combined with all the hate and general unity by consumers against the big movie and music industry,
The problem is, there is not general unity by consumers against those industries. There is definitely unity on Slashdot and other tech-savvy sites, but walk into any Best Buy (or any other store) and look at the dozens of people perusing the DVD & CD sections. If the Vista DRM cripples legitimately purchased media you will see public backlash but as long as the public doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes they won't care until it affects them.
I didn't read the article, but I don't think it matters for this reply.
Start taxing domain names at 50 bucks a year and the use the money to go after the spammers and other such scum.
Based on the blurb - a team of 4 people manages 300k domains generating $20mil revenue from the Caymans. Even with a $50/domain-year tax they'd probably still be profitable (though not as wildly so). Even if you increase the domain tax higher you end up just alienating more "average Joe" users from joining the web.
The real answer is much more complex. Realistically it shouldn't matter if somebody owns slahsdot.org or gogle.com just to put ads up. Those aren't the sites people intend to visit so if they find it by mistake they should use their Back button. If they choose to click an ad link and generate revenue for the parker, more power to 'em. Since the alternative is a "server not found" error I don't see the harm. I'll admit it's extremely frustrating to want to register a "more legit" domain and have a squatter in the way, but to me that appears to be a different philosophical problem.
I'd wouldn't mind seeing a requirement that domain names can't be resold for more than $50 (or whatever) to prevent people from registering reallycooldomain.com in the hopes of selling to Really Cool Company for a king's ransom without preventing people from making ad money on silly typos. If your intent is to generate revenue through ads, I can't hate your business model but if your intent is to hold a domain ransom as a speculative investment I get annoyed. I'm not sure why I don't hate people who buy real estate in emerging development areas...
I suppose the free flow of the internet will eventually correct the problem. As soon as companies stop paying ransoms to squatters and as soon as dyslexic browsers stop clicking their accidentally-found links I would think these squatter/parking companies will start to disappear. As long as it's profitable, they'll fight to keep their businesses alive.
Welcome to KCAL 9. We're sorry we had to cut away from this evening's high speed pursuit but we have received word that Ventura is experiencing scattered sprinkles. Johnny Mountain is down in the trenches, reporting from the eye of the storm. We'll hear from him after this break, if he's still alive!
Sorry, wasn't trying to undermine your point, just throwing it out there. My GSM phone has worked everywhere I've ever been except Japan. My CDMA phone stays at home when I go on trips. Verizon sucks...
That's as much a function of having a GSM phone as having a carrier with international agreements. The best thing about having a GSM phone is that when you go international you can pop the SIM out and buy a SIM card with a local number and prepaid minutes. Generally this will provide you with free incoming calls when your friends/family at home call you as well as provide you with cheaper outbound calls.
Ok, about the clothing thing - I'll concede part of the point. Yes, it may be harder for you to find stuff since fashion trends are a lot more dynamic for women than men *but* that's not a get-out-of-jail free card. The onus is still on the employee to find clothes that are appropriate for the workplace no matter how difficult those clothes are to find.
Is there *any* professional situation where it's appropriate for a supervisor to use namecalling?
My example wasn't particularly namecalling though it could be deemed "insensitive". Namecalling would always be considered unprofessional as a supervisor should be above such behavior, but simply being insensitive is sometimes just a part of business. Business isn't about being cuddly, cute, and likeable, it's about getting the job done.
If men put up with that kind of response, I feel sorry for them. I wouldn't put up with that from *any* supervisor, regardless of gender.
And if Jackie Robinson had never put up with abuse how much longer would it have taken for blacks to become common baseball players? I'm not justifying the abuse that was given, but his tolerance certainly opened the door for more players and today the game is different and better because of his (and others') efforts. Remember, you things change from within and from the top-down. Every time a boss is insensitive or discriminatory and people get huffy and quit "because they shouldn't have to put up with that", nothing changes. I've put up with a fair share of abuse and I make sure I don't pass it down to the people below me. I get further for my tolerance and try to leave a better environment in my wake. My gripe with most minority-discrimination complaints is that nobody wants to bite the bullet, nobody wants to be "the example". Most seem content to bitch about how screwed-up the system is and wait for it to change so they can become a part of the better system. Sure, standing outside the system you can make small changes, but your contribution will never be as great as it would be if you tolerated the current system until you were in a position to make large changes to it.
And if it happens to be much rarer to find the "right" company for people of one gender than the other, that's just tough luck, right?
I'm not saying bigotry doesn't exist, but sometimes YES it is just tough luck. I'm a young white male and there have been many situations where I had personality conflicts with my bosses. It's resulted in me quitting (twice), getting fired (once), and otherwise making my jobs more difficult. I've also worked with women put in the same situations who went through the same personality conflicts I went through who were convinced their difficulties were due to gender-discrimination. I know this doesn't represent all women, but it certainly represents the most vocal ones I've encountered.
Wearing skirts and makeup is not "dressing and acting like a ditzy blonde." Yet it certainly cuts down on the number of people who will trust you with their computer.
Are your skirts cut above the knee? Do your blouses show cleavage? It is perfectly possible to dress professionally and attractively (ie. not "manly") without being distracting. I'm not making an unreasonable assumption, I have no idea how you dress, but if guys are going "bazonkers" when you walk by I assume you are giving them some reason to. Maybe you're just an amazing knock-out, maybe you're just overly self-concious, maybe you've worked with complete savages, I can't tell from this side of the keyboard.
Sorry, pronoun issues. I was saying that women are not a typical part of the "natural habitat" of male tech employees.
Yeah, I know. I was just having some fun because this is stupid slashdot and I didn't want to write an entire serious post. I would've included a winky emoticon if it wouldn't have resulted in unrelenting flames of wrath from the flocks of nerds circling above.
Yep, got your number now... "providing a non-hostile work environment"?
Believe it or not, I'm on your side. I do think companies should provide a non-hostile working environment, but how do you define "hostile". Woman gets passed over for promotion that goes to man, is that automatically hostile? Man looks at woman's legs as she walks by, hostile? Supervisor tells supervisee "stop being a wimp" when it complains about something. If that's a man-to-man conversation it's not an issue but if it's man-to-woman it's asking for a discrimination suit.
I'd like to think the free market will eventually weed out bigotry on it's own. Smart companies will hire the most qualified employees regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, creed, sexuality, etc. The best & the brightest will survive and the self-hampered bigoted companies would not. But that's my little unreality...
I knew there were some offerings but wasn't aware it was that advanced. My unit never registers as connected to a 3G network (could be a problem between Cingular & Verizon) and I certainly never get very fast data transfer speeds compared to when I'm overseas. Granted, this is strictly anecdotal and not at all a scientific measurement, just my own experience.
* People condescend to them and assume they can't possibly do the job
The same goes for any job. If you are new, you are low-(wo)man on the totem-pole. That's life. If you've proved your merits and still get demeaned, you're at the wrong company. This has nothing to do with being female, it's common business-sense: an employee is always best served at a company that appreciates its talents.
* It's assumed that any woman who can hack it must look like a man
Not necessarily, but dressing & acting like a ditzy blonde is not a good way to get ahead in a tech field. Similarly, dressing & acting like a nerd is not going to help a model get on the catwalk.
* Their co-workers all go bazonkers the second a woman walks in the room, because they never get to see them in their natural habitat
Did you just say that the workplace is not a natural habitat for women? I know that's not what you meant, just having some fun. Honestly, I've never seen co-workers "go bazonkers" if a woman is professionally dressed, no matter how often that co-worker is exposed to women "in their natural habitat". If you truly maintain yourself in a dignified & professional manner and people are going "bazonkers" it's a symptom of a larger problem in that workplace.
We all know the world is not perfect, but it is getting better. The conditions you describe are not exclusive to the tech industry nor are they female-specific issues. There are obstacles for all workers to overcome whether it's age, gender, race, education, language, etc. If you expect the world to bend over for you just because we need to "balance" demographics in the workplace, fuck off and go home.
Women, just like all other workers, need to come to work ready to work with no expection that bosses & policies will cater to their every whim. Work hard and earn respect as an individual instead of relying on the system to provide it for you. Whether you want to believe it or not, it is an uphill battle for all but very few and those very few weren't chosen by gender but by economics.
It really does suck that you got passed over for a promotion. It's happened to me too, but I didn't have an easy "because I'm female/black/gay" excuse. You may be very good at what you do, I don't know. If you're that good and that unappreciated you should find a new company. Maybe you feel this is the wrong move because it doesn't fix the problem, but silently enduring the problem is not going to solve it either. If the industry is as hostile as you think it is, I would think it would be prime-time to start a women-oriented tech company. Similar to the "Curves" explosion on the gym scene.
Again, why was this not noted all over the blogosphere? I'm guessing that because it is expected from Fox News.
I doubt most people would agree that omitting a detail is as egregious as completely fabricating a detail. Neither scenario is acceptable or "morally right", but there's not a big "gotcha" moment for the bloggers to say "see, you forgot to mention detail X" vs. "you bastards completely doctored this photo, look at my photoshop comparisons".
I do think it's reprehensible how biased the "news" companies are, but I also think it's up to the people to sort through the bias and form opinions. According to Wikipedia, the term Yellow Journalism was coined in 1897; 110 years ago people were dealing with the same issue! At least without government regulation there is no seal or certificate saying "this news is not biased". Can you imagine how much worse it would be if networks could make biased statements that are "Certified Objective"? And let's not pretend that government regulation will strip the bias from the media, it will always be there in one form or another.
You don't have to do everything first...you just have to do it better.
The benchmark for "better" seems to be all over the place. Compared to most mobile-phones on the market in the US, the iPhone definitely seems to be revolutionary. Compared to most true smart-phones, it doesn't seem to offer anything new other than multitouch.
Can you get EVERYTHING the iPhone proposes to offer in the same form factor and equally appealing design?
Personally, and this has no bearing on the over-arching debate, I hate the form-factor of the iPhone.
If you happen to live in Japan or S. Korea, then yes, perhaps you have really good options NOW. We don't here in the US.
I don't think the distinction is so much geographic as it is economic. The majority of people who can afford to spend $500-600 on a phone are likely to be business users, not trendy teens. This isn't good for Apple, because the majority of these business users have probably already been exposed to quality offerings from BlackBerry and Treo and don't need the majority of the "new" features that Apple claims iPhone is the first to do. (As a reference, I use a BlackBerry 8707v daily and have used several other BlackBerry & Treo models as well as a Motorola Q.)
It seems the majority of "new" iPhone features will be "who-cares?" features for most business users: MP3 player, Media galleries, camera, access to Yahoo! IMAP mail - none of these are things that business users crave in a phone. Meanwhile, other "new" features aren't new at all: "fully-usable" browser (what about Opera Mini?), Google Maps (available on most mobile platforms), "real desktop applications" (visit Handango.com, there are tons already). One other disappointing feature on the spec sheet is EDGE instead of 3G - EDGE barely feels faster than GPRS but there is no 3G network in the USA so I understand why they made this decision. Hopefully when they release later versions it will have 3G support for international users.
Apple definitely gets points for marketing, but based on their feature list I don't see anything truly innovative except for multitouch and visual-voicemail. Multitouch really doesn't sound like much more than marketing mumbo-jumbo to me but I'll reserve final judgment until I have a phone in hand to play with. The most useful feature to me, based on the announcements, is simple but genious - "visual voicemail" so you can pick which messages you want to listen to and save others for later without having to navigate phone trees.
If Apple can get the price down on this unit so that casual users can afford it, I think it will blow that market away. As it stands now I think Apple has produced an underpowered product for the business market which (to me) seems to be the only market that can afford it.
Wow, modded troll simply for daring to think that not everybody reads slashdot and that perhaps, though vilified, Microsoft and others are still successful companies?
They already gave surveys to people working
at Google for 6+ months. Theoretically those people are secure in their
job and stand to gain nothing by lying. If their sample size is large
enough there may be some discernable trends by which they can judge applicant
surveys. If 90% of current employees who prefer The Office (American)
over The Office (British) version also happen to like red Swingline
staplers and you get a job applicant who likes The Office (American) but likes
Acme staplers, that could be a warning sign. On its own this might
not be enough to create a 'this guy is faking' alert, but if enough warning
flags were accumulated it could drag down the validity of the final score.
Then again, this goes against the principles of hiring a mentally diverse
workforce and promotes conformity so it may help show "wrong" answers but defeat
the purpose.
More likely there are no "wrong"
answers on the survey. The survey generates an complete score &
profile so instead of saying "Applicant A isn't good enough for Blanket Job
Description" it seems the results would be more "Applicant A's profile fits Job
Description A. Applicant B's profile fits Job Description C but not D or
B." Then the scores come into play where the algorithm decides that the
top X applicants in each category can be used to fill open jobs Y in
respective categories.
I'd be curious how much of a role it plays
in final selection - if they have an abundance of "good" surveys one month and
very few a short period of time later, does the system revert to older survey
submissions to find appropriate candidates when a new opportunity opens?
Or statistically aberrant responses where a candidate seems too-good-to-be-true
how much human oversight comes into play?
OK, wtf... I click the link and no sponsored results now. I swear I'm not crazy, but they were there. I don't know what determines if they show up or not, but they do exist for some searches.
There's some interesting behavior I've never noticed before- Searching for photo sharing in Firefox produces no "blue box" sponsored links at the top. Searching in IE6 produced a "blue box" with 3 links (winkflash.com, photos.aol.com, twango.com), but after refreshing the search the ads were not present the second time or subsequent refreshes. Closing & reopening IE6 reproduced the same results. Closing, reopening IE6, and searching a third time did not produce the ad box. After writing the response to this point I just closed, reopened, & researched in IE6 and the box is back with 2 links.
I'm sure there's some logical explanation for the behavior, anyone have any insight?
I haven't conducted any lab tests, but under regular usage (70 mile rt commute 5 times a week with no major hills and traffic only 1 direction) my 2002 Civic LX gets 390-400 miles on under 11 gallons of gas. Not quite 40 mpg, but 35+ ain't bad for 120k+ miles and not being a hybrid. When it was new and before I stopped caring for it properly it would regularly get 420-450 miles per tank (~38-40mpg).
You're forgetting that, here at Slashdot, any reasonable expectation of monetary reward for service(s) rendered is pure evil. This isn't reality, it's Slashdot.
If I could mod that post funny, sad, and true, I would. It's sad that in the time it took me to write this response it got modded down to 0 points for "Troll".
I've recently installed Fedora Core 5 on a computer to embark on my first real Linux adventure. Some things were fairly easy, some weren't. Downloading the CD images, burning, & starting the install process was easy as pie. Then halfway through the install I got errors. I had checked the images and they passed the test so I turned to Google and searched the error message. The first hits I got said that FC's install image is notoriously unstable and my CD drive was probably too fast. The suggestions were to remove the drive and use a slower drive for the install. Up until this point, the install process was something that could be handled by someone with little computer knowledge. Replacing a CD drive would've stopped them cold in their tracks. I've heard nerds complaining about the Windows installer for years, but I've never had it fail halfway through without giving a descriptive reason for the failure.
After completing the installation I had Gnome running on top of FC5 and everything appeared to be fairly simple. I'd rather use Opera than Firefox so I went to Opera.com and downloaded an installer package for Opera. After downloading it I executed the package and Opera installed somewhere in the depths of the machine with no desktop launcher or applications-menu launcher. My first instinct was to use the file system's search function to look for "opera" but it returned no results. Eventually I found it while browsing/usr/bin/... but, again, this is not something a casual computer user is likely to figure out on their own. Other than that, my major turn-off is that Gnome insists on opening every folder in a new window and I've been unable to find a way to turn off that behavior.
My feeling so far is that Gnome/FC5 is much easier to deal with than I expected (I was prepared for the absolute worst), but still not easy enough for a casual user to migrate without being horribly confused/frustrated. Linux in its current state seems to be a great system for nerds, but not for the general population. Yes, my experience with Linux is somewhat limited and there may be suites out there that are more fully functioning. My choice of FC5 was based on Dell offering Red Hat Linux, going to Red Hat's website and then on to Fedora as the free alternative. I installed FC5 based on a quick Google search about Fedora stability. None of this was the "best" research or the "best" decisions, but expecting the general public to do the "best" reseach and make the "best" decisions is naive.
I agree completely. I was thinking the "Linux Blue" (or "Common Desktop Standard '08") certification could be automatically generated by the system each time a major piece of hardware or software changes. I figured my first post was just going to get a bunch of sarcastic remarks about "Microsoft uses monopolies instead of marketing" so I just cut it short. I really like the idea of an online service providing lookups of game requirements vs. system configurations. And even 1 step further... if Dynamic DNS ever gets to an easy-to-use state for casual users to the point where casual users can easily have URLs associated with their machines there could be a kiosk in a store where you scan the UPC on a game box and type in your address and the kiosk contacts your machine and verifies the system specs against the game you scanned. Or maybe simpler- if there was an "Xbox Live"-type service for computers where you could log in and create a gamertag and the network kept an up-to-date profile of your machine you could simply enter your gamertag and scan the game and it would spit out compatibility results.
I'm glad you enjoyed your prize. I didn't have any mod points to give so I had to ring the prize bell and hope for the best.
The OSS community could learn a lot from Microsoft's marketing department. While MS software is not necessarily consumer minded (and some would even say anti-consumer with the current WGA, DRM initiatives, etc.), the marketing & brand-management is incredibly consumer-focused. The vast majority of software released for Windows XP simply restate XP's minimum requirements as their own. When "Uncle Larry" picks up a game on the shelf and sees that it runs on XP or Vista and he knows he has an XP or Vista computer, he will likely feel confident that the software will work on his machine. Most Linux users know their hardware intimately and don't benefit from such association but if the Linux community ever wants to start attracting casual users there will be plenty of new users who have no idea what their specs are and would benefit from a generic designation. If a casual user see a "Linux Blue Game" sticker on the new game on the shelf and knows his computer is "Blue" he would feel comfortable buying the software regardless of his knowledge about the precise specs on his machine.
As a side note- is anyone else seeing the irony that this board is usually foaming at the mouth for standards-support but when MS releases an opt-in standardization scheme for games running on its platform... suddenly standards are evil? For the people complaining about stifling creativity on box art, etc. - do you also complain about stifling the creativity of browser-engineers by forcing them to interpret a DIV tag the same way as the "artist" next to them? And before this gets modded "flamebait", I do understand and support the idea of standard interpretations in HTML/CSS code. I don't understand why anyone would think that a consumer buying product on a shelf wouldn't also benefit from standard implementations of specs, product identity, etc. There's a reason all cereals have their FDA info on the side of the box.
Most are also conveniently ignoring the fact that IE7 simply imports your IE6 settings. If you already had the Google search hooks set (either by the Google toolbar or doing it manually), IE7 adopts those settings. My IE7 installation has defaulted to Google searching since day 1 and has never even tried to override it with Live settings.
If you've never tried to setup IE to use Google search before, there's no reason a new IE install from Microsoft.com should point you that direction. If you've already done that work or are bothering to install Google's modified IE, MS isn't getting in your way.
After all, somewhere on the equator would be better and almost certainly cheaper too.
Similarly, it's much cheaper to go diving in certain countries. But when you're 80 ft down and realize you're swimming in dangerous shark-infested waters and you're not even sure if your rasta pilot is going to wait for you to resurface before he heads back to the beach for more weed... was the money-saved worth it?
In the case of the original topic, the regulations don't appear that they would be much different than those imposed on airlines with flights entering/leaving the US. The purpose is not to restrict industry or even to pork-barrel a niche industry of space-travel-safety-consultants, but to create a safety standard for the carriers & crew conducting these flights. Yes, the free market would eventually level the playing field but the artificial restrictions created by the government in this scenario attempt to level this playing field without sacrificing peoples' lives in unnecessary crashes first.
Do these regulations cause a slightly higher operating cost for the carriers? Perhaps. Is it worth it to make sure that when you spend $200k to fly to space your craft won't be manned by a drug-addicted geriatric with heart problems and no flight experience? I think so.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, there is not general unity by consumers against those industries. There is definitely unity on Slashdot and other tech-savvy sites, but walk into any Best Buy (or any other store) and look at the dozens of people perusing the DVD & CD sections. If the Vista DRM cripples legitimately purchased media you will see public backlash but as long as the public doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes they won't care until it affects them.
I didn't read the article, but I don't think it matters for this reply.
Based on the blurb - a team of 4 people manages 300k domains generating $20mil revenue from the Caymans. Even with a $50/domain-year tax they'd probably still be profitable (though not as wildly so). Even if you increase the domain tax higher you end up just alienating more "average Joe" users from joining the web.
The real answer is much more complex. Realistically it shouldn't matter if somebody owns slahsdot.org or gogle.com just to put ads up. Those aren't the sites people intend to visit so if they find it by mistake they should use their Back button. If they choose to click an ad link and generate revenue for the parker, more power to 'em. Since the alternative is a "server not found" error I don't see the harm. I'll admit it's extremely frustrating to want to register a "more legit" domain and have a squatter in the way, but to me that appears to be a different philosophical problem.
I'd wouldn't mind seeing a requirement that domain names can't be resold for more than $50 (or whatever) to prevent people from registering reallycooldomain.com in the hopes of selling to Really Cool Company for a king's ransom without preventing people from making ad money on silly typos. If your intent is to generate revenue through ads, I can't hate your business model but if your intent is to hold a domain ransom as a speculative investment I get annoyed. I'm not sure why I don't hate people who buy real estate in emerging development areas...
I suppose the free flow of the internet will eventually correct the problem. As soon as companies stop paying ransoms to squatters and as soon as dyslexic browsers stop clicking their accidentally-found links I would think these squatter/parking companies will start to disappear. As long as it's profitable, they'll fight to keep their businesses alive.
Welcome to KCAL 9. We're sorry we had to cut away from this evening's high speed pursuit but we have received word that Ventura is experiencing scattered sprinkles. Johnny Mountain is down in the trenches, reporting from the eye of the storm. We'll hear from him after this break, if he's still alive!
Yeah, they were held up for a moment when none of his kids' birthdays was the password, but then they realized it was his anniversary in reverse.
Police used computer experts...
Sorry, wasn't trying to undermine your point, just throwing it out there. My GSM phone has worked everywhere I've ever been except Japan. My CDMA phone stays at home when I go on trips. Verizon sucks...
That's as much a function of having a GSM phone as having a carrier with international agreements. The best thing about having a GSM phone is that when you go international you can pop the SIM out and buy a SIM card with a local number and prepaid minutes. Generally this will provide you with free incoming calls when your friends/family at home call you as well as provide you with cheaper outbound calls.
It's no baloney, it ain't a phony...
My cellular bananular phone!
Ok, about the clothing thing - I'll concede part of the point. Yes, it may be harder for you to find stuff since fashion trends are a lot more dynamic for women than men *but* that's not a get-out-of-jail free card. The onus is still on the employee to find clothes that are appropriate for the workplace no matter how difficult those clothes are to find.
My example wasn't particularly namecalling though it could be deemed "insensitive". Namecalling would always be considered unprofessional as a supervisor should be above such behavior, but simply being insensitive is sometimes just a part of business. Business isn't about being cuddly, cute, and likeable, it's about getting the job done.
And if Jackie Robinson had never put up with abuse how much longer would it have taken for blacks to become common baseball players? I'm not justifying the abuse that was given, but his tolerance certainly opened the door for more players and today the game is different and better because of his (and others') efforts. Remember, you things change from within and from the top-down. Every time a boss is insensitive or discriminatory and people get huffy and quit "because they shouldn't have to put up with that", nothing changes. I've put up with a fair share of abuse and I make sure I don't pass it down to the people below me. I get further for my tolerance and try to leave a better environment in my wake. My gripe with most minority-discrimination complaints is that nobody wants to bite the bullet, nobody wants to be "the example". Most seem content to bitch about how screwed-up the system is and wait for it to change so they can become a part of the better system. Sure, standing outside the system you can make small changes, but your contribution will never be as great as it would be if you tolerated the current system until you were in a position to make large changes to it.
I'm not saying bigotry doesn't exist, but sometimes YES it is just tough luck. I'm a young white male and there have been many situations where I had personality conflicts with my bosses. It's resulted in me quitting (twice), getting fired (once), and otherwise making my jobs more difficult. I've also worked with women put in the same situations who went through the same personality conflicts I went through who were convinced their difficulties were due to gender-discrimination. I know this doesn't represent all women, but it certainly represents the most vocal ones I've encountered.
Are your skirts cut above the knee? Do your blouses show cleavage? It is perfectly possible to dress professionally and attractively (ie. not "manly") without being distracting. I'm not making an unreasonable assumption, I have no idea how you dress, but if guys are going "bazonkers" when you walk by I assume you are giving them some reason to. Maybe you're just an amazing knock-out, maybe you're just overly self-concious, maybe you've worked with complete savages, I can't tell from this side of the keyboard.
Yeah, I know. I was just having some fun because this is stupid slashdot and I didn't want to write an entire serious post. I would've included a winky emoticon if it wouldn't have resulted in unrelenting flames of wrath from the flocks of nerds circling above.
Believe it or not, I'm on your side. I do think companies should provide a non-hostile working environment, but how do you define "hostile". Woman gets passed over for promotion that goes to man, is that automatically hostile? Man looks at woman's legs as she walks by, hostile? Supervisor tells supervisee "stop being a wimp" when it complains about something. If that's a man-to-man conversation it's not an issue but if it's man-to-woman it's asking for a discrimination suit.
I'd like to think the free market will eventually weed out bigotry on it's own. Smart companies will hire the most qualified employees regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, creed, sexuality, etc. The best & the brightest will survive and the self-hampered bigoted companies would not. But that's my little unreality...
I knew there were some offerings but wasn't aware it was that advanced. My unit never registers as connected to a 3G network (could be a problem between Cingular & Verizon) and I certainly never get very fast data transfer speeds compared to when I'm overseas. Granted, this is strictly anecdotal and not at all a scientific measurement, just my own experience.
The same goes for any job. If you are new, you are low-(wo)man on the totem-pole. That's life. If you've proved your merits and still get demeaned, you're at the wrong company. This has nothing to do with being female, it's common business-sense: an employee is always best served at a company that appreciates its talents.
Not necessarily, but dressing & acting like a ditzy blonde is not a good way to get ahead in a tech field. Similarly, dressing & acting like a nerd is not going to help a model get on the catwalk.
Did you just say that the workplace is not a natural habitat for women? I know that's not what you meant, just having some fun. Honestly, I've never seen co-workers "go bazonkers" if a woman is professionally dressed, no matter how often that co-worker is exposed to women "in their natural habitat". If you truly maintain yourself in a dignified & professional manner and people are going "bazonkers" it's a symptom of a larger problem in that workplace.
We all know the world is not perfect, but it is getting better. The conditions you describe are not exclusive to the tech industry nor are they female-specific issues. There are obstacles for all workers to overcome whether it's age, gender, race, education, language, etc. If you expect the world to bend over for you just because we need to "balance" demographics in the workplace, fuck off and go home.
Women, just like all other workers, need to come to work ready to work with no expection that bosses & policies will cater to their every whim. Work hard and earn respect as an individual instead of relying on the system to provide it for you. Whether you want to believe it or not, it is an uphill battle for all but very few and those very few weren't chosen by gender but by economics.
It really does suck that you got passed over for a promotion. It's happened to me too, but I didn't have an easy "because I'm female/black/gay" excuse. You may be very good at what you do, I don't know. If you're that good and that unappreciated you should find a new company. Maybe you feel this is the wrong move because it doesn't fix the problem, but silently enduring the problem is not going to solve it either. If the industry is as hostile as you think it is, I would think it would be prime-time to start a women-oriented tech company. Similar to the "Curves" explosion on the gym scene.
I doubt most people would agree that omitting a detail is as egregious as completely fabricating a detail. Neither scenario is acceptable or "morally right", but there's not a big "gotcha" moment for the bloggers to say "see, you forgot to mention detail X" vs. "you bastards completely doctored this photo, look at my photoshop comparisons".
I do think it's reprehensible how biased the "news" companies are, but I also think it's up to the people to sort through the bias and form opinions. According to Wikipedia, the term Yellow Journalism was coined in 1897; 110 years ago people were dealing with the same issue! At least without government regulation there is no seal or certificate saying "this news is not biased". Can you imagine how much worse it would be if networks could make biased statements that are "Certified Objective"? And let's not pretend that government regulation will strip the bias from the media, it will always be there in one form or another.
The benchmark for "better" seems to be all over the place. Compared to most mobile-phones on the market in the US, the iPhone definitely seems to be revolutionary. Compared to most true smart-phones, it doesn't seem to offer anything new other than multitouch.
Personally, and this has no bearing on the over-arching debate, I hate the form-factor of the iPhone.
I don't think the distinction is so much geographic as it is economic. The majority of people who can afford to spend $500-600 on a phone are likely to be business users, not trendy teens. This isn't good for Apple, because the majority of these business users have probably already been exposed to quality offerings from BlackBerry and Treo and don't need the majority of the "new" features that Apple claims iPhone is the first to do. (As a reference, I use a BlackBerry 8707v daily and have used several other BlackBerry & Treo models as well as a Motorola Q.)
It seems the majority of "new" iPhone features will be "who-cares?" features for most business users: MP3 player, Media galleries, camera, access to Yahoo! IMAP mail - none of these are things that business users crave in a phone. Meanwhile, other "new" features aren't new at all: "fully-usable" browser (what about Opera Mini?), Google Maps (available on most mobile platforms), "real desktop applications" (visit Handango.com, there are tons already). One other disappointing feature on the spec sheet is EDGE instead of 3G - EDGE barely feels faster than GPRS but there is no 3G network in the USA so I understand why they made this decision. Hopefully when they release later versions it will have 3G support for international users.
Apple definitely gets points for marketing, but based on their feature list I don't see anything truly innovative except for multitouch and visual-voicemail. Multitouch really doesn't sound like much more than marketing mumbo-jumbo to me but I'll reserve final judgment until I have a phone in hand to play with. The most useful feature to me, based on the announcements, is simple but genious - "visual voicemail" so you can pick which messages you want to listen to and save others for later without having to navigate phone trees.
If Apple can get the price down on this unit so that casual users can afford it, I think it will blow that market away. As it stands now I think Apple has produced an underpowered product for the business market which (to me) seems to be the only market that can afford it.
Wow, modded troll simply for daring to think that not everybody reads slashdot and that perhaps, though vilified, Microsoft and others are still successful companies?
Just spitballing...
They already gave surveys to people working at Google for 6+ months. Theoretically those people are secure in their job and stand to gain nothing by lying. If their sample size is large enough there may be some discernable trends by which they can judge applicant surveys. If 90% of current employees who prefer The Office (American) over The Office (British) version also happen to like red Swingline staplers and you get a job applicant who likes The Office (American) but likes Acme staplers, that could be a warning sign. On its own this might not be enough to create a 'this guy is faking' alert, but if enough warning flags were accumulated it could drag down the validity of the final score. Then again, this goes against the principles of hiring a mentally diverse workforce and promotes conformity so it may help show "wrong" answers but defeat the purpose.
More likely there are no "wrong" answers on the survey. The survey generates an complete score & profile so instead of saying "Applicant A isn't good enough for Blanket Job Description" it seems the results would be more "Applicant A's profile fits Job Description A. Applicant B's profile fits Job Description C but not D or B." Then the scores come into play where the algorithm decides that the top X applicants in each category can be used to fill open jobs Y in respective categories.
I'd be curious how much of a role it plays in final selection - if they have an abundance of "good" surveys one month and very few a short period of time later, does the system revert to older survey submissions to find appropriate candidates when a new opportunity opens? Or statistically aberrant responses where a candidate seems too-good-to-be-true how much human oversight comes into play?
Thanks.
There's some interesting behavior I've never noticed before- Searching for photo sharing in Firefox produces no "blue box" sponsored links at the top. Searching in IE6 produced a "blue box" with 3 links (winkflash.com, photos.aol.com, twango.com), but after refreshing the search the ads were not present the second time or subsequent refreshes. Closing & reopening IE6 reproduced the same results. Closing, reopening IE6, and searching a third time did not produce the ad box. After writing the response to this point I just closed, reopened, & researched in IE6 and the box is back with 2 links.
I'm sure there's some logical explanation for the behavior, anyone have any insight?
I haven't conducted any lab tests, but under regular usage (70 mile rt commute 5 times a week with no major hills and traffic only 1 direction) my 2002 Civic LX gets 390-400 miles on under 11 gallons of gas. Not quite 40 mpg, but 35+ ain't bad for 120k+ miles and not being a hybrid. When it was new and before I stopped caring for it properly it would regularly get 420-450 miles per tank (~38-40mpg).
You're forgetting that, here at Slashdot, any reasonable expectation of monetary reward for service(s) rendered is pure evil. This isn't reality, it's Slashdot.
If I could mod that post funny, sad, and true, I would. It's sad that in the time it took me to write this response it got modded down to 0 points for "Troll".
I've recently installed Fedora Core 5 on a computer to embark on my first real Linux adventure. Some things were fairly easy, some weren't. Downloading the CD images, burning, & starting the install process was easy as pie. Then halfway through the install I got errors. I had checked the images and they passed the test so I turned to Google and searched the error message. The first hits I got said that FC's install image is notoriously unstable and my CD drive was probably too fast. The suggestions were to remove the drive and use a slower drive for the install. Up until this point, the install process was something that could be handled by someone with little computer knowledge. Replacing a CD drive would've stopped them cold in their tracks. I've heard nerds complaining about the Windows installer for years, but I've never had it fail halfway through without giving a descriptive reason for the failure.
After completing the installation I had Gnome running on top of FC5 and everything appeared to be fairly simple. I'd rather use Opera than Firefox so I went to Opera.com and downloaded an installer package for Opera. After downloading it I executed the package and Opera installed somewhere in the depths of the machine with no desktop launcher or applications-menu launcher. My first instinct was to use the file system's search function to look for "opera" but it returned no results. Eventually I found it while browsing /usr/bin/... but, again, this is not something a casual computer user is likely to figure out on their own. Other than that, my major turn-off is that Gnome insists on opening every folder in a new window and I've been unable to find a way to turn off that behavior.
My feeling so far is that Gnome/FC5 is much easier to deal with than I expected (I was prepared for the absolute worst), but still not easy enough for a casual user to migrate without being horribly confused/frustrated. Linux in its current state seems to be a great system for nerds, but not for the general population. Yes, my experience with Linux is somewhat limited and there may be suites out there that are more fully functioning. My choice of FC5 was based on Dell offering Red Hat Linux, going to Red Hat's website and then on to Fedora as the free alternative. I installed FC5 based on a quick Google search about Fedora stability. None of this was the "best" research or the "best" decisions, but expecting the general public to do the "best" reseach and make the "best" decisions is naive.
I agree completely. I was thinking the "Linux Blue" (or "Common Desktop Standard '08") certification could be automatically generated by the system each time a major piece of hardware or software changes. I figured my first post was just going to get a bunch of sarcastic remarks about "Microsoft uses monopolies instead of marketing" so I just cut it short. I really like the idea of an online service providing lookups of game requirements vs. system configurations. And even 1 step further... if Dynamic DNS ever gets to an easy-to-use state for casual users to the point where casual users can easily have URLs associated with their machines there could be a kiosk in a store where you scan the UPC on a game box and type in your address and the kiosk contacts your machine and verifies the system specs against the game you scanned. Or maybe simpler- if there was an "Xbox Live"-type service for computers where you could log in and create a gamertag and the network kept an up-to-date profile of your machine you could simply enter your gamertag and scan the game and it would spit out compatibility results.
I'm glad you enjoyed your prize. I didn't have any mod points to give so I had to ring the prize bell and hope for the best.
*ding-ding-ding* You get the prize!
The OSS community could learn a lot from Microsoft's marketing department. While MS software is not necessarily consumer minded (and some would even say anti-consumer with the current WGA, DRM initiatives, etc.), the marketing & brand-management is incredibly consumer-focused. The vast majority of software released for Windows XP simply restate XP's minimum requirements as their own. When "Uncle Larry" picks up a game on the shelf and sees that it runs on XP or Vista and he knows he has an XP or Vista computer, he will likely feel confident that the software will work on his machine. Most Linux users know their hardware intimately and don't benefit from such association but if the Linux community ever wants to start attracting casual users there will be plenty of new users who have no idea what their specs are and would benefit from a generic designation. If a casual user see a "Linux Blue Game" sticker on the new game on the shelf and knows his computer is "Blue" he would feel comfortable buying the software regardless of his knowledge about the precise specs on his machine.
As a side note- is anyone else seeing the irony that this board is usually foaming at the mouth for standards-support but when MS releases an opt-in standardization scheme for games running on its platform... suddenly standards are evil? For the people complaining about stifling creativity on box art, etc. - do you also complain about stifling the creativity of browser-engineers by forcing them to interpret a DIV tag the same way as the "artist" next to them? And before this gets modded "flamebait", I do understand and support the idea of standard interpretations in HTML/CSS code. I don't understand why anyone would think that a consumer buying product on a shelf wouldn't also benefit from standard implementations of specs, product identity, etc. There's a reason all cereals have their FDA info on the side of the box.
Pretty much covered all the bases with that post.
Most are also conveniently ignoring the fact that IE7 simply imports your IE6 settings. If you already had the Google search hooks set (either by the Google toolbar or doing it manually), IE7 adopts those settings. My IE7 installation has defaulted to Google searching since day 1 and has never even tried to override it with Live settings.
If you've never tried to setup IE to use Google search before, there's no reason a new IE install from Microsoft.com should point you that direction. If you've already done that work or are bothering to install Google's modified IE, MS isn't getting in your way.
Similarly, it's much cheaper to go diving in certain countries. But when you're 80 ft down and realize you're swimming in dangerous shark-infested waters and you're not even sure if your rasta pilot is going to wait for you to resurface before he heads back to the beach for more weed... was the money-saved worth it?
In the case of the original topic, the regulations don't appear that they would be much different than those imposed on airlines with flights entering/leaving the US. The purpose is not to restrict industry or even to pork-barrel a niche industry of space-travel-safety-consultants, but to create a safety standard for the carriers & crew conducting these flights. Yes, the free market would eventually level the playing field but the artificial restrictions created by the government in this scenario attempt to level this playing field without sacrificing peoples' lives in unnecessary crashes first.
Do these regulations cause a slightly higher operating cost for the carriers? Perhaps. Is it worth it to make sure that when you spend $200k to fly to space your craft won't be manned by a drug-addicted geriatric with heart problems and no flight experience? I think so.