Of course, in reality, this is just a good argument for ANY sort of "group insurance". Thats kind of the problem with one-off single insurance. You go to the ins company, and ask for insurance. They look at YOUR risk to insure you.
When I got my job, I got insurance with it. Working at this company is the criteria by which I got onto my plan. So there is no reason for the insurance company to see me as a greater risk than anyone else at the company, since they have nearly everyone here, its all about average risk.
SO, by grouping people together based on a criteria that has nothing to do with health (working for a specific company) they get a mix of risky and non-risky and blend us into a pool that can be insured as a group.
Now, getting back to your point... Single payer is just.... group insurance expanded to its logical conclusion. Its insurance for a large group of people, based on a membership that has nothing to do with health, thus blending "risky" and "safe" individuals. Its just that the group is everyone here, and the insurer is a "non-profit" known as the government.
Frankly, "single payer" is an insurance companies wet dream of what the world would be if they could get a mandate to buy insurance to everyone and put everyone else out of business. It makes sense that they don't want it, because it means them going out of business. Excuse me while my heart bleeds for them....
Thank you very much! When I made my comment I had this exact article in mind, but couldn't remember enough about it to find it in a google search. Particularly, this is the passage that I had in mind:
The word "ballot" comes from the Italian ballotta, or little ball, and a ballot often was a ball, or at least something ballish, like a pea or a pebble, or, not uncommonly, a bullet. Colonial Pennsylvanians commonly voted by tossing beans into a hat. Paper voting wasn't meant to conceal anyone's vote; it was just easier than counting beans. Our forebears considered casting a "secret ballot" cowardly, underhanded, and despicable; as one South Carolinian put it, voting secretly would "destroy that noble generous openness that is characteristick of an Englishman."
Obviously not everyone feels the same way, or did then. However, its funny how something that came about primarily for pragmatic reasons (ease of counting), can get elevated to "fundamental to our democracy" in peoples minds.
Not to say it is a bad thing, I have much bigger issues with how we vote than whether or not ballots are secret. Frankly, given the issues involved, I find myself really leaning towards a condorcet method of voting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method ) because I am fundamentally bothered that my vote for a third party candidate ends up just taking away from the least objectionable of the mainstream candidates and that this is one of the major hurdles towards the adoption of third parties.
I agree with you here. Totally actually. Though I did want to point out that it wasn't until almost 1900 before secret ballots were used over the entire US. It was actually fairly controversial for very similar arguments as you gave for signatures on petitions.
I might also add, there is the case of being able to find out your name is on a petition that you might not have signed. That isn't even possible if signatures are kept secret.
> The ONLY reason for such a list, is future harassment.
Sure, that is, until people who never signed it find their name on the list.
Seriously... if a petition to ammend your state constitution to allow police officers to ass rape anyone they see on the street.... how would you know that your name wasn't improperly added to the list of signers if the list wasn't publically posted?
What does signature validation consist of anyway? They check the names against the voter roles and addresses? Nice. Does anyone actually bother to mail people and say "Hey, you actually signed this, right?"
Hell, I could draw up a petition and have a few hundred "signatures" by the end of the day if that is the standard. Omar Ravenhurst wouldn't even need to sign.
I think Zack De La Rocha, The Last Emperor & KRS-ONE said it best in their track "CIA" "Need I say the C.I.A. be criminals in action"
But given that the same song said that "President Clinton should delete them", I guess it wasn't as popular as it could have been:) and sadly, since 9/11 they are actually percieved to have a job again. A front job is always a very good thing for a criminal. Nothing like an air of legitimacy to hide criminal minds.
You could get inexpensive astronaut standins. Maybe put some dirty telephone handsets on the shuttle and lock the door when the telephone handset cleaners go in....
Thats true of many things really. Whether something is a weapon or not really has more to do with what use it is designed for, more than what it does. A large rail gun could be used for many things, you could use it to shoot a payload to the top of a mountain. You could use it to put a shuttle in space, you could use it to drop explosive shells on your enemies. One of these uses makes it a weapon.
Of course, dropping space shuttles all over your enemies is probably pretty effective too, though damned expensive. Then again, if you were routinely shelling with space shuttles, production volume would drastically reduce the per unit price of the shuttles....
We have to have them by regulation here. I think its asinine. Not totally, but, this is Boston, the houses here are so old that the vast majority still use single pipe steam heat. The only air exchange beteen my living space and the basement is from when the door is left open.... and there is an aparement between us and the boiler.
Clearly it makes sense to put a detector in the basement. First floor? sure, probably. Second and third?
Shit, these houses have no insulation and the exterior walls are barely six inches thick. These places are leaky as hell.
Every time it comes up, people seem to think I am a southerner when I refer to the War of Northern Agression.
Your right, we don't need another war of Union Aggression. However, I don't think the people here are served by maintaining the Union either, so whats a people to do?
If the Union wont allow us to leave peacefully, thats on them, as far as I am concerned.
No way. It had to be more recent than this. (in 1997 I had just left HS, was in college, and my head was way too far up my own ass to care). I am pretty sure I know where I was working when it happened, which places it somewhere between 2000 and 2005... possibly somewhat later, but no earlier.
As far as I understand the law now, Law Enforcement can ask the IRS to review a return for fraud. However, the IRS (this is my understanding now, please correct me if I am wrong) can review it and decided fraud was committed or not. However, they cannot actually show the return itself to anyone, as the contents are protected.
Hmmm Northeast leaves.... and CA leaves (probably taking the rest of the west coast with it).... I have to imagine that the midwest/south would then split.
For some reason this leaves me with the image of Texas becoming the Lone Star State again and being overwhelmed by a rush of Mexicans looking to take their land back.... and that makes me giggle and want to see this even more!
With poker, at least in some of the casnios I have played at... they have a mechanical shuffler in the table.
Play with 1 deck, while the other shuffles in the machine. What would be so hard about playing with 1 deck in, and one deck playing. Or have card shufflers made that can do 4 decks at once, and then use 4 decks shuffling, and 4 decks in use....
Fuck.... shuffle every hand.
Problem solved. Now playing the game properly with all available information still gives the house an advantage.
It seems to me they MUST figure either A. its cheaper to just catch and eject people B. The ability to count cards brings in more money from incompetent counters than is lost to competent ones before they are ejected
Frankly, I think they would implement this within 2 weeks if the law were amended to simply not allow them to eject people from the game for just playing well.
I swear, NOTHING has radicalized my views, like reading about the ideals of the radicals that started the American Revolution and founded this country. Nothing has so quickly shown the current system to be one of utter hypocrites.
Frankly the only place I disagree is in that this would even be useful. I think my state, and the few that surround it, should all consider secession. Then we can go and sign our own treaties.
As was pointed out at the time, even on the republican side, the northeast voted 2 to 1 for McCain over Bush in primaries for the 2000 election. Thats the exact opposite from the rest of the country. I think its pretty clear that neither party really represents the interests of the North East.
I CLEARLY remember an emergency session being called right after they went into recess a few years back (4-8 years ago I believe) because they passed a budget that contained a provision that removed privacy protections from tax return information.... and of course.... nobody read the bill.
Of course, as much as many hate the idea, it could be REALLY BAD for political figures, big businessmen etc, so they held an emergency summer session, and fixed it.
Anyway, I clearly remember it.... maybe my brain is broken in a way that makes it not interface seamlessly with google, but I can't find a single article or reference to this incident, which is too bad, because it is a link that could be really useful in say.... discussions like this.
I have been forwarding the link to everyone that I know, I recommend that everyone else who cares about transparency in the legal process to do the same.
Frankly, I don't spend much time thinking about whether the person that I am typing a response is male or female since, it has no bearing at all on 99% of discussions. If you asked me if the person who wrote any given message was a man, I might get the feeling that its so, I might not. However, since women are underrepresented in many of these forums, it is correct most of the time to assume the person is a man. What of it?
People are creatures of habits and guesses. Sometimes those guesses are wrong.
This is a simple guess, based on experience, because we grew up with it being more normal to refer to people with gender based pronouns. In fact, some of us have had the experience of having people get pissy because we used a gender neutral pronoun (if you don't believe me, the next time you run into someone with a child and are unsure of the gender, see how quickly you get corrected when you refer to their child as "it")
and... "ze"? I am sorry that someone invented a new word that you like and it hasn't caught on yet. This is the first that I am even seeing "ze" as an english word. Yet you seem to take personal offense that people don't use it. You are not the first person to find human language to be resistant to intentional change... http://lmgtfy.com/?q=esperanto
Essentially, I am all for fighting real sexism. I am all for getting women into IT, and wherever else that they want to be and make themselves qualified to be. Some sports have talked of getting rid of the gender divide, in favor of weight classes, since it is a more fair way to divide competitors.
I wrestled in high school and thats exactly what we were doing 15 years ago. Were there still issues? You bet. Still are I bet. However, I tend to be of the opinion that this sort of social change happens through generations, rather than through winning over individuals.
> Yes, it led to the brutality of the Roman Empire, where everyone was abused and therefore everyone became an > abuser. Yes, let's go back to that.
But of course! It all started there. There was no slavery, sexual or otherwise, and no child abuse before the greek institution of young men being paired with older men as mentors and life teachers in a relationship that was sometimes, but not always, sexual.
It makes so much more sense now.
> Yes, nobody has ever become an emotional cripple for life or a dangerous criminal because of a sexual > experience in their past... No families have ever been destroyed because of "just sex". Nope. Never.
You can't say whats going to effect a person. Plenty of people have become dangerous criminals or emotional cripples without such experiences. Families are never destroyed by sex...its more like cheating and deception etc that destroys families, and those are not just sex.
It was school that did everything from teach me some history and introduce me to philosophy, to geometry, algebra, and some calculous. I mean, my parents were helpful with times tables and all sorts of things, but, unter their tutelage, I doubt i would have made it to college level calculus without some serious remedial work.
not a dig at the rents, just, 6 or so hours a day 180 or so day a year... its a lot of time.
This talk always reminds me og grade school when the shop teacher (yes shop, go figure) did his sexism class. He handed out papers with a number of professions on it, and asked us all to rate each one as a male or female job.
I was accused of "goofing off" and "not taking it seriously" because of my answers. Go figure that the kid whose mother was the college educated professional and father was a night worker who was unable to be there a lot except on weekends wouldn't have the exact same prejudices as everyone else.
That always seems to be the problem though.... the law of fives is never wrong!
That is, if you set out to look for something, evidence of it will bubble to the surface wherever you look.
Consider this exchange "You sir, are an addict" "I am not" "See! Denial! You are totally an addict, addicts often deny being addicts"
I can start out now with the idea that women find me attractive. Then as I go throughout my day, mark in my head every time that I see a woman that I don't already know well looks at me and smiles. Then later on I can say "hey man, women find me attractive, 6 girls checked me out today".
Is that valid evidence? I mean, the look and smile could mean they find me attractive. So it is evidence that they might. However, it ignores all the women who didn't look at me, or I didn't see look at me. It ignores all the other reasons they might be smiling. It might even be evidence I have dirt on my nose that amuses people.
In the end, we have to rememeber that correlation is not causation. Why are there very few females in FOSS? I don't know at all. I don't claim to know. That is the bigger issue. The author talks about being attacked, I remain unconvinced.
I think the real answer is, it depends on who is doing the hiring. We all like to think we are not biased, but, we all have our biases. It is possible that the person interviewing you has a problem with gambling, could be mormon, could have had a degenerate gambler for a parent etc. They also might hold it against you that you worked in that industry.
Thats true of anything though. You could work for Monsanto and interview with the cousin of a small farmer who got in legal trouble for seeds that fell off a truck and grew on his land. Shit, you could call in for a phone interview and have it be with that bitch who side swiped your car and blamed you for the accident (happened to someone I know!).
In the end, I would say.... fuck them all. If its a job that you think might be interesting and you have no problems with it, I say take it. Do you really have such a strong need to be accepted and belong as you can't take not getting some job later on? The chances of getting any individual job that you want are pretty low anyway.
People really need to turn it around. Yes they might reject you... consider it their loss. Do you want to work for someone who would hold something like that against you?
Thats my attitude on drug tests. The only fluid sample that anyone other than my doctor gets to ask for is a taste test. I don't want to work for someone who invades into my body chemistry and what I may or may not do on my time off.... so if thats what they need, good luck to them.
Certainly the plastic case of most keyboards would break before most bones would. So unless you got a corner to smash just right into the temple, I think you are SOL on that front. However.... once the plastic breaks, the broken edges, or inside boards, will have sharp enough edges to do slashing damage.
So I think you COULD kill someone with most keyboards... if they let you...
> Hell, I was raised by very conservative Christian parents, and was homeschooled, so I actually didn't know > much about it until we had "the talk" in my teen years. But even I remember fooling around as a curious > (probably - it's so long ago I don't really remember) ten or eleven year old with a girl whose parents were > friends of my parents
Meh, my parents were like, the people who could hang with the hippies or the squares (you know, smoked pot when they were younger, never did acid, have records of music from woodstock, but didn't go). Lapsed catholic and baptists. Very liberal, do as you want. When my wife told my mother that we have an open relationship, she actually asked a few questions and that was that, she had no problem with it. No lectures about sex or morality. (though, when we mentioned contemplating a Star Trek themed wedding, she didn't take that as well, at first)
Anyway... you would think I got "the talk". I learned about sex from health class, biology class, and the internet. Maybe they didn't think I needed it since I was kinda shy and not dating at the time? But they NEVER actually tried to have "the talk" with me.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, in reality, this is just a good argument for ANY sort of "group insurance". Thats kind of the problem with one-off single insurance. You go to the ins company, and ask for insurance. They look at YOUR risk to insure you.
When I got my job, I got insurance with it. Working at this company is the criteria by which I got onto my plan. So there is no reason for the insurance company to see me as a greater risk than anyone else at the company, since they have nearly everyone here, its all about average risk.
SO, by grouping people together based on a criteria that has nothing to do with health (working for a specific company) they get a mix of risky and non-risky and blend us into a pool that can be insured as a group.
Now, getting back to your point... Single payer is just.... group insurance expanded to its logical conclusion. Its insurance for a large group of people, based on a membership that has nothing to do with health, thus blending "risky" and "safe" individuals. Its just that the group is everyone here, and the insurer is a "non-profit" known as the government.
Frankly, "single payer" is an insurance companies wet dream of what the world would be if they could get a mandate to buy insurance to everyone and put everyone else out of business. It makes sense that they don't want it, because it means them going out of business. Excuse me while my heart bleeds for them....
-Steve
CIA spooks being disembowled? I might masturbate while watching that.
Thank you very much! When I made my comment I had this exact article in mind, but couldn't remember enough about it to find it in a google search. Particularly, this is the passage that I had in mind:
Obviously not everyone feels the same way, or did then. However, its funny how something that came about primarily for pragmatic reasons (ease of counting), can get elevated to "fundamental to our democracy" in peoples minds.
Not to say it is a bad thing, I have much bigger issues with how we vote than whether or not ballots are secret. Frankly, given the issues involved, I find myself really leaning towards a condorcet method of voting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method ) because I am fundamentally bothered that my vote for a third party candidate ends up just taking away from the least objectionable of the mainstream candidates and that this is one of the major hurdles towards the adoption of third parties.
I agree with you here. Totally actually. Though I did want to point out that it wasn't until almost 1900 before secret ballots were used over the entire US. It was actually fairly controversial for very similar arguments as you gave for signatures on petitions.
I might also add, there is the case of being able to find out your name is on a petition that you might not have signed. That isn't even possible if signatures are kept secret.
-Steve
> The ONLY reason for such a list, is future harassment.
Sure, that is, until people who never signed it find their name on the list.
Seriously... if a petition to ammend your state constitution to allow police officers to ass rape anyone they see on the street.... how would you know that your name wasn't improperly added to the list of signers if the list wasn't publically posted?
What does signature validation consist of anyway? They check the names against the voter roles and addresses? Nice. Does anyone actually bother to mail people and say "Hey, you actually signed this, right?"
Hell, I could draw up a petition and have a few hundred "signatures" by the end of the day if that is the standard. Omar Ravenhurst wouldn't even need to sign.
-Steve
You may also wonder why they needed to illegally . Or perhaps you might wonder why they would dose "their own" citizens with LSD
I think Zack De La Rocha, The Last Emperor & KRS-ONE said it best in their track "CIA"
"Need I say the C.I.A. be criminals in action"
But given that the same song said that "President Clinton should delete them", I guess it wasn't as popular as it could have been :) and sadly, since 9/11 they are actually percieved to have a job again. A front job is always a very good thing for a criminal. Nothing like an air of legitimacy to hide criminal minds.
-Steve
You could get inexpensive astronaut standins. Maybe put some dirty telephone handsets on the shuttle and lock the door when the telephone handset cleaners go in....
-Steve
Thats true of many things really. Whether something is a weapon or not really has more to do with what use it is designed for, more than what it does. A large rail gun could be used for many things, you could use it to shoot a payload to the top of a mountain. You could use it to put a shuttle in space, you could use it to drop explosive shells on your enemies. One of these uses makes it a weapon.
Of course, dropping space shuttles all over your enemies is probably pretty effective too, though damned expensive. Then again, if you were routinely shelling with space shuttles, production volume would drastically reduce the per unit price of the shuttles....
-Steve
Holy shit, when did spain re-invade mexico?!?
I could have sworn they won their independance quite a while ago?
-Steve
We have to have them by regulation here. I think its asinine. Not totally, but, this is Boston, the houses here are so old that the vast majority still use single pipe steam heat. The only air exchange beteen my living space and the basement is from when the door is left open.... and there is an aparement between us and the boiler.
Clearly it makes sense to put a detector in the basement. First floor? sure, probably. Second and third?
Shit, these houses have no insulation and the exterior walls are barely six inches thick. These places are leaky as hell.
-Steve
Every time it comes up, people seem to think I am a southerner when I refer to the War of Northern Agression.
Your right, we don't need another war of Union Aggression. However, I don't think the people here are served by maintaining the Union either, so whats a people to do?
If the Union wont allow us to leave peacefully, thats on them, as far as I am concerned.
-Steve
No way. It had to be more recent than this. (in 1997 I had just left HS, was in college, and my head was way too far up my own ass to care). I am pretty sure I know where I was working when it happened, which places it somewhere between 2000 and 2005... possibly somewhat later, but no earlier.
As far as I understand the law now, Law Enforcement can ask the IRS to review a return for fraud. However, the IRS (this is my understanding now, please correct me if I am wrong) can review it and decided fraud was committed or not. However, they cannot actually show the return itself to anyone, as the contents are protected.
-Steve
Maybe they have, or maybe they are just bickering over minor points? I don't believe its unusual for these sorts of negotiations to drag on.
-Steve
Hmmm Northeast leaves.... and CA leaves (probably taking the rest of the west coast with it).... I have to imagine that the midwest/south would then split.
For some reason this leaves me with the image of Texas becoming the Lone Star State again and being overwhelmed by a rush of Mexicans looking to take their land back.... and that makes me giggle and want to see this even more!
-Steve
With poker, at least in some of the casnios I have played at... they have a mechanical shuffler in the table.
Play with 1 deck, while the other shuffles in the machine. What would be so hard about playing with 1 deck in, and one deck playing. Or have card shufflers made that can do 4 decks at once, and then use 4 decks shuffling, and 4 decks in use....
Fuck.... shuffle every hand.
Problem solved. Now playing the game properly with all available information still gives the house an advantage.
It seems to me they MUST figure either A. its cheaper to just catch and eject people B. The ability to count cards brings in more money from incompetent counters than is lost to competent ones before they are ejected
Frankly, I think they would implement this within 2 weeks if the law were amended to simply not allow them to eject people from the game for just playing well.
-Steve
You sound like my kind of patriot.
I swear, NOTHING has radicalized my views, like reading about the ideals of the radicals that started the American Revolution and founded this country. Nothing has so quickly shown the current system to be one of utter hypocrites.
Frankly the only place I disagree is in that this would even be useful. I think my state, and the few that surround it, should all consider secession. Then we can go and sign our own treaties.
As was pointed out at the time, even on the republican side, the northeast voted 2 to 1 for McCain over Bush in primaries for the 2000 election. Thats the exact opposite from the rest of the country. I think its pretty clear that neither party really represents the interests of the North East.
An article from the 2000 election on this issue: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=6856
-Steve
Speaking of....
I CLEARLY remember an emergency session being called right after they went into recess a few years back (4-8 years ago I believe) because they passed a budget that contained a provision that removed privacy protections from tax return information.... and of course.... nobody read the bill.
Of course, as much as many hate the idea, it could be REALLY BAD for political figures, big businessmen etc, so they held an emergency summer session, and fixed it.
Anyway, I clearly remember it.... maybe my brain is broken in a way that makes it not interface seamlessly with google, but I can't find a single article or reference to this incident, which is too bad, because it is a link that could be really useful in say.... discussions like this.
Anyone remember this? Anyone have a link?
-Steve
It would be nice to see this linked from the article but.... the EFF has a page up to send your reps a request to call senate hearings on this issue:
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=383
I have been forwarding the link to everyone that I know, I recommend that everyone else who cares about transparency in the legal process to do the same.
-Steve
Frankly, I don't spend much time thinking about whether the person that I am typing a response is male or female since, it has no bearing at all on 99% of discussions. If you asked me if the person who wrote any given message was a man, I might get the feeling that its so, I might not. However, since women are underrepresented in many of these forums, it is correct most of the time to assume the person is a man. What of it?
People are creatures of habits and guesses. Sometimes those guesses are wrong.
This is a simple guess, based on experience, because we grew up with it being more normal to refer to people with gender based pronouns. In fact, some of us have had the experience of having people get pissy because we used a gender neutral pronoun (if you don't believe me, the next time you run into someone with a child and are unsure of the gender, see how quickly you get corrected when you refer to their child as "it")
and... "ze"? I am sorry that someone invented a new word that you like and it hasn't caught on yet. This is the first that I am even seeing "ze" as an english word. Yet you seem to take personal offense that people don't use it. You are not the first person to find human language to be resistant to intentional change... http://lmgtfy.com/?q=esperanto
Essentially, I am all for fighting real sexism. I am all for getting women into IT, and wherever else that they want to be and make themselves qualified to be. Some sports have talked of getting rid of the gender divide, in favor of weight classes, since it is a more fair way to divide competitors.
I wrestled in high school and thats exactly what we were doing 15 years ago. Were there still issues? You bet. Still are I bet. However, I tend to be of the opinion that this sort of social change happens through generations, rather than through winning over individuals.
-Steve
> Yes, it led to the brutality of the Roman Empire, where everyone was abused and therefore everyone became an
> abuser. Yes, let's go back to that.
But of course! It all started there. There was no slavery, sexual or otherwise, and no child abuse before the greek institution of young men being paired with older men as mentors and life teachers in a relationship that was sometimes, but not always, sexual.
It makes so much more sense now.
> Yes, nobody has ever become an emotional cripple for life or a dangerous criminal because of a sexual
> experience in their past... No families have ever been destroyed because of "just sex". Nope. Never.
You can't say whats going to effect a person. Plenty of people have become dangerous criminals or emotional cripples without such experiences. Families are never destroyed by sex...its more like cheating and deception etc that destroys families, and those are not just sex.
Nice try though.
-Steve
It can look like that but um....
It was school that did everything from teach me some history and introduce me to philosophy, to geometry, algebra, and some calculous. I mean, my parents were helpful with times tables and all sorts of things, but, unter their tutelage, I doubt i would have made it to college level calculus without some serious remedial work.
not a dig at the rents, just, 6 or so hours a day 180 or so day a year... its a lot of time.
-Steve
This talk always reminds me og grade school when the shop teacher (yes shop, go figure) did his sexism class. He handed out papers with a number of professions on it, and asked us all to rate each one as a male or female job.
I was accused of "goofing off" and "not taking it seriously" because of my answers. Go figure that the kid whose mother was the college educated professional and father was a night worker who was unable to be there a lot except on weekends wouldn't have the exact same prejudices as everyone else.
That always seems to be the problem though.... the law of fives is never wrong!
That is, if you set out to look for something, evidence of it will bubble to the surface wherever you look.
Consider this exchange
"You sir, are an addict"
"I am not"
"See! Denial! You are totally an addict, addicts often deny being addicts"
I can start out now with the idea that women find me attractive. Then as I go throughout my day, mark in my head every time that I see a woman that I don't already know well looks at me and smiles. Then later on I can say "hey man, women find me attractive, 6 girls checked me out today".
Is that valid evidence? I mean, the look and smile could mean they find me attractive. So it is evidence that they might. However, it ignores all the women who didn't look at me, or I didn't see look at me. It ignores all the other reasons they might be smiling. It might even be evidence I have dirt on my nose that amuses people.
In the end, we have to rememeber that correlation is not causation. Why are there very few females in FOSS? I don't know at all. I don't claim to know. That is the bigger issue. The author talks about being attacked, I remain unconvinced.
-Steve
Then there is that word "should".
I think the real answer is, it depends on who is doing the hiring. We all like to think we are not biased, but, we all have our biases. It is possible that the person interviewing you has a problem with gambling, could be mormon, could have had a degenerate gambler for a parent etc. They also might hold it against you that you worked in that industry.
Thats true of anything though. You could work for Monsanto and interview with the cousin of a small farmer who got in legal trouble for seeds that fell off a truck and grew on his land. Shit, you could call in for a phone interview and have it be with that bitch who side swiped your car and blamed you for the accident (happened to someone I know!).
In the end, I would say.... fuck them all. If its a job that you think might be interesting and you have no problems with it, I say take it. Do you really have such a strong need to be accepted and belong as you can't take not getting some job later on? The chances of getting any individual job that you want are pretty low anyway.
People really need to turn it around. Yes they might reject you... consider it their loss. Do you want to work for someone who would hold something like that against you?
Thats my attitude on drug tests. The only fluid sample that anyone other than my doctor gets to ask for is a taste test. I don't want to work for someone who invades into my body chemistry and what I may or may not do on my time off.... so if thats what they need, good luck to them.
-Steve
Actually, maybe, maybe not.
Certainly the plastic case of most keyboards would break before most bones would. So unless you got a corner to smash just right into the temple, I think you are SOL on that front. However.... once the plastic breaks, the broken edges, or inside boards, will have sharp enough edges to do slashing damage.
So I think you COULD kill someone with most keyboards... if they let you...
-Steve
> Hell, I was raised by very conservative Christian parents, and was homeschooled, so I actually didn't know
> much about it until we had "the talk" in my teen years. But even I remember fooling around as a curious
> (probably - it's so long ago I don't really remember) ten or eleven year old with a girl whose parents were
> friends of my parents
Meh, my parents were like, the people who could hang with the hippies or the squares (you know, smoked pot when they were younger, never did acid, have records of music from woodstock, but didn't go). Lapsed catholic and baptists. Very liberal, do as you want. When my wife told my mother that we have an open relationship, she actually asked a few questions and that was that, she had no problem with it. No lectures about sex or morality. (though, when we mentioned contemplating a Star Trek themed wedding, she didn't take that as well, at first)
Anyway... you would think I got "the talk". I learned about sex from health class, biology class, and the internet. Maybe they didn't think I needed it since I was kinda shy and not dating at the time? But they NEVER actually tried to have "the talk" with me.
-Steve