Seriously. If you enable them, and you know what they're doing, and they wouldn't be able to do it without someone enabling them, then you're responsible.
This is simple cause and effect stuff, and you're responsible.
You need to learn the difference between "consumer" and "shareholder." I don't mind laying (some) responsibility on MS's shareholders for its actions, but that's because they have ownership in the company. When the average consumer buys a Microsoft product, they are not tacitly assuming responsibility for Microsoft's actions. They are purchasing a product. That's basically where the relationship ends.
Okay. You could have just replaced explicitly with figuratively since this is something you were typing and not speaking. There was no need to correct yourself afterward unless you were looking to make a point and if you were I am still wondering what it was.
I believe the term you are looking for is "dramatic emphasis."
Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.
Precisely, and this is what I pointed out: what, inherently, makes Hitler's killing worse than Stalin's? Why do you believe that killing a particular ethnic group is more heinous than killing political prisoners? Stalin created his own institutionalized machine, he was just remarkably less adept at keeping records than Hitler. Why does Hitler's professionalism somehow make his acts worse? Why are we conditioned to believe that some types of slaughter are worse than others? It's an absurd and insulting statement.
There is also the historical aspect of the Holocaust; of over a thousand years of abuse of Jews, of countless demagogues calling for violence and even murder against Jews, against the entire culture of Christendom having in its foundation a hatred of the Jews. Stalin's madness is more an outgrowth of the French Revolution, of men who believed that sacrifices of this horrific nature were needed to create a better society. The Holocaust, on the other hand, is the most infamous and deadly chapter in a long sordid story of the hatred against the Jews. The Holocaust is the ultimate example of how racism can poison a civilization right down to its core, and convince people to commit the most insane and evil acts.
Terrible, to be sure, but how is it worse than, say, the Mongol invasion of Iran? I think it's telling that you believe Stalin sought to create "a better society," when really all I see is his desire to wield as much power as possible. And you still have not shown what makes Hitler "most insane and evil." What is it, in particular, that makes the systematic slaughter of an ethnic group more heinous than the systematic slaughter of a political group? And why, in particular, is the slaughter of the Jews so heinous in particular, when compared to the Roma? (I should point out that Hitler was at least partially successful in wiping them out; the Bohemian-Romani language was completely lost.)
It i not about the number of victims, or the existence of camps. The reason why any respectable historian (at least in Europe, dunno about the US) considers the Holocaust as a singular event is that the Nazis were the only terror regime that built factories solely for the extinguishing of certain people. It represents the point in history where the promises of enlightenment were shattered.
You don't think Stalin's gulags and deportation camps were just that? He was less organized about it, but replace "Jew" with "someone I do not trust" and you've got Stalin's Russia. Hitler even tried (albeit pathetically) to create a pretext for his slaughter, by blaming Germany's economic state after WWI on the bankers, who were largely Jewish. Stalin didn't even bother with pretexts. If he didn't like you, he killed you, your family, even your dog. You are arguing what I pointed out as absurd, earlier: we in the West consider killing based on ethnic/religious lines to be more heinous than killing done for purely political purposes. Explain to me how this is internally consistent. You may argue that "someone can control their political beliefs; someone can't control their ethnicity," but then I would ask you to show me evidence of where Stalin accepted the political "conversion" of one of his former opponents. From where I'm standing, killing is killing, and the motivations for both Stalin and Hitler end up being fairly arbitrary: both created a system to dispose of those they wanted dead, and then both put them into practice. Stalin was ultimately more successful.
Yeah, the well-known insurmountable power of communism over Western school systems. I'm pissing my pants.
It has nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with the politics of WWII. The reason Nazi Germany is covered more thoroughly and often thought of as worse than Stalin's USSR is because:
1.) Stalin was our ally at the time, and pointing out the systematic slaughter he carried out against his own people would not have been good for domestic support of the war.
2.) The Nazis committed the Holocaust, and we in the West have convinced ourselves that killing based on political ideology is more palatable than killing based on ethnic/cultural/religious identity.
If you bother to pick up a history book, though, or even just look at the total dead under Stalin's regime, you'll quickly begin to see that Hitler had nothing on Stalin. Hitler killed roughly 9-11 million in the Holocaust. The general consensus, according to Wikipedia, is that Stalin killed at least that many, and likely killed nearly twice that amount. Stalin just chose the right group of people with whom to ally. And, he didn't specifically target the Jews. If history has taught us anything, it's that killing the Jews never works out as intended.
I can't have pesky studies getting in the way of my porn consumption and linux fanaticism! I *know* I'm better than everyone else, so everyone should just shut up and be more like me.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Putin is a dangerous man, and given our current administration's remarkable lack of competency, I'd say our relationship with Russia is not very amicable. The rhetoric's not as fiery as it is with, say, Iran, but the neo-cons have no qualms about letting Putin know what they think of him.
We do still hate the French, but that's everyone.
It just needed to be said again. I kind of wish we could stick it somewhere in our National Anthem.
My argument would fail if I had made the blanket generalization that all nerds have Asperger Syndrome. Which I didn't. All I'm saying that Paul Graham's generalization that, basically, "you're unpopular because you want to be unpopular" is also false. There _are_ people (not all, obviously, but there are) which just can't take part in these popularity games even if they wanted to.
But a generalization is just that: a generalization. It exists to let us make general statements about a population, with the foreknowledge that there will be exceptions to the general rule. All I was pointing out is that Asperger's syndrome does not constitute enough of the nerd population to warrant revocation of Paul Graham's generalization. If over 50% of nerds had Asperger's, then it would be safe to say that Paul Graham was just wrong. But since Asperger's affects a minute proportion of society, his generalization holds: those with the syndrome are just an exception.
Here you seem to assume that everyone has the same goals. If your measure of happiness is measured in money, by all means, go ahead and engage in social games for a promotion.
Here you're reading too much into what I said. I never said "living unhappy lives BECAUSE they work underpaid jobs." I said "living unhappy lives AND working underpaid jobs." It can be any combination of the two. Personally I think that nerds are often woefully underpaid because they lack the social skills to promote their work and properly articulate why they deserve raises/promotions. In my personal experience, nerds often lack tact, patience, and compassion for those with less perceived intelligence. Being a jerk in the working world only works if you've got the charisma to shamelessly promote yourself at the expense of others; as we've both established, nerds lack that charisma, so all they end up being (most of the time) are jerks who stay in the lower levels of the company.
The thing is, in most places the most accessible way upwards is a promotion to management. Which pretty much means changing jobs completely. That's the point where you cease to be an engineer/programmer/whatever, and start being a manager. They're as unrelated as switching a job as a gardener for a job at MacDonalds. You'll have to do different things, interact with different people, and have completely different kinds of interactions.
Again, proper social skills help alleviate or altogether avoid this phenomenon. You are correct that management is a completely different field of work than engineering/programming/etc., but a creative worker (with the social skills to sell their ideas) will find ways to get paid more for the work they do, and possibly even create positions for themselves. The upper levels of any corporation include management AND strategy, and I think a lot of nerds would thrive in a position where they got to make long-term decisions about how IT/programming/engineering went down in the company. And of course, some people just want to program and do nothing else, and that's fine too. But I think a lot of nerds are fairly ambitious people, and it is rare that an ambitious person with no social skills can see their ambitions realized. Eventually you're going to have to work with other people, and how you interact with them is crucial in the formation of the end-product.
And to get back to the point: so not being social means I'll be forever trapped behind a computer, doing the same job? Well, _good_! Yippee! You just gave me the perfect reason to be unsocial.
Yes, but you are professing that you are happy where you are--so there's no impetus for you to change anything at all. Most of the nerds I know are not happy where they are: they despise their jobs, they constantly gripe about their social lives (or lack thereof), and are extremely negative people. Humans are social creatures; we thrive on social interaction, it's just t
The prevalence of AS is not well established, but conservative estimates using the DSM-IV criteria indicate that two to three of every 10,000 children have the condition, making it rarer than autistic disorder itself.
So I'm going to say that your argument, while well-worded, fails, because this syndrome affects.02-.03% of the population. There are a great deal many more nerds in the world than this. I am posting on slashdot, so you can probably guess where my personal interests lie. To top it off, I was a pretty overweight kid during middle school. I had to deal with my fair share of insults and hopeless crushes. And he's right--when I was younger, I was more concerned with knowledge than with popularity.
Luckily, I am an extremely proud person, and eventually the perceived shame of being overweight, and of not having women attracted to me, drove me to start exercising. I also started to devote some time to cultivating my social skills--rather than taking the easy way out and avoiding social situations that made me uncomfortable (like dances, parties, etc.) I started making an effort to go to them and interact with a lot of other people. Social skills are incredibly necessary in day-to-day life, and I am eternally thankful that I took the time to do what I did back then (and during college), because it's made me a happier and more successful person. Would I be smarter if I'd alternatively spent that time writing, studying, etc? Probably, but the trade-off in this case was absolutely necessary. Most people I know, who share my interests, are complete assholes. They are bitter about their childhood, fiercely defensive of their nerd status, and generally unpleasant to be around. Even my fellow IT professionals are normally very unpleasant to deal with, because they are so supremely arrogant and uncouth. The real world doesn't care how smart you are, it cares how well you work with others. Unfortunately, most nerds continue to ignore this fact, and end up living unhappy lives and working underpaid jobs, because they lack the charisma and intuition to progress.
Now, back to the topic at hand. Honestly, it would be wonderful if children didn't have to experience the pain and rejection associated with bullying. But there will always be assholes in the world. And I'm much more concerned with a population that doesn't know how to respond to assholes, than one that lets its children take a few licks early on so they know how to deal/respond to it. Now I'm not condoning bullying here: assault is illegal and it should always be. But we can't coddle our children forever; the real world is a brutal place, and nothing we do can change it. It is brutal in every country, across every culture: you either accept this and prepare for it, or futilely rail against it.
There might be people out there with all sorts of bad evolutionary ideas, but they're not being scientists either.
I think you're operating under a flawed definition of "scientist." A scientist is someone who, according to Merriam-Webster, specializes in a branch of the natural sciences. That's it. Nowhere in there does it equate someone's evolutionary viewpoint with their validity as a scientist. Perhaps you define scientist as "someone who applies the Scientific Method to every aspect of their lives." If that's how you define it, that's fine and dandy, but it's a dumb definition because NO ONE does that.
If a physicist is a creationist, he's not applying science to his biological ideas. Creationism is based on a refusal to argue with evidence. Your claptrap about Darwin's writings being racist is an example. It's interesting that creationists seem incapable of restricting themselves to scientific arguments.
Point one: there's no such thing as "applying science" to an idea. And you're generalizing. I never said the physicist was "a creationist," I said he/she was skeptical of evolutionary theory. Skepticism forms the basis of all science. You should know that.
Point two: creationism is not "based on a refusal to argue with evidence." It's simply the view that God created the heavens and the earth--hence, creationism. Some fundamental Christians believe that God created the earth within a specific time frame--namely, seven days. This is called strict creationism or Biblical creationism. You should get your terminology straight; that's twice now I've corrected your improper usage of the English language.
Point three: my "claptrap" about Darwin was to point out that the application of evolutionary theory to humanity has always been heavily politicized. It is almost impossible to find a scientist who approaches evolution in the same way that he/she would approach a proof of, say, Fermat's Little Theorem. When it comes to the origin of mankind, people always have an agenda to push. In that sense I view evolutionary theory like any other religious movement: people base their world view off of it.
Point four: when did I ever say I was a creationist? And further, what does a "scientific argument" have to do with anything? Last time I checked, we were discussing a philosophical idea: whether or not belief in evolutionary theory could be considered the sole factor in designating someone a "scientist." Since all of the accepted definitions of scientist make no mention of evolutionary theory, clearly it's not the determining agent, hence I was right, and you were wrong. There is no "scientific argument" to be had. So, make that four times that you've misused the English language.
Starting to smell like a Religion of Peace job by someone with some jihad training instead of Sudden Jihad Syndrome or a random nutter stressing about finals or a failed relationship.
So suddenly any well-trained murderer is an Islamic jihadist?
If you mean someone who thinks that the modern theory of evolution is the best available explanation for the facts observed, the word you're looking for is "scientist".
Oh really? So a physics professor can't be skeptical of evolution and still be considered a "scientist?" I didn't realize the criteria for science was: "must improperly and broadly apply Darwin's theory of natural selection to human origins." Darwin wrote two major works: The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. The first one describes the theory of natural selection, and it is actually quite limited in its scope: Darwin doesn't make any vast or overarching claims in the work. The Descent of Man, on the other hand, is virulently racist and offers little to no rigorous study. Most people's ideas about evolution come from The Descent of Man, whether they know it or not. It is the basis for the Social Darwinism and other ridiculous interpretations of evolutionary theory.
Just like the opposite of a "faith healer" isn't a "faithless healer", but a "doctor".
Now you just sound stupid. What about Chinese medicine, or holistic methods? They're not "faith healers" but they're certainly not M.D.s.
In 12 months, Vista will be unavoidable but for now it is a non factor.
I wouldn't even give them that. Personally, I don't plan on upgrading any of the computers I administer until at least 18 months out. I've got a test machine running Vista Ultimate, and while I'm actually a fan of the features Vista introduces, it will be an absolute nightmare to roll this out to my users, especially since (currently) Vista and Server 2003 don't always see eye-to-eye. Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well, and I understand that, but any business that tries to upgrade any time soon is asking for a world of hurt.
You're ignoring how incredibly expensive it is to build a well-designed wired network. I just finished wiring my office at work, and the wire ALONE (I had to buy PLENUM wire, which tripled my cost) was nearly $3000. Coupled with the racks, the switches, the punchdown panels, the keystone jacks, the LV plates, the wall plates, and the labor, I have easily eclipsed $10K, and this is for a business of only about 25 people. For a major office or (God forbid) a hotel, these expenses are extraordinary. Now contrast that with a dozen cheap Proxim APs, each of which run only about $600. Not only would this provide plenty of wireless coverage, but it requires dramatically less labor. Clearly wireless is not always the solution, but to say it "rarely has legitimate uses" is to be completely unfamiliar with the complications of running CAT5e or (God forbid) CAT6.
I think the reason that there is so much anti-depressant use these days is because, as our economy slowly swirls the drain
Our economy isn't swirling down the drain. It's growing very healthily. In fact, our economy has continued to grow throughout the Bush administration, despite his completely asinine way of running things. On top of that, unemployment is hitting all-time lows. (Richmond, VA, where I live, is so low that we are on the cusp of entering a labor shortage.) And for those skeptics, it's not just "low-end" jobs that don't pay well--this is across the board, from corporations to gas stations.
I realize a lot of slashdotters are well-educated and many of them have decent jobs. It seems to me that this is a child-like view of "Things are going well for me; if anyone else is having a problem, they are just not working hard enough."
I agree with you in that the viewpoint you mentioned is childish, but things *really* aren't that bad over here. We're still growing, every year. Sometimes we grow less, but we always grow. Since 1970, the U.S. has created 57 million new jobs. In that same time period, Europe has only created 4 million. (See here for details.) And judging from my time abroad in Japan and Iran, I'm convinced that the issues with management are universal: very few people know how to successfully manage others. Just look in the job market: you will be shocked at how well a company with decidedly average management can compete. The guys that are actually good at management? They make millions, every time. It's a bona-fide skill, one that takes plenty of experience and a generous helping of talent, too.
The best advice here has already been given, I think: work hard and have confidence in your own abilities. I worked for the state right out of college and after 9 months I'd had it. I worked my ass off, scored excellent evals across the board, worked overtime and hauled ass to get deadlines met and respond to technical emergencies, and come my review, I got a whopping 3% raise. I told my boss on numerous occasions that I loved my job (and I did) but that the money was absolutely not enough for what they were asking me to do. She sympathized for me but was unwilling, ultimately, to go to bat for me and get me more money. So I started putting my resume out there, and within a few months I had an offer for--literally--double the salary. I took it. The most important thing any worker can understand about him/herself is that you constantly have to stick up for yourself. Make yourself difficult or impossible to replace, and demand the proper compensation for the work you do. If you don't get it, move on. Too many people stick around in shit jobs because they think their chance will come. Poor managers rely on that type of thinking. A good manager will see talent and will reward it, because talented people make money for everyone. If you're consistently exceeding goals and not getting some of it pushed back your way, get into your manager's office and demand compensation! And if you don't get it in a timely manner, get out, get out, get out. You are worth more than that.
It wouldn't matter even if it was. If the OS you have installed does not support the anti-enjoyment filters that the MPAA and the RIAA are so keen on imposing, then nothing can be done. I would love to get my hands on one of those laptops.
It's not about loyalty, it's about profitability. When the PS2 came out, everyone nay-sayed as well. Look what happened there. I think Sony has made a LOT of terrible decisions in the past few years, but ultimately the brand is still very strong and people still want to buy PS3s. You're assuming its price is a significant hurdle for most people: honestly, we have no way of knowing, because supply is so scarce. If in three months' time, the PS3 is well-stocked and no one is buying them, then you might have a point. Otherwise, there's no reason to believe that developers will shelve games for the PS3. And if Sony continues to have as strong a software library as it has in the past (it is consistently the only camp with plenty of RTS/RPG/Action-Adventure games) then the PS3 will succeed. (Sports/Racing games are the biggest sellers on most consoles but those are almost always cross-console.)
As a general comment, the arguably stupid part of the fixation on SUVs is that if everyone stopped driving them tomorrow and drove a Prius instead, it would have a negligible impact on oil consumption in the US. That fixation is fundamentally misplaced.
The only way you'll make a difference is if people stop driving generally. Which means more telecommuting and smaller suburbs, something I am okay with on both accounts. Whining about SUVs is pissing in the ocean because it ignores the major causes of fuel consumption.
What mathematics are you relying on to come to this conclusion? Or is your definition of "negligible" much more broad than mine? Let's run with what the article gives us: over half of the purchases made today are SUVs or minivans (53% as of this year). A quick run to the government's fuel economy website shows the breakdown of all 2006 SUV fuel mileage. Eyeballing it, let's say the average highway fuel economy is 21 mpg. A quick peek at the minivan class shows them to be around 24 mpg, but I want to stick with SUVs for the time being. Now let's do the same thing for small sedans. (Your example used a Prius, but I don't want to include hybrids.) The average highway fuel economy here is easily well over 30 mpg highway, but let's just say it's 31 mpg for the sake of argument. The article then goes on to tell us that each car saw an average of 11,856 miles last year. Breaking it down, this comes to 564.9 gallons for the SUVs, and 382.5 gallons for the small cars.
So some proportion of 53% of new cars purchased consume 564.9 gallons a year. Looking at the road, I think we can safely say that more SUVs are sold than minivans, so let's say 2/3rds of 53% of new cars are SUVs, or approximately 36%. According to the study, the ratio of vehicles-to-people in the US is 1.178 to 1, and considering that the population of the US is around 270 million, we're looking at roughly 318 million vehicles. Clearly not all of these are personal vehicles, but let's assume 75% of them are, so now we're at 238.5 million vehicles. Considering that the rate of SUV purchase has decreased over the past five years, I think it's safe to say that our ratio (36%) is a fair one to apply to the entire population, rather than just new cars purchased. So we can say that 85.88 million vehicles in the US consume 564.9 gallons of gasoline per year, on average. This equates to 48,511,465,380 gallons of fuel a year. (Keep in mind that total US consumption of gasoline per year is around 146 billion gallons.) If ALL of them, tomorrow, were to start driving small sedans, that number would become 32,847,646,500. That switch would effectively curtail fuel consumption in the US by 15 billion gallons of gasoline per year. A 42-gallon barrel of oil only produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline, so some quick math shows us that this would cut our oil barrel consumption by 769,230,769 barrels a year. According to recent statistics, total US oil consumption is around 22 million barrels of oil per day, so over a year that's 8,030,000,000 barrels. In essence we're talking about a 10% drop of total oil consumption. That is by no means "negligible." And this is without considering hybrid vehicles or truly fuel efficient small sedans (which easily average 35 mpg highway).
Admittedly I make quite a few assumptions in my statistics, but I don't think what I have proposed and the actual reality are too divided here. Improving fuel efficiency will make a dramatic and immediate impact on our fuel consumption. Whether or not this will be countered by increased amounts of driving has yet to be seen, but it's untrue to say that fuel efficiency is a negligible part of the equation.
Not only is this outlandish, but it's unethical, too. You are attempting to limit someone's ability to travel freely within the US. It's one thing to tax gas, which is a good, and another thing entirely to tax someone's distance travelled. You're talking about an extremely totalitarian policy. What comes next, taxing people for buying more than one pair of running shoes a year? It's the same principle: rather than tax someone for the goods they consume, you want to tax them for how they choose to consume the good as well.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to learn the difference between "consumer" and "shareholder." I don't mind laying (some) responsibility on MS's shareholders for its actions, but that's because they have ownership in the company. When the average consumer buys a Microsoft product, they are not tacitly assuming responsibility for Microsoft's actions. They are purchasing a product. That's basically where the relationship ends.
Precisely, and this is what I pointed out: what, inherently, makes Hitler's killing worse than Stalin's? Why do you believe that killing a particular ethnic group is more heinous than killing political prisoners? Stalin created his own institutionalized machine, he was just remarkably less adept at keeping records than Hitler. Why does Hitler's professionalism somehow make his acts worse? Why are we conditioned to believe that some types of slaughter are worse than others? It's an absurd and insulting statement.
Terrible, to be sure, but how is it worse than, say, the Mongol invasion of Iran? I think it's telling that you believe Stalin sought to create "a better society," when really all I see is his desire to wield as much power as possible. And you still have not shown what makes Hitler "most insane and evil." What is it, in particular, that makes the systematic slaughter of an ethnic group more heinous than the systematic slaughter of a political group? And why, in particular, is the slaughter of the Jews so heinous in particular, when compared to the Roma? (I should point out that Hitler was at least partially successful in wiping them out; the Bohemian-Romani language was completely lost.)
You don't think Stalin's gulags and deportation camps were just that? He was less organized about it, but replace "Jew" with "someone I do not trust" and you've got Stalin's Russia. Hitler even tried (albeit pathetically) to create a pretext for his slaughter, by blaming Germany's economic state after WWI on the bankers, who were largely Jewish. Stalin didn't even bother with pretexts. If he didn't like you, he killed you, your family, even your dog. You are arguing what I pointed out as absurd, earlier: we in the West consider killing based on ethnic/religious lines to be more heinous than killing done for purely political purposes. Explain to me how this is internally consistent. You may argue that "someone can control their political beliefs; someone can't control their ethnicity," but then I would ask you to show me evidence of where Stalin accepted the political "conversion" of one of his former opponents. From where I'm standing, killing is killing, and the motivations for both Stalin and Hitler end up being fairly arbitrary: both created a system to dispose of those they wanted dead, and then both put them into practice. Stalin was ultimately more successful.
It has nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with the politics of WWII. The reason Nazi Germany is covered more thoroughly and often thought of as worse than Stalin's USSR is because:
1.) Stalin was our ally at the time, and pointing out the systematic slaughter he carried out against his own people would not have been good for domestic support of the war.
2.) The Nazis committed the Holocaust, and we in the West have convinced ourselves that killing based on political ideology is more palatable than killing based on ethnic/cultural/religious identity.
If you bother to pick up a history book, though, or even just look at the total dead under Stalin's regime, you'll quickly begin to see that Hitler had nothing on Stalin. Hitler killed roughly 9-11 million in the Holocaust. The general consensus, according to Wikipedia, is that Stalin killed at least that many, and likely killed nearly twice that amount. Stalin just chose the right group of people with whom to ally. And, he didn't specifically target the Jews. If history has taught us anything, it's that killing the Jews never works out as intended.
I can't have pesky studies getting in the way of my porn consumption and linux fanaticism! I *know* I'm better than everyone else, so everyone should just shut up and be more like me.
Oh intertron, you are a wealth of practical information. :D
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Putin is a dangerous man, and given our current administration's remarkable lack of competency, I'd say our relationship with Russia is not very amicable. The rhetoric's not as fiery as it is with, say, Iran, but the neo-cons have no qualms about letting Putin know what they think of him.
It just needed to be said again. I kind of wish we could stick it somewhere in our National Anthem.
But a generalization is just that: a generalization. It exists to let us make general statements about a population, with the foreknowledge that there will be exceptions to the general rule. All I was pointing out is that Asperger's syndrome does not constitute enough of the nerd population to warrant revocation of Paul Graham's generalization. If over 50% of nerds had Asperger's, then it would be safe to say that Paul Graham was just wrong. But since Asperger's affects a minute proportion of society, his generalization holds: those with the syndrome are just an exception.
Here you're reading too much into what I said. I never said "living unhappy lives BECAUSE they work underpaid jobs." I said "living unhappy lives AND working underpaid jobs." It can be any combination of the two. Personally I think that nerds are often woefully underpaid because they lack the social skills to promote their work and properly articulate why they deserve raises/promotions. In my personal experience, nerds often lack tact, patience, and compassion for those with less perceived intelligence. Being a jerk in the working world only works if you've got the charisma to shamelessly promote yourself at the expense of others; as we've both established, nerds lack that charisma, so all they end up being (most of the time) are jerks who stay in the lower levels of the company.
Again, proper social skills help alleviate or altogether avoid this phenomenon. You are correct that management is a completely different field of work than engineering/programming/etc., but a creative worker (with the social skills to sell their ideas) will find ways to get paid more for the work they do, and possibly even create positions for themselves. The upper levels of any corporation include management AND strategy, and I think a lot of nerds would thrive in a position where they got to make long-term decisions about how IT/programming/engineering went down in the company. And of course, some people just want to program and do nothing else, and that's fine too. But I think a lot of nerds are fairly ambitious people, and it is rare that an ambitious person with no social skills can see their ambitions realized. Eventually you're going to have to work with other people, and how you interact with them is crucial in the formation of the end-product.
Yes, but you are professing that you are happy where you are--so there's no impetus for you to change anything at all. Most of the nerds I know are not happy where they are: they despise their jobs, they constantly gripe about their social lives (or lack thereof), and are extremely negative people. Humans are social creatures; we thrive on social interaction, it's just t
Quoted from Wikipedia:
So I'm going to say that your argument, while well-worded, fails, because this syndrome affects .02-.03% of the population. There are a great deal many more nerds in the world than this. I am posting on slashdot, so you can probably guess where my personal interests lie. To top it off, I was a pretty overweight kid during middle school. I had to deal with my fair share of insults and hopeless crushes. And he's right--when I was younger, I was more concerned with knowledge than with popularity.
Luckily, I am an extremely proud person, and eventually the perceived shame of being overweight, and of not having women attracted to me, drove me to start exercising. I also started to devote some time to cultivating my social skills--rather than taking the easy way out and avoiding social situations that made me uncomfortable (like dances, parties, etc.) I started making an effort to go to them and interact with a lot of other people. Social skills are incredibly necessary in day-to-day life, and I am eternally thankful that I took the time to do what I did back then (and during college), because it's made me a happier and more successful person. Would I be smarter if I'd alternatively spent that time writing, studying, etc? Probably, but the trade-off in this case was absolutely necessary. Most people I know, who share my interests, are complete assholes. They are bitter about their childhood, fiercely defensive of their nerd status, and generally unpleasant to be around. Even my fellow IT professionals are normally very unpleasant to deal with, because they are so supremely arrogant and uncouth. The real world doesn't care how smart you are, it cares how well you work with others. Unfortunately, most nerds continue to ignore this fact, and end up living unhappy lives and working underpaid jobs, because they lack the charisma and intuition to progress.
Now, back to the topic at hand. Honestly, it would be wonderful if children didn't have to experience the pain and rejection associated with bullying. But there will always be assholes in the world. And I'm much more concerned with a population that doesn't know how to respond to assholes, than one that lets its children take a few licks early on so they know how to deal/respond to it. Now I'm not condoning bullying here: assault is illegal and it should always be. But we can't coddle our children forever; the real world is a brutal place, and nothing we do can change it. It is brutal in every country, across every culture: you either accept this and prepare for it, or futilely rail against it.
I think you're operating under a flawed definition of "scientist." A scientist is someone who, according to Merriam-Webster, specializes in a branch of the natural sciences. That's it. Nowhere in there does it equate someone's evolutionary viewpoint with their validity as a scientist. Perhaps you define scientist as "someone who applies the Scientific Method to every aspect of their lives." If that's how you define it, that's fine and dandy, but it's a dumb definition because NO ONE does that.
Point one: there's no such thing as "applying science" to an idea. And you're generalizing. I never said the physicist was "a creationist," I said he/she was skeptical of evolutionary theory. Skepticism forms the basis of all science. You should know that.
Point two: creationism is not "based on a refusal to argue with evidence." It's simply the view that God created the heavens and the earth--hence, creationism. Some fundamental Christians believe that God created the earth within a specific time frame--namely, seven days. This is called strict creationism or Biblical creationism. You should get your terminology straight; that's twice now I've corrected your improper usage of the English language.
Point three: my "claptrap" about Darwin was to point out that the application of evolutionary theory to humanity has always been heavily politicized. It is almost impossible to find a scientist who approaches evolution in the same way that he/she would approach a proof of, say, Fermat's Little Theorem. When it comes to the origin of mankind, people always have an agenda to push. In that sense I view evolutionary theory like any other religious movement: people base their world view off of it.
Point four: when did I ever say I was a creationist? And further, what does a "scientific argument" have to do with anything? Last time I checked, we were discussing a philosophical idea: whether or not belief in evolutionary theory could be considered the sole factor in designating someone a "scientist." Since all of the accepted definitions of scientist make no mention of evolutionary theory, clearly it's not the determining agent, hence I was right, and you were wrong. There is no "scientific argument" to be had. So, make that four times that you've misused the English language.
So suddenly any well-trained murderer is an Islamic jihadist?
Yes, because clearly your time is so valuable that you do not have time to create an account or log in. You certainly showed him.
Oh really? So a physics professor can't be skeptical of evolution and still be considered a "scientist?" I didn't realize the criteria for science was: "must improperly and broadly apply Darwin's theory of natural selection to human origins." Darwin wrote two major works: The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. The first one describes the theory of natural selection, and it is actually quite limited in its scope: Darwin doesn't make any vast or overarching claims in the work. The Descent of Man, on the other hand, is virulently racist and offers little to no rigorous study. Most people's ideas about evolution come from The Descent of Man, whether they know it or not. It is the basis for the Social Darwinism and other ridiculous interpretations of evolutionary theory.
Now you just sound stupid. What about Chinese medicine, or holistic methods? They're not "faith healers" but they're certainly not M.D.s.
I wouldn't even give them that. Personally, I don't plan on upgrading any of the computers I administer until at least 18 months out. I've got a test machine running Vista Ultimate, and while I'm actually a fan of the features Vista introduces, it will be an absolute nightmare to roll this out to my users, especially since (currently) Vista and Server 2003 don't always see eye-to-eye. Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well, and I understand that, but any business that tries to upgrade any time soon is asking for a world of hurt.
You're ignoring how incredibly expensive it is to build a well-designed wired network. I just finished wiring my office at work, and the wire ALONE (I had to buy PLENUM wire, which tripled my cost) was nearly $3000. Coupled with the racks, the switches, the punchdown panels, the keystone jacks, the LV plates, the wall plates, and the labor, I have easily eclipsed $10K, and this is for a business of only about 25 people. For a major office or (God forbid) a hotel, these expenses are extraordinary. Now contrast that with a dozen cheap Proxim APs, each of which run only about $600. Not only would this provide plenty of wireless coverage, but it requires dramatically less labor. Clearly wireless is not always the solution, but to say it "rarely has legitimate uses" is to be completely unfamiliar with the complications of running CAT5e or (God forbid) CAT6.
Except economics is not, nor has it ever been, a zero-sum game.
And you got modded +5. Jesus Christ. I lose more faith in slashdot every day.
Our economy isn't swirling down the drain. It's growing very healthily. In fact, our economy has continued to grow throughout the Bush administration, despite his completely asinine way of running things. On top of that, unemployment is hitting all-time lows. (Richmond, VA, where I live, is so low that we are on the cusp of entering a labor shortage.) And for those skeptics, it's not just "low-end" jobs that don't pay well--this is across the board, from corporations to gas stations.
I agree with you in that the viewpoint you mentioned is childish, but things *really* aren't that bad over here. We're still growing, every year. Sometimes we grow less, but we always grow. Since 1970, the U.S. has created 57 million new jobs. In that same time period, Europe has only created 4 million. (See here for details.) And judging from my time abroad in Japan and Iran, I'm convinced that the issues with management are universal: very few people know how to successfully manage others. Just look in the job market: you will be shocked at how well a company with decidedly average management can compete. The guys that are actually good at management? They make millions, every time. It's a bona-fide skill, one that takes plenty of experience and a generous helping of talent, too.
The best advice here has already been given, I think: work hard and have confidence in your own abilities. I worked for the state right out of college and after 9 months I'd had it. I worked my ass off, scored excellent evals across the board, worked overtime and hauled ass to get deadlines met and respond to technical emergencies, and come my review, I got a whopping 3% raise. I told my boss on numerous occasions that I loved my job (and I did) but that the money was absolutely not enough for what they were asking me to do. She sympathized for me but was unwilling, ultimately, to go to bat for me and get me more money. So I started putting my resume out there, and within a few months I had an offer for--literally--double the salary. I took it. The most important thing any worker can understand about him/herself is that you constantly have to stick up for yourself. Make yourself difficult or impossible to replace, and demand the proper compensation for the work you do. If you don't get it, move on. Too many people stick around in shit jobs because they think their chance will come. Poor managers rely on that type of thinking. A good manager will see talent and will reward it, because talented people make money for everyone. If you're consistently exceeding goals and not getting some of it pushed back your way, get into your manager's office and demand compensation! And if you don't get it in a timely manner, get out, get out, get out. You are worth more than that.
It wouldn't matter even if it was. If the OS you have installed does not support the anti-enjoyment filters that the MPAA and the RIAA are so keen on imposing, then nothing can be done. I would love to get my hands on one of those laptops.
That's a really ingenious use of Silly String. I just hope it continues to work.
I really love the mental acrobatics it takes to go from "free speech" to "kiddie porn is constitutionally protected." Censorship hyperbole FTW!
It's not about loyalty, it's about profitability. When the PS2 came out, everyone nay-sayed as well. Look what happened there. I think Sony has made a LOT of terrible decisions in the past few years, but ultimately the brand is still very strong and people still want to buy PS3s. You're assuming its price is a significant hurdle for most people: honestly, we have no way of knowing, because supply is so scarce. If in three months' time, the PS3 is well-stocked and no one is buying them, then you might have a point. Otherwise, there's no reason to believe that developers will shelve games for the PS3. And if Sony continues to have as strong a software library as it has in the past (it is consistently the only camp with plenty of RTS/RPG/Action-Adventure games) then the PS3 will succeed. (Sports/Racing games are the biggest sellers on most consoles but those are almost always cross-console.)
What mathematics are you relying on to come to this conclusion? Or is your definition of "negligible" much more broad than mine? Let's run with what the article gives us: over half of the purchases made today are SUVs or minivans (53% as of this year). A quick run to the government's fuel economy website shows the breakdown of all 2006 SUV fuel mileage. Eyeballing it, let's say the average highway fuel economy is 21 mpg. A quick peek at the minivan class shows them to be around 24 mpg, but I want to stick with SUVs for the time being. Now let's do the same thing for small sedans. (Your example used a Prius, but I don't want to include hybrids.) The average highway fuel economy here is easily well over 30 mpg highway, but let's just say it's 31 mpg for the sake of argument. The article then goes on to tell us that each car saw an average of 11,856 miles last year. Breaking it down, this comes to 564.9 gallons for the SUVs, and 382.5 gallons for the small cars.
So some proportion of 53% of new cars purchased consume 564.9 gallons a year. Looking at the road, I think we can safely say that more SUVs are sold than minivans, so let's say 2/3rds of 53% of new cars are SUVs, or approximately 36%. According to the study, the ratio of vehicles-to-people in the US is 1.178 to 1, and considering that the population of the US is around 270 million, we're looking at roughly 318 million vehicles. Clearly not all of these are personal vehicles, but let's assume 75% of them are, so now we're at 238.5 million vehicles. Considering that the rate of SUV purchase has decreased over the past five years, I think it's safe to say that our ratio (36%) is a fair one to apply to the entire population, rather than just new cars purchased. So we can say that 85.88 million vehicles in the US consume 564.9 gallons of gasoline per year, on average. This equates to 48,511,465,380 gallons of fuel a year. (Keep in mind that total US consumption of gasoline per year is around 146 billion gallons.) If ALL of them, tomorrow, were to start driving small sedans, that number would become 32,847,646,500. That switch would effectively curtail fuel consumption in the US by 15 billion gallons of gasoline per year. A 42-gallon barrel of oil only produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline, so some quick math shows us that this would cut our oil barrel consumption by 769,230,769 barrels a year. According to recent statistics, total US oil consumption is around 22 million barrels of oil per day, so over a year that's 8,030,000,000 barrels. In essence we're talking about a 10% drop of total oil consumption. That is by no means "negligible." And this is without considering hybrid vehicles or truly fuel efficient small sedans (which easily average 35 mpg highway).
Admittedly I make quite a few assumptions in my statistics, but I don't think what I have proposed and the actual reality are too divided here. Improving fuel efficiency will make a dramatic and immediate impact on our fuel consumption. Whether or not this will be countered by increased amounts of driving has yet to be seen, but it's untrue to say that fuel efficiency is a negligible part of the equation.
Not only is this outlandish, but it's unethical, too. You are attempting to limit someone's ability to travel freely within the US. It's one thing to tax gas, which is a good, and another thing entirely to tax someone's distance travelled. You're talking about an extremely totalitarian policy. What comes next, taxing people for buying more than one pair of running shoes a year? It's the same principle: rather than tax someone for the goods they consume, you want to tax them for how they choose to consume the good as well.