that a blessing in the first place.
sex, incidentally, is probably best understood as an institution of or gift from God; He gave Adam and Eve pretty direct instructions on what they needed to be doing. so most mainstream Christian denominations, which assert both that in marriage they are recognizing - not invoking - God's blessing and that sex is only appropriate within marriage, are making an institution or gift of God subservient to an institution of man. and that's messed up.
...
an executive admitting that file sharers are not the biggest threat... Why are they suing bitorrent users then?
don't make the mistake of assuming that any group of people we can slap a label on are automatically a unified front. this is a common error among all sorts of groups (quick quiz: is "the feminist movement" for or against censorship?). this is a single individual expressing his views. there's no hypocrisy or conflict here unless he is also suing BitTorrent users.
of course, there's also the fact that BitTorrent users are simply easier targets. the real threat - the real pirates - know what they're doing is both wrong and illegal, and - more importantly - know people are after them; they're much more adept at hiding their operations.
I contend that Apple partnered with Cingular because they are the largest carrier in the US...
unlikely. more specifically, it was likely a prerequisite that the carrier in question be one of the big players, but not that they be the largest. Cingular, as you point out, is only the largest because of the AT&T buyout, and the growth curves have them falling behind Verizon again in relatively short order.
...and because Cingular would allow Apple to sell a phone that didn't get it music by buying from an over priced Verizon music store.
this is an excellent point that i've not seen mentioned elsewhere. Verizon is very much into the "walled garden" approach - they want all the content put under their control. GSM operators tend to be more open to decentralized control. still, i suspect the biggest factor was the simple fact that GSM operators generally, and Cingular in particular, get slicker phones much sooner than Verizon, generally. there's no technical reason (i know of) the RAZR couldn't have been a CDMA phone.
there are also some pretty serious questions around Genesi as a company. business practice sorts of questions. i know several people who've tried to order hardware from them and come away thinking the whole thing is basically a scam. at the very least, they bill themselves for much more than they are (although that's true of many companies).
Bell Labs as an organization explicitly went with Lucent. the staff got split, and some - not "most", but some - of the software folks did go to AT&T. the AT&T Labs organization was grown from scratch. AT&T had not originally prepared to have an explicit research arm, considering themselves a service house only, not a product house. they realized as they were splitting things up preparing for the split that there was a lot of R&D going on in the labs that just made more sense in AT&T.
most relevantly, the organization 1127 and a significant majority of the staff went with Lucent.
AT&T Labs' UK research was pretty good; shame when they got shut down.
just for clarity, there hasn't been an AT&T department 1127 since 1996; when Lucent split off, 1127, along with the rest of Bell Labs, went with them. this is a Lucent re-org.
brother, you're not an introvert, you're a misanthrope. the introvert/extrovert is a statement on yourself, mostly about how you interact with people. you're making statements on the relative worth of humanity in general. there's a lot of "hate" and "despise" in your post (including, apparently, hating people who like to have a good time, which is awful telling).
i'm a mild introvert. i can deal with groups and crowds, i'm not crippled by them, but i don't generally enjoy them. but i have lots of friends who're strong extroverts. this works well because they're still good people. stop trying to dump people into neat little categories. i don't know you, so i won't speculate on where the dark emotions come from, but i will recommend you talk to a professional about them. they're not good for you.
...any compressed music will not sound as good as the source.
that is not quite true. i suspect you're talking about mp3 or AAC style compression, in which case, sure, you're right. but lossless compression, such as FLAC or Apple's Lossless Encoder will give compressed audio of identical quality to the source.
Slashdot Mirror
i'm on Verizon's unlimited $80USD/month plan for their high speed (EV-DO) service. this gets me 150-300kbps in most major US metro areas (which, really, includes about half of the east coast from boston to DC), falling back to RTT at about ~60kbps when EV-DO isn't available, anywhere on Verizon's network nation-wide. it's the only internet connection i have when not at work. the price has recently come down to $60USD/month, and sprint has launched a service at $80USD/month unlimited or some lower rate ($40USD/month, i think) for capped usage (with per-MB charges over that). it's certainly steep just looking at the $/kbps compared to other services, but the mobility is a huge win. great service.
so the FBI can contact me and demand i provide them the ability to tap my VoIP communications. well, cool! sure, FBI, just let me know when you'd like to start listening and i'll open up the tap point, then close it when you're done. and wait 'till after to have all the interesting conversations.
(yes, i know that's not really what it's about, but it's how all the summaries read)
let's hear it for broad, sweeping generalizations! yay!
please. i know or have known lots of cops, and not one fits your mold. most cops would rather lock up criminals and leave the innocents alone. they've got a genuinely difficult job to do, and are competing with ever-increasingly advanced criminals. i think the wiretapping laws in the states are significantly more onerous than they should be, but painting cops as a bunch of fascists does absolutely nothing to help that problem, and in fact makes having an intelligent conversation about the issues more difficult. this certainly doesn't qualify as "Insightful".
right. why is that again? when should we expect to see, say, the military governments in Pakistan or Mayanmar (both in Asia, you'll note) to collapse? been hanging out a good while now. and that's even before we get into countries where military-industrial structures exert undue influence over nominally civilian governments (like, say, China or the United States).
really? okay, what are they, then? northern and eastern boundaries are easy, but what about western and southern (particularly south-western)? what's the clean, unequivocal boundary? and if it's anything like as clear as you imply, why do so many people disagree, even over how many continents there are?
oh, come off it. even if you were correct - and you most assuredly are not - were i wrong here it would be ignorance of geography, not racism. you're engaging in obvious ad-hominum attacks because the logic of your argument is abysmal. further, no, Europe most certainly does not have any cleaner-defined boundaries. most difficult is the boundary with asia, particularly in russia and turkey, but also problematic are the islands leading into north america and in the arctic circle.
i would love to. very, very much. provided i could do it legally and without the restrictions typically imposed on visitors by the communist chinese government. i have friends who've been and have at least enough information to know that the oppression is real, even if the extent of it is misreported by the media on both sides. certainly more than your desire to limit it to religious believers.
what the hell are you talking about? you got from my statement that asias have a history of killing each other more than europeans have of killing asians to this? you've totally gone. europeans have a longer history of killing europeans than asians do of europeans. it's, um, 'cuase they've been living with each other! i've never made any comments about the comparative merits of the peoples involved or that any shouldn't be able to self-govern.
i'll ignore the fact that Christianity was born in Asia, and concede that most denominations of modern Christianity is much more a product of Rome (the Catholic variety) and north-western Europe (the Protestant varieties). but what about the various Orthodox varieties, which are generally based in Asia, and have been for the past, oh, 1900+ years? and now it gets "good":
this is amusing since most people i know who you'd likely consider "white" - or would consider themselves such - would find this notion preposterous. and, of course, your racism and arbitrary delineation has just come home. who's the "us" that Arabs are farther from? "Asians"? Um, Arabia is in every classical construction of Asia. you are redefining your definition of things to exclude people you don't like, and declaring that your new definitions are obviously "the right ones".
oh, and the Spanish converted the Philippines, not the Americans. nice mastery of history there.
but really: i just don't get it! i've never heard this argument before. in what way do "these people" think the film is anti-christian? anti-semitic, i can understand. and i certainly don't think it gives any sort of useful or complete portrayal of christianity, and therefore makes a poor introduction to the religion, but what's anti-christian about it? even from a fundie's point of view?
don't feed the troll... don't feed the troll... aw, fsck it.
these lines are very clear to you, aren't they? defining who's asian and who's not should be no problem. unfortunately, not everyone faced with this question comes to the same conclusions, so your premise that "a modern civilian government of an Asian country would not engage in random acts of genocide against their own people" is fundamentally flawed: what guarantees who they view as "their own people", and why do you expect that a military junta (which you already conceded was running Japan during WWII) would turn over power willingly to a civilian government? what examples of that happening do you have? (oh, right, that guy in Gladiator)
i'm all for global solidarity. building up to that, things like the EU are great in that they foster increased communication and whatnot. but basing such things on as flimsy a concept of being ethnically "asian" is totally bogus. hell, japanese are genetically more similar to native americans than they are to most asians. what, exactly, is it that's going to unify Han Chinese, Mongolian, Indian, Russian, and Japanese Asians (just to pick a few)? the fact that you (or someone like you) drew some arbitrary boundaries and called that "Asia"? haven't we all seen enough how well arbitrary boundaries work?
is the Chinese occupation of Tibet an example of the sort of "solidarity" you're looking for? forced migrations, exploitation of natural resources, and intentional destruction of distinct cultures? but, of course, China just striving for unity, so it's okay, right?
yeah, if you contrast the horrors committed by the French and the Germans and the British and the Americans against Asians over 300 years to the atrocities committed by just the Japanese over a few years, the later set doesn't compare. but WTF?!? compare like to like! compare the atrocities committed by europeans (heck, we'll lump in the Americans for you) over the past 300 years to the atrocities committed by all Asians against Asians in the same period, and we've got a much more even set. i'd even suggest that the Sino-Russian and Sino-Chinese wars in themselves tip the scales in "favor of" Asian-on-Asian violence. and the Asians have a much longer history of living with each other, trying to work this stuff out... why, exactly, should we expect to see major improvements overnight just because the Japanese get the upper hand? lacking any sort of built-in guarantees, neighboring Asians were right to mistrust Japanese supremacy, just as continental Europeans and British colonies eventually grew to mistrust unmetered British supremacy.
sounds to me like Christians wouldn't be welcomed in your Asian paradise, either. so, what, "sorry, Philippines?" not to mention the tons of Christians spread all over the rest of Asia. and what about Muslims? same religious family, after all, and they've engaged in just as many "absurd religious crusades" (okay, they didn't call 'em "crusades") as their Christian counterparts. but there's plenty of Muslims - whole countries, in fact - in what everyone agrees to be Asia.
and you're relying on anecdotal evidence to prove the "niceness" of Japanese military forces? good lord. have a chat with a WWII-era US Marine. particularly what the japanese did to US Marines with their swords (a large part of why Marines still talk about shooting the guy with the sword first). anecdotal "evidence" is totally useless here (as in most places).
"asian solidarity" as an ideology is somewhere between ignorant and impossible. who's "asian"? the asian american club in my high school got in trouble for trying to exclude indians. how 'bout russians? russia's in asia. but, of course, it's also in europe, with mostly the same people, ethnically. and of course, the belorussians are more or less the same people, certainly closer than Tibetans and Japanese. and how 'bout Asia Minor? they in? including the Jews? and the Turks? even if they end up in the EU? this
i couldn't agree more. the war between humanities and sciences is destroying both.
a very good friend of mine is teaching basic composition as part of her english PhD program. her first term, she loved it: obviously simple subject matter, but the students seemed mostly attentive and to want to be there and learn. second term, she was constantly upset by her class. i asked her what had changed. at first, she couldn't pinpoint it but we eventually came to "well, this term most of the kids are engineering students." seems the engineers, in general, didn't care about basic comp, didn't think this "stupid humanities class" was important to them, and were only there because it's in their core curriculum.
i wanted to fly out there and yell at her students. as a professional engineer (having spent time in various subsections of CS engineering), i can say, unequivocally, that the part of my education that's been most important to my professional development and success in my career has been my high school writing program. my school was heavy into writing; in english alone we had a minimum of one paper every two weeks, plus a few every term for history, plus about one a term for science (yeah, we did papers for science), plus whatever you had for language, and often some for electives, too (i tended to take writing-heavy electives). the process of researching your subject (even if that just meant pouring over a single text or notes), synthesizing findings into well-formed ideas, presenting them in a logical manner, and being evaluated on the quality of your conclusion and how you got there is something that the humanities excel at. the critical thinking skills available in these realms are invaluable in technical fields. and the more recent innovations of the PoMo and deconstructionist literary theory and philosophy impart whole new ways of understanding problems. they're helpful in actual programming, but they're critical in things like systems engineering and related fields where understanding complex problems, distilling them to their most salient points, and presenting them in a more manageable form is entirely the point.
i contrast my experiences here with another friend of mine who got through all of high school without ever being made to write a paper. his was (at least at the time, not sure about now) a fairly large, and very weak, public school where the teachers were concerned that they'd not have time to grade papers, but that's simply inexcusable in my book. while he doesn't recognize it as such (thinking, as many do, that writing would have been irrelevant to him), i'm convinced that this has been the source of many of his problems in college and professionally.
in the absense of the influence of the humanities, my experience with current undergraduate students in the sciences is that education in those fields is quickly turning (not everywhere, but on average) into vocational training. even ten years ago, CS education looked more like a liberal arts discipline. you learned some theory, some history, some philosophy of your discipline. more recently, corporations have given large sums of money to educational institutions to turn out programmers who can immediately enter into the workforce knowing [some random language]. when CS students learn C, C++, or Java as a first language, things are seriously buggered.
the humanities, for their part, are being hurt by their distance from majors with more direct "real-world" application. the lit theory and related folks, in particular, are really prone to increasing naval gazing and isolation even from the rest of academia. things like philosophy of science are obviously hurt (and their lack obviously hurts science), but humanities disciplines like linguistics are huge benefits for CS.
i work closely with a group of ~18 CS folks, including application and database developers, QA folks, integration engineers, and systems engineers; we've got as many non-CS undergrad degrees in the group as we do CS undergrad degrees, and i firmly believe that's an important part of our success.
whoa... you think the Passion of the Christ was part of a plot to induce people "into uncontrolled sex, drugs, and 'having fun'"? i'm fairly certain that Gibson didn't intend his film to suggest "christianity is a bogus religion", being something of a fundie himself. that film no more promotes hedonism and promiscuity than this post helps your credibility.
let's not overstate things. $70k/year in Manhattan isn't rolling in the dough, that's for sure, but it's still way above the poverty line. like, tens of thousands of dollars a year above the poverty line. i know people there who've lived much, much closer to the poverty line than $70k/year in Manhattan.
mod points? you get mod points?!?
that's it, i quit!
second, and more significantly (and thus where i'm really going to start pissing people off), religious marriage is not an act of god, either (or at least it's not understood that way in most denominations). in at least the vast majority of protestant denominations (Catholics differ here, i think), as well as Judaism, the marriage ceremony is a recognition or affirmation of God's blessing, not an event which confers God's blessing. the important theological point here is that God does what He will, blesses who He will, in whatever way He will, regardless of whether any particular collection of humans recognizes it or not. this is true even among denominations which don't recognize homosexual marriage: they simply don't believe God would convey that kind of blessing, or wouldn't make that a blessing in the first place.
sex, incidentally, is probably best understood as an institution of or gift from God; He gave Adam and Eve pretty direct instructions on what they needed to be doing. so most mainstream Christian denominations, which assert both that in marriage they are recognizing - not invoking - God's blessing and that sex is only appropriate within marriage, are making an institution or gift of God subservient to an institution of man. and that's messed up.
of course, there's also the fact that BitTorrent users are simply easier targets. the real threat - the real pirates - know what they're doing is both wrong and illegal, and - more importantly - know people are after them; they're much more adept at hiding their operations.
um, no?
but, uh, thanks for asking, i guess.
there are also some pretty serious questions around Genesi as a company. business practice sorts of questions. i know several people who've tried to order hardware from them and come away thinking the whole thing is basically a scam. at the very least, they bill themselves for much more than they are (although that's true of many companies).
just FYI, it's "y'all", not "ya'll" - a contraction of "you" and "all".
Bell Labs as an organization explicitly went with Lucent. the staff got split, and some - not "most", but some - of the software folks did go to AT&T. the AT&T Labs organization was grown from scratch. AT&T had not originally prepared to have an explicit research arm, considering themselves a service house only, not a product house. they realized as they were splitting things up preparing for the split that there was a lot of R&D going on in the labs that just made more sense in AT&T.
most relevantly, the organization 1127 and a significant majority of the staff went with Lucent.
AT&T Labs' UK research was pretty good; shame when they got shut down.
just for clarity, there hasn't been an AT&T department 1127 since 1996; when Lucent split off, 1127, along with the rest of Bell Labs, went with them. this is a Lucent re-org.
brother, you're not an introvert, you're a misanthrope. the introvert/extrovert is a statement on yourself, mostly about how you interact with people. you're making statements on the relative worth of humanity in general. there's a lot of "hate" and "despise" in your post (including, apparently, hating people who like to have a good time, which is awful telling).
i'm a mild introvert. i can deal with groups and crowds, i'm not crippled by them, but i don't generally enjoy them. but i have lots of friends who're strong extroverts. this works well because they're still good people. stop trying to dump people into neat little categories. i don't know you, so i won't speculate on where the dark emotions come from, but i will recommend you talk to a professional about them. they're not good for you.