This is why I'm not conservative any more. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am still pretty conservative, but no longer in the Republican party, or any other party. In the past, conservative leaders were intelligent people like William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, George Will, Walter Williams, etc. Nowadays the conservative leaders are ignorant and boorish. I cannot associate with them, and have trouble associating with my friends who like them.
Having said that, ignorance is not limited to those on the right. There are a lot of leftists who are pretty stupid as well. These are the people who think we should not put babies in diapers, suggest we ban the use of plastic utensils, and assume thousands of wind turbines will not require expensive maintenance.
So, I can sue Buick now if someone breaks into my car?
I can understand the expectation for a reasonable amount of quality and security, but when there are literally thousands of people actively trying to break into your computer, you have to assume that occasionally one is going to be successful.
This kind of thing happens out of rampaging ignorance. People don't understand how the damn things work, and assume that computers can be absolutely locked down, while at the same time travel the universe, virtually speaking.
My Heathkit H89, built in 1980, has never had a computer virus in 31 years of service. Of course, it's not connected to the internet either.
I imagine quantum computers will be possible, but only after a fundamental change in how we think about and design things. Sort of like how future technology was imagined in the 30's and 40's. It took the invention of the transistor and other solid state devices to get people to re-think how things could be designed.
The problem I have with FB, and the reason I am going to leave it, is the new ticker "feature" and how it is going to be used in the future.
FB has announced plans to partner up with companies like Netflix. So, in the near future, when I rent or watch a movie on Netflix, the ticker will report "Will is watching on Netflix". The problem, of course, is that I might have chosen to watch some sort of "Girls Gone Wild" movie, and might not want all the world to know that. Zuckerberg has announced that he wants to make all the internet a social experience. That means in the future FB will be partnering up with more online retailers and even brick and mortar stores. The ticker will be reporting things like "Kris just bought a bra from JC Penny", "Keith just purchased Preparation H at Walgreens".
I don't mind other anonymous people knowing my buying habits, but sometimes I don't want my closest friends and family knowing these things. I don't want to know these things about my friends and family either. It's not a matter of social protest, it's a matter of being able to keep things to yourself.
I don't understand why they added these amendments. If we're going to maintain a proper police state, we need to make as many of our citizen's actions illegal as possible. This makes it easier for our brave and glorious men and women in uniform to keep the peace and protect our precious homeland from all those who would threaten it, or disagree with it, or who just look funny.
Interesting question and I don't have a definite answer. I recently read about a Canadian who was arrested simply for holding up a protest sign (not a particularly offensive one) at a policeman's funeral. And of course, there are the well-known Westboro Baptist Church funeral protests. All of these incidents run along the same lines and are testing the concept of free speech.
Perhaps we need to delineate between what speech is protected at what is essentially a state ceremony (the police funeral) and what speech is protected at a private ceremony (or website).
In the case of the police funeral, the protester wanted to draw attention to the fact that the funeral was "over the top"; "like a funeral for a head of state". In the protester's mind, such extravagant glorification is indicative of a police state. In my mind, this kind of protest should be legitimately protected because the funeral was an affair of state.
In the case of private funerals (and this case as well), families should not have to deal with or respond to protesters who are using the demise of their loved ones to make a point. It is a type of provocation akin to the classic "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater", and becomes a danger to those involved and even the public at large.
There was a time when, based on their observations, scientists thought there were canals on Mars. The reception of that news was probably mostly positive too.
One of the reasons this kind of news might be positively received, is that its veracity is of no consequence to anyone. Other than providing fodder for science fiction stories, it had little impact on peoples' lives. No one demanded that something be done about the Mars "canal" situation.
The topic of climate change is a different matter. The public perceives that climate observations are not conclusive, are somewhat subject to interpretation, and are hampered by the fact that no one can predict, with 100% accuracy, what the weather will be like next Tuesday, let alone next year, or even fifty years from now. Despite this, the public are asked to make sacrifices, and spend huge sums of money, based on interpretations of data that only a few can understand.
When scientific discoveries are benevolent, irrelevant, or beneficial, it is no surprise that they are positively received.
I still think P.J. O'Rourke's Eat The Rich is the best book on this subject. Every Economics major should have to read this book. His basic premise is that almost any socioeconomic system can work provided that there is rule of law and private property rights. Take away these things and nothing works, whether it be capitalism, socialism, communism or anything else.
My grandfather was a telegraph operator for the railroad in the early part of the 20th century. It was a fairly highly skilled occupation for the time. When official communications were not going up and down the line, the operators sent messages to each other. I have a few of them from around 1915. These young men were like young men of other ages -- they talked mostly about sports and girls. They were like text messages of today. Highly skilled as they were, within a few years they would be completely obsolete, being replaced by telephones. I think many of us in IT are the "telegraph operators" of our time.
Okay, but there are two issues here: protesting and blocking cell service. It sounds like the argument is, "Protesting on the platform is dangerous, so we are going to block cell service." I'm trying to understand how blocking cell service keeps people from protesting, or makes the protest safer. It might keep people from texting, "Hey, come join our protest," but if the protest is organized outside the BART station, I don't see how blocking cell service prevents the protest from taking place, or makes the protest venue more safe.
Using Facebook to test this theory seems kind of dumb. I'm Facebook friends with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, so it would appear that there is one degree of separation between me and his All Holiness. And because Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is acquainted with Pope Benedict XVI, then there are only two degrees of separation between me and the Pope -- or between me and any number of world leaders or other important people. But, of course, I have never met the Ecumenical Patriarch, so you can't really consider that much of a connection.
That's interesting, and you may have something there, but it still doesn't explain why women seemed to leave computing. I mean, I can see more men coming into computing because of changing attitudes, but why didn't more women also come into the field?
Like I said, it's just a theory. I'm trying to explain the interesting fact that women were active in computing, then virtually disappeared from the field, only to begin to return to it. Whatever condescending attitude there is among computer geeks has nothing to do with gender. Geeks are chock full of hubris towards anyone who can't understand information systems whether male or female. Throughout much of the late 80's and 90's there were not enough computer professionals to do all the work that needed to be done. In some quarters it is still that way. Are you seriously suggesting that qualified women could not get jobs in computing for twenty years, when jobs were plentiful and employers were begging for workers, just because of condescending attitudes among males? Propose an alternate theory if you like, but don't just discount mine because you think I'm a misogynist. That's a straw man argument.
Re:My mom was a computer operator in the 70s
on
Girls Go Geek Again
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· Score: 1
That's actually making my point. That 70s era computer was pretty simple even though there were a lot of parts. Jobs tended to be run one at a time in individual batches. There would be books of written procedures that would say things like, "1. Load tape xxx. 2. Insert card stack yyy. 3. Type CALL PR0102C and press Enter." Very simple stuff compared to later systems where multiple users ran multiple applications from multiple locations and networked with systems all over the place.
When I started in this industry we had punch cards, but things escalated exponentially. Modern interfaces have greatly simplified the job again.
It has to do with the complexity of the systems. Those early computer systems were not very complicated. Then, throughout the late 80s and 90s systems and software became much more complex. However, in the last ten years or so, much of the complexity is hidden. Programming and systems management has become just a lot of pointing and clicking without any need (usually) to really understand what's going on underneath the covers.
I want to add that this is just a theory, and that tt's not that I think women are incapable of understanding very complex systems, it's just that I think the majority of them have no interest in that kind of work.
Computers used to be tools used by a minority of professionals and hobbyists. But for almost 20 years now, certainly for the last 15 years, computers have become ubiquitous -- practically everyone in the United States has one on their desk and/or at home. And yet, after all these years of working with computers, people still naively, stupidly, assume that any output from a software program is 100% accurate and trustworthy. "The computer says it is so, therefore it must be true."
My unscientific, gut feeling is that this is a distinction within my generation -- the generation which is now running things -- who grew up with simple devices like digital watches and foolishly have extended the reliability and accuracy of those baubles to machines and software which they barely comprehend.
I hope and pray that the next generation, my daughter's generation, who have grown up with spam, spoofing, malware, faulty operating systems, and software inaccuracies, will have the intelligence to treat software as a useful tool to help us make decisions, rather than as founts of truth that make our decisions for us.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why I'm not conservative any more. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am still pretty conservative, but no longer in the Republican party, or any other party. In the past, conservative leaders were intelligent people like William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, George Will, Walter Williams, etc. Nowadays the conservative leaders are ignorant and boorish. I cannot associate with them, and have trouble associating with my friends who like them.
Having said that, ignorance is not limited to those on the right. There are a lot of leftists who are pretty stupid as well. These are the people who think we should not put babies in diapers, suggest we ban the use of plastic utensils, and assume thousands of wind turbines will not require expensive maintenance.
I don't see where in the patent application that it says Facebook is the applicant.
Not that I'm a fan of FB (I plan to leave during the Great Facebook Postout on 10/10), but are they really the ones who filed the patent?
So, I can sue Buick now if someone breaks into my car?
I can understand the expectation for a reasonable amount of quality and security, but when there are literally thousands of people actively trying to break into your computer, you have to assume that occasionally one is going to be successful.
This kind of thing happens out of rampaging ignorance. People don't understand how the damn things work, and assume that computers can be absolutely locked down, while at the same time travel the universe, virtually speaking.
My Heathkit H89, built in 1980, has never had a computer virus in 31 years of service. Of course, it's not connected to the internet either.
Madness.
I imagine quantum computers will be possible, but only after a fundamental change in how we think about and design things. Sort of like how future technology was imagined in the 30's and 40's. It took the invention of the transistor and other solid state devices to get people to re-think how things could be designed.
The problem I have with FB, and the reason I am going to leave it, is the new ticker "feature" and how it is going to be used in the future.
FB has announced plans to partner up with companies like Netflix. So, in the near future, when I rent or watch a movie on Netflix, the ticker will report "Will is watching on Netflix". The problem, of course, is that I might have chosen to watch some sort of "Girls Gone Wild" movie, and might not want all the world to know that. Zuckerberg has announced that he wants to make all the internet a social experience. That means in the future FB will be partnering up with more online retailers and even brick and mortar stores. The ticker will be reporting things like "Kris just bought a bra from JC Penny", "Keith just purchased Preparation H at Walgreens".
I don't mind other anonymous people knowing my buying habits, but sometimes I don't want my closest friends and family knowing these things. I don't want to know these things about my friends and family either. It's not a matter of social protest, it's a matter of being able to keep things to yourself.
I don't understand why they added these amendments. If we're going to maintain a proper police state, we need to make as many of our citizen's actions illegal as possible. This makes it easier for our brave and glorious men and women in uniform to keep the peace and protect our precious homeland from all those who would threaten it, or disagree with it, or who just look funny.
A) You have recourse. Far more recourse then you do against a private security agency.
Really? How?
Every time anyone has questioned their actions the TSA just uses the Nuremburg defense and that's that.
Interesting. If they follow his recommendations the TSA may become the first privatized secret police force in history.
Interesting question and I don't have a definite answer. I recently read about a Canadian who was arrested simply for holding up a protest sign (not a particularly offensive one) at a policeman's funeral. And of course, there are the well-known Westboro Baptist Church funeral protests. All of these incidents run along the same lines and are testing the concept of free speech.
Perhaps we need to delineate between what speech is protected at what is essentially a state ceremony (the police funeral) and what speech is protected at a private ceremony (or website).
In the case of the police funeral, the protester wanted to draw attention to the fact that the funeral was "over the top"; "like a funeral for a head of state". In the protester's mind, such extravagant glorification is indicative of a police state. In my mind, this kind of protest should be legitimately protected because the funeral was an affair of state.
In the case of private funerals (and this case as well), families should not have to deal with or respond to protesters who are using the demise of their loved ones to make a point. It is a type of provocation akin to the classic "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater", and becomes a danger to those involved and even the public at large.
I wish I had mod points. That's pretty funny.
There was a time when, based on their observations, scientists thought there were canals on Mars. The reception of that news was probably mostly positive too.
One of the reasons this kind of news might be positively received, is that its veracity is of no consequence to anyone. Other than providing fodder for science fiction stories, it had little impact on peoples' lives. No one demanded that something be done about the Mars "canal" situation.
The topic of climate change is a different matter. The public perceives that climate observations are not conclusive, are somewhat subject to interpretation, and are hampered by the fact that no one can predict, with 100% accuracy, what the weather will be like next Tuesday, let alone next year, or even fifty years from now. Despite this, the public are asked to make sacrifices, and spend huge sums of money, based on interpretations of data that only a few can understand.
When scientific discoveries are benevolent, irrelevant, or beneficial, it is no surprise that they are positively received.
I still think P.J. O'Rourke's Eat The Rich is the best book on this subject. Every Economics major should have to read this book. His basic premise is that almost any socioeconomic system can work provided that there is rule of law and private property rights. Take away these things and nothing works, whether it be capitalism, socialism, communism or anything else.
My grandfather was a telegraph operator for the railroad in the early part of the 20th century. It was a fairly highly skilled occupation for the time. When official communications were not going up and down the line, the operators sent messages to each other. I have a few of them from around 1915. These young men were like young men of other ages -- they talked mostly about sports and girls. They were like text messages of today. Highly skilled as they were, within a few years they would be completely obsolete, being replaced by telephones. I think many of us in IT are the "telegraph operators" of our time.
Okay, but there are two issues here: protesting and blocking cell service. It sounds like the argument is, "Protesting on the platform is dangerous, so we are going to block cell service." I'm trying to understand how blocking cell service keeps people from protesting, or makes the protest safer. It might keep people from texting, "Hey, come join our protest," but if the protest is organized outside the BART station, I don't see how blocking cell service prevents the protest from taking place, or makes the protest venue more safe.
Cutting off cell service? Why? Because people never protested or rioted before the existence of cell phones?
Can someone explain the logic?
Using Facebook to test this theory seems kind of dumb. I'm Facebook friends with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, so it would appear that there is one degree of separation between me and his All Holiness. And because Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is acquainted with Pope Benedict XVI, then there are only two degrees of separation between me and the Pope -- or between me and any number of world leaders or other important people. But, of course, I have never met the Ecumenical Patriarch, so you can't really consider that much of a connection.
At least I didn't hide behind "Anonymous Coward".
In my 25 years in this business, I've never seen anything like what you describe. But then gaming programmers are a different animal altogether.
That's interesting, and you may have something there, but it still doesn't explain why women seemed to leave computing. I mean, I can see more men coming into computing because of changing attitudes, but why didn't more women also come into the field?
Like I said, it's just a theory. I'm trying to explain the interesting fact that women were active in computing, then virtually disappeared from the field, only to begin to return to it. Whatever condescending attitude there is among computer geeks has nothing to do with gender. Geeks are chock full of hubris towards anyone who can't understand information systems whether male or female. Throughout much of the late 80's and 90's there were not enough computer professionals to do all the work that needed to be done. In some quarters it is still that way. Are you seriously suggesting that qualified women could not get jobs in computing for twenty years, when jobs were plentiful and employers were begging for workers, just because of condescending attitudes among males? Propose an alternate theory if you like, but don't just discount mine because you think I'm a misogynist. That's a straw man argument.
That's actually making my point. That 70s era computer was pretty simple even though there were a lot of parts. Jobs tended to be run one at a time in individual batches. There would be books of written procedures that would say things like, "1. Load tape xxx. 2. Insert card stack yyy. 3. Type CALL PR0102C and press Enter." Very simple stuff compared to later systems where multiple users ran multiple applications from multiple locations and networked with systems all over the place.
When I started in this industry we had punch cards, but things escalated exponentially. Modern interfaces have greatly simplified the job again.
It has to do with the complexity of the systems. Those early computer systems were not very complicated. Then, throughout the late 80s and 90s systems and software became much more complex. However, in the last ten years or so, much of the complexity is hidden. Programming and systems management has become just a lot of pointing and clicking without any need (usually) to really understand what's going on underneath the covers.
I want to add that this is just a theory, and that tt's not that I think women are incapable of understanding very complex systems, it's just that I think the majority of them have no interest in that kind of work.
Pointy-Haired-Bosses who think everything needs to be "in the cloud", pay attention.
...asteroidy!
Computers used to be tools used by a minority of professionals and hobbyists. But for almost 20 years now, certainly for the last 15 years, computers have become ubiquitous -- practically everyone in the United States has one on their desk and/or at home. And yet, after all these years of working with computers, people still naively, stupidly, assume that any output from a software program is 100% accurate and trustworthy. "The computer says it is so, therefore it must be true."
My unscientific, gut feeling is that this is a distinction within my generation -- the generation which is now running things -- who grew up with simple devices like digital watches and foolishly have extended the reliability and accuracy of those baubles to machines and software which they barely comprehend.
I hope and pray that the next generation, my daughter's generation, who have grown up with spam, spoofing, malware, faulty operating systems, and software inaccuracies, will have the intelligence to treat software as a useful tool to help us make decisions, rather than as founts of truth that make our decisions for us.