I don't know a lot about auto manufacturers and unions (ignorance has never stopped anyone from posting on slashdot...), but I wonder if unions don't impact quality by requiring more affordable (and perhaps lower quality) designs from the get-go (as you've said) because of the requirement of meeting a certain price point. Since labor costs with unions are, I believe, considerably higher, you've got to cut back somewhere, right? Just a thought or guess or something...
On the other hand, if they choose to hear me out and base their opinions on who I really am, and not the type of shoes I'm wearing, there might be something worth pursuing. But the shoes you wear are part of who you are! As is the way you look, the way you compose yourself, your communication style and a host of other things. Communicating online may offer you more opportunities to communicate with others, but it's not going to change what people really want. I'm not trying to pick on any one person here, but I think it's laughable that people think the online world is somehow superior to the real world and that somehow people lose their prejudices and preferences (there's nothing wrong with preferring things) simply because they're communicating via a different method. When you communicate online, more often than not people aren't basing their opinions of you on who you really are, but rather a construct of you which you've established for communicating online. This isn't deliberate deceit as much as flexing the tremendous amount of control you have over your online persona which is -- even for the most forthright and self-aware -- most definitely not who you really are.
Gone are insecurities about looks, shyness, and other such nonsense. Also eliminated is the abysmal dating experience where you basically spend the night being critiqued. Did you hold open the door? Did you stand too close? Not close enough? You make HOW MUCH for a living? Rather than face these typical, and often uncomfortable situations, you can simply talk with someone and really get to know who they are on the inside. All jokes aside, that's really what matters. The judgments aren't gone -- they're just (as others have hinted at) different. So someone may not have to worry about holding the door open (that's a really tough one, too) or making a reasonable wage (at least, not for now), but it's not like just because they're "online" nobody's going to judge them on the way they communicate or the way they look in their carefully selected profile picture. Online communication isn't some utopia that eliminates all the bad facets of human nature. And the reason people make judgments on those things is because those are the things people care about. The method and medium of communication isn't going to change that.
Yeah. It's a tough balancing act, you're right about that.
I still have a lot of confidence in these collective united states, not meaning their government bodies or institutions as much as a collective people and national "being". Whether it's greed or work ethic I couldn't tell you, but we've (I'm from the US) got a knack for working through tough situations creatively to come out ahead or on par. My biggest fear is that the government and big influential social institutions (mainstream media for one) will stifle free thinkers, which won't allow us the same opportunities as we had in the past to live out those freedoms guaranteed in the US and states' Constitutions. When the law and ill-conceived social constructs have so clamped down that individuals cannot operate under the freedoms outlined in these documents, well, that's when things REALLY start to go down the tubes.
Why in the name of everything good and true are the parent and the two other previous posts like it (addressing the issue of competition) modded troll? WHY?! SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY? Seriously. Why? Please. Please. PLEASE.
You're operating under the mistaken principle that change is always good -- which it is not. By refusing to vote for an incumbent, you may be eliminating the best candidate. If spending is your concern, you should choose the candidate that votes most according to the manner of spending that you deem appropriate. What if the incumbent has a tremendous track record and the challenger is a total putz?
Also, it's important to note that "deindustrialization" is a result of a freer market, a maturing economy and industrial/technological advances. It's not like the United States had a formal plan to just stop its big industry. It has just maintained a relatively free market where companies and individuals can decide, within the framework of the law, how and with whom they want to do business. If that means making parts for a car in Mexico for costs reasons because you have to give a huge chunk of the retail price of the car to ridiculous unions with whom you made equally ridiculous deals, then that's the way it goes. If that means you want to have some pollutant-spewing factory in China make the cloth for your clothes, then that's the way it goes.
So should the framework of the law be changed? I don't think we need any more protectionist schemes from the US government, unless we're willing to deal with the fact that some, if not all, of those schemes will drive costs through the roof. Even then, the reintroduction of big industry wouldn't necessarily guarantee a reversion to the US's prior industrial status, nor would it mean that reattaining that status would guarantee the same things that it used to. The world's changing. There are many hard-and-fast economic, social and political rules that allow us to learn from history, but there's very little chance that we should meddle just to make things 100% like they used to be either.
If people get pissed at youtube, we can start freetube, with no ads. Sure, but you said yourself that there's no free lunch. So if you somehow catch lightning in a bottle and pull a bunch of users away from youtube for freetube, then you'll eventually have to resort to using advertising (or something else annoying) to pay for it.
And hey, as a perk, if
I ever find myself on the run from the police (for example, after someone
steals my identity and gets me flagged as a major contributor to Al Qaida)[...]
If this happens to you, I'd suggest definitely not running away and hiding.
Truth is pipedream. For the most part truth is unattainable. It always relies on someones perception of events. Even if verified from other sources you cannot know for sure. I long ago accepted that truth does not exist, there is only the accepted "truth" and what I see, and I can't trust either.
First you use the "for the most part" disclaimer -- which is a good one, in my opinion. And then, in your next sentence, you use the word "always", which is troubling.
I think most people understand and agree with your point, but there're some truths that are pretty inescapable. There are certain things that just are, and denying them is pure foolishness, even if just in the context of someone doing the look-how-smart-i-am semantic hokey-pokey with them to (try to) impress people on slashdot. Life isn't the Matrix, you can't do the building jump. The spoon is really there -- if you disagree, then would you let me gouge out your eye with it? And so on. Truth is only bendable to a degree, then it snaps. Its degree of bendability would be an interesting discussion, I suppose.
My point is that the only reason you find it "insightful" is because you're a non Christian (I'm assuming) living in the bible belt, not because it's particularly insightful. What new insight did the post bring to you? None. People have been saying the same thing for more than a few years. Ask John Fricking Lennon. Asking people, whatever their belief is, to simply just take that belief less seriously, is not only not insightful, it's ridiculous and impossible.
Think of it another way. Like take a political statement on slashdot. Posts get modded insightful all the time because they maintain the US should pull out of Iraq. Conversely, other posts get modded insightful because they provide evidence contrary to that point of view. And yet, are either really that insightful? I maintain that the bar for "insightfulness" is pretty low.
I know this is tough for some people to believe, but my beef here isn't with anyone's opinion, your opinion included. I disagree with people, but can recognize (yes, often very reluctantly) that they've got some good insights. In this situation, that mod just caught me at a bad time in terms of my disposition towards how slashdot's moderation effectively works. Few people mod based on the actual definitions of the terms and more so on agreement or disagreement, so why not just make it what it really is? A voting system Look at your responses to me. You're talking about your view of religion, not whether or not the comment was actually insightful. That's the key to me.
Thanks for responding. Seriously. It is good to know people are reading and thinking, even when we don't see eye to eye.
...the differences between using Tivo and using a cable company's DVR. Like can I transfer shows off of either? Or are my shows always locked up on the box for either one anyways? Stuff like that.
And yes, I am too lazy (or is it busy?) to look for myself.
This type of moderation is the kind that makes me think moderation doesn't work. Why not just make it a voting system, up or down? That's what it is anyways. You might agree with the parent here, but to label it insightful sets the bar pretty low for insight. Pathetic foolishness.
1) Throw out the baby with the bathwater and pretend it's still 1996 . . . so that you can increase the number of impossible-to-please-anyways slashdot ACs that visit your site.
A solid state drive has no moving parts and is constructed entirely of flash memory chips, so no amount of bumping, bashing or general notebook abuse is going to affect your data I disagree with this. Bumping maybe. General notebook abuse yes. But bashing? My phone is a solid state appliance too and I'm not going to go around bashing it into or with anything.
... and like a zillion other sites I have to put up with.
If by "put up with" you mean putting up with their mere existence, then I guess I see what you mean. Otherwise, nobody's making you visit them or anything, right?
I go through this because (1) the only true way to make quality software is to put forth the effort to design, test, and maintain the code from the beginning, and (2) I never expect any language to handle errors correctly.
I try to go through this too, but then I run into one point you've missed -- which is:
3) some tool of a PM or "business sponsor" or whatever-that-company-may-call-it makes it impossible to do 1 and 2. And because of their poor planning and ridiculous timelines, the obvious choices of where to cut corners fall under proper design, testing and error handling.
Of course, I could try to be a tough guy and refuse to turn the work over until I get what I want from them, but I prefer receiving a paycheck over doing things the "right" way.
Now, in true slashdot fashion, we'll get about 300 comments filled with expletives as if that somehow makes a point. Yeah - awesome - you really showed them, tough guy! And you're ultra smart too!
Anyhow, just a reminder to read up on how the legislative branch works, if you have a chance. Note this from TFA: "But CDT also points out that if Senator Rockefeller's bill becomes law[...]". This suggests that, strangely enough, a committee in the Senate "passing" (questionable word choice by "pressesc.com") a bill isn't the same as it actually becoming a law! Weird, huh? There's a big difference. Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't care about it; just that it's not a law right now.
What I'd be more interested in (instead of a bunch of whining) would be knowing where most people think the line should be drawn. Obviously there are extremes on both ends, but I think most would agree that a line needs to be drawn at least somewhere(?) Where is that line?
Perhaps what one actually does in their life is more reflective of what someone actually is than a term by which that person chooses (or picks from a list, as in the case of some surveys) for the purposes of self-labeling. I could say I play halfback for the Chicago Bears, but my claim doesn't make it so. Or, perhaps more pertinent to slashdot, I could say I have a wife or girlfriend, but my statement of such does not make it true. Or, from a different perspective, I could say I suffer from cluster headaches, but do I really know what that means?.
The manner by which these things is determined is whether or not I actually meet the "criteria" (if you will) defined for those things. I don't carry the ball for or get paid by the Bears. I do have a marriage license and tax returns that could be used as evidence that I'm married, not to mention lots of friends and family that would vouch for me. What I call a cluster headache, might be something I picked up watching TV although I've never received an actual diagnosis.
A short, but perhaps unpopular, way to express this would be that if you say you're a Christian, but don't live like one, then you're not one. The obvious challenge with this statement then becomes determining how a Christian actually lives. Traditionally, evangelicals would say the criteria are laid out in the bible. This is what I believe, for what it's worth. I recognize this only increases debate for some folks (for instance: What if there's debate about one of these criteria in the bible? Who gets to decide then?), but it's a debate for another time and place.
Finally, to merge two responses into one, I agree about the lack of persecution of Christians in the US (especially if you exclude mocking as a form of persecution, which -- if you want to be intellectually honest -- could indeed be included as a form of "persecution" based on some, but not all, so-called hate speech laws); however, you'd be naive not to recognize that persecution of Christians throughout the world is not small and isolated. Why this is the case is yet another debate.
...for a better "nutshell" summary than the one in TFA. I read the whole thing, the actual whole thing, including all the comments with the bad avatar-like photos, and I'm still confused about why this Holt Bill is so bad. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying I don't know. Most of all, I don't particularly trust the summary of someone who then goes on to argue against a bill, mainly by just repeating the same comments over and over again with no deeper explanation.
When I was like 10 I accidentally dumped a nuke in my friend's swimming pool. I tried to play it off like it was this other kid who nobody liked, but everyone knew it was me.
I'm a bit defensive on this one, too -- because I have a BA (not a BS) and work in an industry where there are many with formal CS or Math/Engineering degrees, obtained during a time period when math was indeed the focus -- and yet I don't find them particularly skilled or effective at the type of work that we need to do. They understand a lot more of math than I, but many are poor communicators, lack business savvy, are poor teachers and are terrible overthinkers. Maybe there needs to be new types of differentiation while earning a degree of the types of ways you intend to use that degree, which could determine different "tracks" you could take, similar to how many Communications departments function (mass communications, interpersonal, rhetoric, etc). I do use "maths" (hate that word), but I find those things I learned for my BA (Mass Communications) sometimes exponentially more useful to get my work done, especially given the availability of concepts/code/information that I can steal/copy from others.
Not to jump in the way of someone else's argument, but mod points aren't always available when you'd like to use them. And there isn't a mod for "masturbatory", either.
Thing is, I agree with your points, but not really the manner in which you've delivered them. The dumbing down of society isn't limited to computer science (look at the way people write, for example), but when bringing this to people's attention, there's always the risk that your argument will come out in a sort of "I'm-so-smart-and-I-and-my-ideas-add-so-much-value -to-this-earth-...-why-can't everyone-just-see-and-do-things-like-I-do" way. I think that's how some folks would interpret your comment.
Secondly, I feel, after reading your comment, as if you're indicating that everyone must be an expert at something in order to be able to utilize that something in a practical fashion, which moves the argument beyond supporting the growth of intellectual qualities in any scientific field and into little more than an elitist club of balding, very intelligent guys that don't have wives or girlfriends, but still vehemently insist they do on slashdot.
To use a decent -- but not great -- analogy, I am glad that I don't need to have 15 years of training to do the trim work on my house. Could a master craftsman do the work better? Yeah. Much better. But that would also cost me a lot more money. I've got tools now that make it easier for a simple DIYer to do the work, and I can do the work to the level that someone that would buy a house in my price range would expect. So am I going to say there's no need for master craftsman anymore, that the expert details they learn only by doing things for years, need not be taught? No. But I'm also not going to say everyone needs to be taught those details if they want to be involved in similar types of projects.
There's value in both breadth and depth of knowledge. It's not like it's mutually exclusive.
Well said. All in all, my focus is the relativity of the words "can" and "afford". Just because we could make something work, as you've said, does not mean that it'd be wise to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know a lot about auto manufacturers and unions (ignorance has never stopped anyone from posting on slashdot...), but I wonder if unions don't impact quality by requiring more affordable (and perhaps lower quality) designs from the get-go (as you've said) because of the requirement of meeting a certain price point. Since labor costs with unions are, I believe, considerably higher, you've got to cut back somewhere, right? Just a thought or guess or something...
Yeah. It's a tough balancing act, you're right about that.
I still have a lot of confidence in these collective united states, not meaning their government bodies or institutions as much as a collective people and national "being". Whether it's greed or work ethic I couldn't tell you, but we've (I'm from the US) got a knack for working through tough situations creatively to come out ahead or on par. My biggest fear is that the government and big influential social institutions (mainstream media for one) will stifle free thinkers, which won't allow us the same opportunities as we had in the past to live out those freedoms guaranteed in the US and states' Constitutions. When the law and ill-conceived social constructs have so clamped down that individuals cannot operate under the freedoms outlined in these documents, well, that's when things REALLY start to go down the tubes.
Why in the name of everything good and true are the parent and the two other previous posts like it (addressing the issue of competition) modded troll? WHY?! SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY? Seriously. Why? Please. Please. PLEASE.
You're operating under the mistaken principle that change is always good -- which it is not. By refusing to vote for an incumbent, you may be eliminating the best candidate. If spending is your concern, you should choose the candidate that votes most according to the manner of spending that you deem appropriate. What if the incumbent has a tremendous track record and the challenger is a total putz?
Also, it's important to note that "deindustrialization" is a result of a freer market, a maturing economy and industrial/technological advances. It's not like the United States had a formal plan to just stop its big industry. It has just maintained a relatively free market where companies and individuals can decide, within the framework of the law, how and with whom they want to do business. If that means making parts for a car in Mexico for costs reasons because you have to give a huge chunk of the retail price of the car to ridiculous unions with whom you made equally ridiculous deals, then that's the way it goes. If that means you want to have some pollutant-spewing factory in China make the cloth for your clothes, then that's the way it goes.
So should the framework of the law be changed? I don't think we need any more protectionist schemes from the US government, unless we're willing to deal with the fact that some, if not all, of those schemes will drive costs through the roof. Even then, the reintroduction of big industry wouldn't necessarily guarantee a reversion to the US's prior industrial status, nor would it mean that reattaining that status would guarantee the same things that it used to. The world's changing. There are many hard-and-fast economic, social and political rules that allow us to learn from history, but there's very little chance that we should meddle just to make things 100% like they used to be either.
Just my 2 cents.
If this happens to you, I'd suggest definitely not running away and hiding.
First you use the "for the most part" disclaimer -- which is a good one, in my opinion. And then, in your next sentence, you use the word "always", which is troubling.
I think most people understand and agree with your point, but there're some truths that are pretty inescapable. There are certain things that just are, and denying them is pure foolishness, even if just in the context of someone doing the look-how-smart-i-am semantic hokey-pokey with them to (try to) impress people on slashdot. Life isn't the Matrix, you can't do the building jump. The spoon is really there -- if you disagree, then would you let me gouge out your eye with it? And so on. Truth is only bendable to a degree, then it snaps. Its degree of bendability would be an interesting discussion, I suppose.
Am I "grossly obese"?
No - you're just the billionth person to make the same comment about BMI.
My point is that the only reason you find it "insightful" is because you're a non Christian (I'm assuming) living in the bible belt, not because it's particularly insightful. What new insight did the post bring to you? None. People have been saying the same thing for more than a few years. Ask John Fricking Lennon. Asking people, whatever their belief is, to simply just take that belief less seriously, is not only not insightful, it's ridiculous and impossible.
Think of it another way. Like take a political statement on slashdot. Posts get modded insightful all the time because they maintain the US should pull out of Iraq. Conversely, other posts get modded insightful because they provide evidence contrary to that point of view. And yet, are either really that insightful? I maintain that the bar for "insightfulness" is pretty low.
I know this is tough for some people to believe, but my beef here isn't with anyone's opinion, your opinion included. I disagree with people, but can recognize (yes, often very reluctantly) that they've got some good insights. In this situation, that mod just caught me at a bad time in terms of my disposition towards how slashdot's moderation effectively works. Few people mod based on the actual definitions of the terms and more so on agreement or disagreement, so why not just make it what it really is? A voting system Look at your responses to me. You're talking about your view of religion, not whether or not the comment was actually insightful. That's the key to me.
Thanks for responding. Seriously. It is good to know people are reading and thinking, even when we don't see eye to eye.
...the differences between using Tivo and using a cable company's DVR. Like can I transfer shows off of either? Or are my shows always locked up on the box for either one anyways? Stuff like that.
And yes, I am too lazy (or is it busy?) to look for myself.
And the same for this one's (my own post) parent.
This type of moderation is the kind that makes me think moderation doesn't work. Why not just make it a voting system, up or down? That's what it is anyways. You might agree with the parent here, but to label it insightful sets the bar pretty low for insight. Pathetic foolishness.
1) Throw out the baby with the bathwater and pretend it's still 1996 . . . so that you can increase the number of impossible-to-please-anyways slashdot ACs that visit your site.
Yeah - that sounds like a real good plan.
If by "put up with" you mean putting up with their mere existence, then I guess I see what you mean. Otherwise, nobody's making you visit them or anything, right?
I try to go through this too, but then I run into one point you've missed -- which is:
3) some tool of a PM or "business sponsor" or whatever-that-company-may-call-it makes it impossible to do 1 and 2. And because of their poor planning and ridiculous timelines, the obvious choices of where to cut corners fall under proper design, testing and error handling.
Of course, I could try to be a tough guy and refuse to turn the work over until I get what I want from them, but I prefer receiving a paycheck over doing things the "right" way.
Now, in true slashdot fashion, we'll get about 300 comments filled with expletives as if that somehow makes a point. Yeah - awesome - you really showed them, tough guy! And you're ultra smart too!
Anyhow, just a reminder to read up on how the legislative branch works, if you have a chance. Note this from TFA: "But CDT also points out that if Senator Rockefeller's bill becomes law[...]". This suggests that, strangely enough, a committee in the Senate "passing" (questionable word choice by "pressesc.com") a bill isn't the same as it actually becoming a law! Weird, huh? There's a big difference. Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't care about it; just that it's not a law right now.
What I'd be more interested in (instead of a bunch of whining) would be knowing where most people think the line should be drawn. Obviously there are extremes on both ends, but I think most would agree that a line needs to be drawn at least somewhere(?) Where is that line?
Perhaps what one actually does in their life is more reflective of what someone actually is than a term by which that person chooses (or picks from a list, as in the case of some surveys) for the purposes of self-labeling. I could say I play halfback for the Chicago Bears, but my claim doesn't make it so. Or, perhaps more pertinent to slashdot, I could say I have a wife or girlfriend, but my statement of such does not make it true. Or, from a different perspective, I could say I suffer from cluster headaches, but do I really know what that means?.
The manner by which these things is determined is whether or not I actually meet the "criteria" (if you will) defined for those things. I don't carry the ball for or get paid by the Bears. I do have a marriage license and tax returns that could be used as evidence that I'm married, not to mention lots of friends and family that would vouch for me. What I call a cluster headache, might be something I picked up watching TV although I've never received an actual diagnosis.
A short, but perhaps unpopular, way to express this would be that if you say you're a Christian, but don't live like one, then you're not one. The obvious challenge with this statement then becomes determining how a Christian actually lives. Traditionally, evangelicals would say the criteria are laid out in the bible. This is what I believe, for what it's worth. I recognize this only increases debate for some folks (for instance: What if there's debate about one of these criteria in the bible? Who gets to decide then?), but it's a debate for another time and place.
Finally, to merge two responses into one, I agree about the lack of persecution of Christians in the US (especially if you exclude mocking as a form of persecution, which -- if you want to be intellectually honest -- could indeed be included as a form of "persecution" based on some, but not all, so-called hate speech laws); however, you'd be naive not to recognize that persecution of Christians throughout the world is not small and isolated. Why this is the case is yet another debate.
...for a better "nutshell" summary than the one in TFA. I read the whole thing, the actual whole thing, including all the comments with the bad avatar-like photos, and I'm still confused about why this Holt Bill is so bad. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying I don't know. Most of all, I don't particularly trust the summary of someone who then goes on to argue against a bill, mainly by just repeating the same comments over and over again with no deeper explanation.
When I was like 10 I accidentally dumped a nuke in my friend's swimming pool. I tried to play it off like it was this other kid who nobody liked, but everyone knew it was me.
I'm a bit defensive on this one, too -- because I have a BA (not a BS) and work in an industry where there are many with formal CS or Math/Engineering degrees, obtained during a time period when math was indeed the focus -- and yet I don't find them particularly skilled or effective at the type of work that we need to do. They understand a lot more of math than I, but many are poor communicators, lack business savvy, are poor teachers and are terrible overthinkers. Maybe there needs to be new types of differentiation while earning a degree of the types of ways you intend to use that degree, which could determine different "tracks" you could take, similar to how many Communications departments function (mass communications, interpersonal, rhetoric, etc). I do use "maths" (hate that word), but I find those things I learned for my BA (Mass Communications) sometimes exponentially more useful to get my work done, especially given the availability of concepts/code/information that I can steal/copy from others.
Not to jump in the way of someone else's argument, but mod points aren't always available when you'd like to use them. And there isn't a mod for "masturbatory", either.
Thing is, I agree with your points, but not really the manner in which you've delivered them. The dumbing down of society isn't limited to computer science (look at the way people write, for example), but when bringing this to people's attention, there's always the risk that your argument will come out in a sort of "I'm-so-smart-and-I-and-my-ideas-add-so-much-value -to-this-earth-...-why-can't everyone-just-see-and-do-things-like-I-do" way. I think that's how some folks would interpret your comment.
Secondly, I feel, after reading your comment, as if you're indicating that everyone must be an expert at something in order to be able to utilize that something in a practical fashion, which moves the argument beyond supporting the growth of intellectual qualities in any scientific field and into little more than an elitist club of balding, very intelligent guys that don't have wives or girlfriends, but still vehemently insist they do on slashdot.
To use a decent -- but not great -- analogy, I am glad that I don't need to have 15 years of training to do the trim work on my house. Could a master craftsman do the work better? Yeah. Much better. But that would also cost me a lot more money. I've got tools now that make it easier for a simple DIYer to do the work, and I can do the work to the level that someone that would buy a house in my price range would expect. So am I going to say there's no need for master craftsman anymore, that the expert details they learn only by doing things for years, need not be taught? No. But I'm also not going to say everyone needs to be taught those details if they want to be involved in similar types of projects.
There's value in both breadth and depth of knowledge. It's not like it's mutually exclusive.
Well said. All in all, my focus is the relativity of the words "can" and "afford". Just because we could make something work, as you've said, does not mean that it'd be wise to do so.