In that case what is the deal with Microsoft Internet Information Services? It has a significantly lower market share than Apache, yet has seen more serious security problems.
Right. Because fuck knows having a better-educated population won't pay off in the long run.
Education does frequently pay off, but it doesn't always pay off. Sending anyone who's interested to a college and then having half of them drop out isn't exactly a financial gold mine. Currently if a student does that, they tend to absorb at least part of the cost, and we have a large number of scholarships.
Do you have any idea what it does for the US to have so many people only capable of filling basic manufacturing jobs?.
The US is ever increasingly losing manufacturing and gaining service industry jobs. Healthcare, investment, and IT jobs will likely keep growing (well after the recession ends anyways), manufacturing, textiles (what is left of it), steel, etc. will keep shrinking. This is the natural order of economic development. This is obviously going to speed up along with globalization, thanks to comparative advantage. We will probably increasingly design, develop, and support products but produce them overseas and buy them from overseas.
Before some twit brings it up, no the infamous trade deficit will not kill us. If I buy a $30 table from a company China it doesn't mean the Chinese economy just gains $30 and the US economy loses $30. Trade isn't a zero-sum game. What it actually means is that the Chinese company has gained $30 which they value more than their table, while I gain a table I value at more than $30. We both gain something of more value to us that what we had, otherwise one of us would refuse the offer.
The rightest of rightiests (aside from the libertarians) were all for the TARP funds with Bush/Cheney was handing them out.
[citation needed] I would also point out Bush didn't create TARP, the Democratic congress (and being budgetary, mostly the much more strongly Democratic House). Bush just signed it. Congress has power of the purse, not the President.
There is a concept of sacrificing a few to save the sinking ship.
This works if you have a small crash in one sector and the program used to rescue it is reasonably expected to do so. Using the FDIC to protect a bank customers is reasonable, people invested planning on it and it was not expected to carry the risk of losses. Though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should eventually lose their taxpayer insurance, they had it and it would have disrupted the market not to follow through. Bailing out a random hash of companies but letting the others fail with no clear criteria is just retarded.
The problem was already there and "bailing out" and most smart people understood that the "bailout" action prevented the Titanic.
Prevented? Unemployment is approching double digits and the markets have suffered massive markets. How the hell is that prevented? All the TARP and Stimulus programs have done thus far is ensured that once this is over with we will likely face inflation or issues with selling our bonds.
In context, on September 18, 2008, the federal government froze credit markets in light of a $10 trillion run on banks during a 2 hour period.
Had they not done that, by 4pm, the US Dollar would have been worth less than the paper it is printed on and we would probably be trading Euros and gold coins right now, while burning those dollars for fuel to heat our dark, frozen houses.
We already have the FDIC in place to prevent runs on insured investments. A "cooling off" period for markets also sometimes helps settle panics, but racking up one of the largest peacetime deficits relative to GDP is not always a great option, especially since other countries are increasingly the owners of our bonds.
I understand capitalism and the supposed free market (fuck-it, it DOES NOT EXIST) but why does it have to be labeled as socialism and pinko-communism to have the idea that education should be one of the few things that is supported solely by the government? Why does free education always have to be instantly equated to unpaid teachers and staff?
There could be far more competition in a "free" system than is currently provided, such as allowing parents to decide where they want to send their kids rather than locking them into catch areas. Private schools could compete here too (as they are often charge less per pupil than what the states generally spend.
Part of that reform must be a federal education budget,
I'd like to remind you that constitutional issues aside, the more the federal government has involved itself in schools the worse our schools have gotten.
that cannot be withheld from the states under any circumstances
without a constitutional amendment we cannot mandate something like that, and that would screw up budgeting in ridiculous ways. Trust me. I live in Colorado. After the voters approved a constitutional amendment known as the TAxpayer Bill Of Rights which mandated voter approval for most tax hikes other than those that adjust for inflation. This was pretty reasonable, but it meant we had to be flexable when working with a limited budget (our constitution also forbids us from running up much in debt, but TABOR does direct extra funds into a rainy day fund to help with shortfalls). TABOR worked well for us until the teacher's union got a referendum approved that also amended the state constitution to mandate constant increases in the education budget at rates significantly faster than inflation. As a result of this measure, we have seen education eat up more and more of our budget, leaving less for higher ed, roads, law enforcement, and everything else. Education is no more crucial a public service than anything else.
Also as a college student, I must say I am beginning to suspect more and more that the reason the colleges make you jump through so many needless hoops in the name of "tradition" is because they are sheltered from competition. Seeing as how they get government funds either way, there isn't much concern about for-profit colleges competing with them. Actual career training would help me, taking a foreign language class, a minor, dozens of electives, and other needless fluff doesn't do squat.
A citizenry incapable of evaluating arguments and ignorant of history is more easily duped.
Yes, but that is an excuse to cover the subject in high school and make it available in college, not to devote extensive amounts of time to it. Your view of what is important doesn't matter nearly as much as a prospective employer's view.
It has long been a dream of fascists to eliminate such forms of education for precisely that reason.
Actually most fascist governments have been thrilled to have science, math, and other intellectual pursuits. It makes an excellent tool to manipulate the masses. I hate to prove Godwin's law, but Nazi Germany was perhaps the most scientifically advanced society in the world at its time. The USSR also devoted large amounts of money to science (though rarely could they actually put any of their discoveries to good use. Heck Woodrow Wilson was the first President with an advanced college degree and when WWI ended he tried to convince the US to continue with its "War Socialism" (the term for the centralized comand and control economic policies we enacted during WWI and abolished at the end), when members of congress refused and when there was public outcry he used his education to try to "prove" that others were just simply not smart enough to know he was right, but that his educated opinion should be the only one people listen to. Crying out the term "science" is no substitute for the democratic process.
And before anyone starts, you should already have noticed that the same phenomenon occurs with science degrees. Some of those who think science degrees are great as long as science graduates are making useful widgets tend to get very agitated when science graduates start using their education to hold policy makers to account (climate change is an obvious example, as is teaching evolution in schools).
Global Warming can be studied, but there are a mix of political, scientific, and economic realities here. A scientist can study global warming, but that doesn't mean that it is economically worth the money to fight it or that one method of fighting it is economically better than the other. There is also the question of whether or not it is worth the loss of freedom that companies and individuals will suffer from due to regulation. There is also the political reality that while fighting it might possibly be in every countries best interest (debatable) it is pretty much undeniable that the countries that bother to act will suffer economic losses for it (a "tragedy of the commons") but turning it over to some international agency (such as the U.N.) likely will leave it open to corruption and political gaming (as well as a serious threat to the sovereignty of different nations). As for the teaching of evolution, that is not exactly a purely scientific issue. Yes, evolution is a proper scientific theory and creationism is not, but school curriculum and standards are something to be decided upon by the publicly elected or appointed officials (such as the school board, state legislature, and to some extend the federal, county, and municipal government) and/or by those involved in education (such as the PTA, student council, the school's administration, teachers, and staff). I would much rather those involved make a decision. I personally believe evolution should be taught, but if whatever powers that be oppose that, then the law is the law, whether or not it is actually scientific has very little meaning (of course ID may be taught in a way that violates the establishment clause or some other legal code, but that is once again a legal question, not a scientific question.
Beware those who say that all education must be "useful". They often have a hidden agenda.
I wouldn't describe pragmatism as a "hidden agenda". It is pretty open. There is no vast right wing conspiracy here, there is just a question of what level of education is practical.
Academia rightfully doesn't give a sh** about weather it's preparing you to shuffle work around or not. That's not it's goal, and I don't think it should be. It's goal is for you to learn things, and perhaps eventually further the field for the few that choose to continue. Learning for learning's sake is their goal and an admirable one.
I hate to break it to you, but I don't give a damn about the goal of learning. I am in college entirely for the hope of a better career. I wouldn't even consider college more than a formality. Knowledge is only valuable when it is useful. If you are a doctor you likely will not benefit any from studying Greek artwork career-wise. If you enjoy it then studying for the purpose of enjoying it might be worth it to you, but it likely won't be of any real use to spend the time and money studying it for no real reason.
Learning, like many things in life, requires the investment of time and money, both of which are finite resources with alternative options for use, therefore learning "for learning's sake" is not always a wise choice. Sometimes it is best to be rationally ignorant if your time and money would better be spent elsewhere.
I find it problematic that academia is much more concerned with idealistic views of learning and jumping through their hoops than with the pragmatic goal of preparing their customers for a career.
It's well known that people anthropomorphize computers in order to deal with them in our own frame of reference,
It'll only get worse as technology progresses.
In WWII pilots would often nickname their aircraft and paint pictures on them (the infamous "nose art"). I wonder if someday companies will tolerate us doing more to customize our computers than just changing the background. Probably not, but it would be cool.
Or, as another example, this story is tagged 'sendthemtothekitchen'. This sort of juvenile joke contributes to an atmosphere in which women do not feel welcome.
Erm, would it be bad to add that I just tagged the story that because of your post?
You've provided a nice illustration of the problem. If it turns out that, say, 10% of FOSS developers are black, do you think that would make nigger references OK as long as we kept them under 1%?
Do you ever actually read usenet post or forums? They are filled with personal attacks. Calling some chick a bitch is far different than saying "all women are cunts".
It's a problem when the offshore camera looks like a canon, has a not-quite-canon-but-damn-close logo, and tells the computer it's a canon, but actually installs a rootkit and fails after a month.
That would put the vendor in violation of trademark law and laws that forbid hacking.
I guess if you call a codec 3rd party software you are right, anything quicktime can play it can re-encode and other than drm protected windows media files and some old windows codec AVIs i have no problem opening any media file in QuickTime.
Funny, other than Apples formats and MPEG, it appears as though QuickTime is limited out of the box. It isn't like VLC, or even RealPlayer for Christ's sake. Everything requires a 3rd party codec. Windows Media Player seems to have this habit too.
Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though.
Funny, every time I just decide to forgo syncing and just copy the files to my iPod running in disk mode, it never seems smart enough to figure out they are there.
I can't seem to get my Shuffle to support anything other than Apple's formats or MP3. No WMA support, no OGG, no Real Media support. I don't want to re-encode as that is slow and causes very noticeable loss of quality. I could understand not supporting DRMed stuff, as part of the point of DRM is for nothing to work with it, but really, how annoying.
Insurance companies do this all the time - refuse care/coverage due to expense, experimental status, outcome potential. That last hope treatment is many times rejected as it rarely works - not because it is a bad idea (you are about to die if you don't try it but you have a 5% chance if you do) but because it costs money and the CEO wants to upgrade the kitchen in his yacht.
Mine sure as hell didn't. I had an expensive, and somewhat experimental surgery on my eyes to correct a condition that was likely to eventually require a cornea transplant. They covered their share of it. Turns out the experimental surgery caused complications. They covered the surgery to fix that. Then it turned out the surgery didn't work, and they covered their share of the procedure to undo the surgery. They could probably have weaseled their way out of the contract, and argued that it could be considered "cosmetic" because it would be treatable at the time with glasses (even though it would likely degenerate eventually). During this process I even forgot to do some unrelated paperwork on time which would have made it legal for them to drop me, but they were flexible and didn't. Afterwords they covered both my prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses (albeit I did have to wait a year). My understanding is they will also cover a cornea transplant if need eventually be. While true, the procedure did ultimately fail, I knew I was taking a risk with a roughly 95% chance of success so my reasons for taking the risk are obviously justified, and I am amazed my insurance company was so helpful. I looked it up and this option would not likely have been covered by the NHS in Britain, and until recently, it wouldn't have even been legal in Canada even out of pocket. I also happened to have one of the nations leading corneal experts as my doctor, something I am incredibly lucky to have had.
From personal experience, I would say these sob stories are bullshit.
You're so concerned about the "socialism" bogeyman you can't see the forest for the trees. There is no capitalism in health care as it exists today. There is no real free market for health care except for things that aren't covered by health insurance. Public health care actually creates freedom because you're not dependent on a corporation to take care of you.
Things that aren't covered by insurance, such as cosmetic surgery and LASIK have consistently declined in price. They are free markets, and they work wonderfully. The fact is the more distorted a market is, the less effective it is. The most regulated sector of the economy is healthcare. Also at the top of this list are airlines, utilities, low income mortgages, and labor. In all of these cases the government came in to solve a percieved "market failure" and delivered a cure far worse than the disease. Rather than adding more power to this particular sector, why not strip regulations out. Allow hospitals to decline care for non-emergencies, remove employer mandates, ban states from discrimination against out of state insurance companies, eliminate mandates that all insurance must cover some particular condition, allow for more a-la-carte purchases of care or coverage, streamline FDA approval (or make it so that approval is automatic if the drug has already been approved for use in numerous other 1st World Countries), and enact broad tort reform that would halt the need to perform "defensive medicine" and pay massive malpractice insurance coverage rates (this would likely benefit a large portion of our economy, not just medicine). Unlike the socialized option or the current market, this would actually be a relatively free market, and unlike the heavily subsidized "public option" which could run up cost in the trillions, this plan doesn't cost anything. If we wanted to do something that does cost money, we could eliminate the restrictions on health savings account, or better yet, switch to a tax code like FairTax that doesn't discourage saving like the current code does (although FairTax essentially doesn't cost anything, as it is roughly revenue neutral assuming it is passed without adding special exemptions or other crap in).
I've already called my preferred class-action group and they're salivating over the prospect of several billion dollars from nVidia over this.
Good luck with that. Maybe they'll win, in which case they'll get millions and you could possibly have five whole dollars coming to you if you fill out a few forms to get your part of the settlement.
You mean like when ATI nixed support for all graphics cards not made within the past year or so, thus making them unusable on recent versions of X server and on Windows 7?
Face it, Intel is the only company with good support for Open Source, and generally their embedded cards are supported for a while. The problem is of course, Intel's embedded cards are crap. They may be crap performing at its best, but it is still crap. Fortunately rumor has it Intel is headed for the performance market soon, so we'll see.
How many vendors right now are still deploying products that don't have ipv6? how many of these companies who could provide firmware updates won't so that they can simply force hardware upgrades on users? ipv6 can be easily switched in 6months if the networking hardware companies were willing to provide free firmware updates for hardware up to 2 years old. If they did that we'd be talking about ipv6 coming in 6months instead of the current situation of non-existance.
Your forgetting the other side of the story. Even if companies were willing to support legacy hardware with current updates, how many users do you think would be willing to go through with patching everything? How many Grandma's do you expect will want to learn how to flash the firmware on their DSL modem and then apply a hotfix their e-mail client and patch their OS to support this new protocol? How many do you think would just be irritated and confused by this change? If you thought people panicked over DTV, something users didn't even have to really re-configure assuming they bought proper hardware, imagine that with user error thrown into the mix?
When millions of other people have dollars and a good chunk of them are ignorant, your dollar won't be missed.
The fact that they are ignorant shows one thing quite clearly, they don't really mind. I could get up on some ideological high horse, but really, nobody cares. IPv6 may matter to you, but until IPv4 exhaustion causes enough problems, nobody else really has a reason to notice or care.
the third lets everyone hear what evils the company did and how they handle it
Evil? Really? They didn't correctly provide access to all computers using a protocol that has below 1% usage. That may be an obscure breach of contract, but calling that evil seems a bit much wouldn't you say?
thus making more people make decisions of their own.
Yes, it is your job to makes sure people make the decisions we want. If nobody cares then it is your right to impose caring upon them!
Seeing as how all of the duopolies and monopolies and x-opolies are still thriving despite the silent treatment, I would think a more aggressive approach is the only way to fight back.
More aggressive? It's their equipment, not ours? It isn't like there is a right to IPv6 access, they can choose whether or not to sell such services using their facilities. There is no monopoly either. You can use Verizon's fiber, your phone companies DSL, your cable company's cable, a satelight based service, a cell tower based service, or just forgo internet access and rely upon hot spots, your local library, or just do without. Actual real monopolies are extraordinarily rare and there are generally two ways they emerge. The first is by providing better service to their customers than all other competitors (your view of "better" might be different from the customers, but your view doesn't matter, while the customer's does). This is how Microsoft, Standard Oil, A & P, Ford, U.S. Steel, and Wal-Mart have gotten huge, and all either now or at one time had massive shares of their markets (though it is debatable how much of a "monopoly" each might have been). The second way is by getting a countries government to protect them or fund them. Amtrack, the former "Ma Bell" AT&T, countless local utilities, the health care companies is many countries and in a few states such as Massachusetts and Tennessee, most educational facilities at both primary and secondary levels, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Postal System (at least in the USA), the Social Security "survivor's insurance" pension system, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, the FDIC, the now dead proposal of a "Public Option" in health care, National Flood Insurance, and in a sense most labor unions all essentially function as monopolistic companies whom are or at one time were protected by the government. The difference between monopolies in the first and in the second is that those in the first category generally are forced to serve customers well to prevent new competition from arriving and ousting them. As you can see, this is generally futile as many of these companies don't retain their dominance for long either due to new technology ousting them due to their slower response time than small companies, or due to some competitors finding a way to beat them by doing better. Companies in the second category generally have no reason to care what their customers thing. Either regulation clears the field for them or they are subsidized to the extent that nobody can challenge them. Verizon is most certainly in the first category in the few areas it may have something even vaguely resembling a monopoly, and if they do something that angers their competitors, eventually their monopolies shall be usurped.
Re:Do we need the anti-smoking jab
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A Geek Funeral
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That's not really a fair argument. After all, who ever died from not smoking?
Probably a few have died from trying to quit due to the stress it causes.
Will Facebook or Twitter be as likely to get your organization sued for sexual harassment? Don't go into bullshit relativism here, just go with Occam's Razor.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just about the marketshare.
In that case what is the deal with Microsoft Internet Information Services? It has a significantly lower market share than Apache, yet has seen more serious security problems.
Right. Because fuck knows having a better-educated population won't pay off in the long run.
Education does frequently pay off, but it doesn't always pay off. Sending anyone who's interested to a college and then having half of them drop out isn't exactly a financial gold mine. Currently if a student does that, they tend to absorb at least part of the cost, and we have a large number of scholarships.
Do you have any idea what it does for the US to have so many people only capable of filling basic manufacturing jobs?.
The US is ever increasingly losing manufacturing and gaining service industry jobs. Healthcare, investment, and IT jobs will likely keep growing (well after the recession ends anyways), manufacturing, textiles (what is left of it), steel, etc. will keep shrinking. This is the natural order of economic development. This is obviously going to speed up along with globalization, thanks to comparative advantage. We will probably increasingly design, develop, and support products but produce them overseas and buy them from overseas.
Before some twit brings it up, no the infamous trade deficit will not kill us. If I buy a $30 table from a company China it doesn't mean the Chinese economy just gains $30 and the US economy loses $30. Trade isn't a zero-sum game. What it actually means is that the Chinese company has gained $30 which they value more than their table, while I gain a table I value at more than $30. We both gain something of more value to us that what we had, otherwise one of us would refuse the offer.
Show me the last person who helped design advanced chip architecture who didn't have a degree...
I just want to be a technician, not an engineer. I should be perfectly fine with A+, Net+, and a few other programs, but a degree seems a bit much.
The rightest of rightiests (aside from the libertarians) were all for the TARP funds with Bush/Cheney was handing them out.
[citation needed] I would also point out Bush didn't create TARP, the Democratic congress (and being budgetary, mostly the much more strongly Democratic House). Bush just signed it. Congress has power of the purse, not the President.
There is a concept of sacrificing a few to save the sinking ship.
This works if you have a small crash in one sector and the program used to rescue it is reasonably expected to do so. Using the FDIC to protect a bank customers is reasonable, people invested planning on it and it was not expected to carry the risk of losses. Though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should eventually lose their taxpayer insurance, they had it and it would have disrupted the market not to follow through. Bailing out a random hash of companies but letting the others fail with no clear criteria is just retarded.
The problem was already there and "bailing out" and most smart people understood that the "bailout" action prevented the Titanic.
Prevented? Unemployment is approching double digits and the markets have suffered massive markets. How the hell is that prevented? All the TARP and Stimulus programs have done thus far is ensured that once this is over with we will likely face inflation or issues with selling our bonds.
In context, on September 18, 2008, the federal government froze credit markets in light of a $10 trillion run on banks during a 2 hour period.
Had they not done that, by 4pm, the US Dollar would have been worth less than the paper it is printed on and we would probably be trading Euros and gold coins right now, while burning those dollars for fuel to heat our dark, frozen houses.
We already have the FDIC in place to prevent runs on insured investments. A "cooling off" period for markets also sometimes helps settle panics, but racking up one of the largest peacetime deficits relative to GDP is not always a great option, especially since other countries are increasingly the owners of our bonds.
I understand capitalism and the supposed free market (fuck-it, it DOES NOT EXIST) but why does it have to be labeled as socialism and pinko-communism to have the idea that education should be one of the few things that is supported solely by the government? Why does free education always have to be instantly equated to unpaid teachers and staff?
There could be far more competition in a "free" system than is currently provided, such as allowing parents to decide where they want to send their kids rather than locking them into catch areas. Private schools could compete here too (as they are often charge less per pupil than what the states generally spend.
Part of that reform must be a federal education budget,
I'd like to remind you that constitutional issues aside, the more the federal government has involved itself in schools the worse our schools have gotten.
that cannot be withheld from the states under any circumstances
without a constitutional amendment we cannot mandate something like that, and that would screw up budgeting in ridiculous ways. Trust me. I live in Colorado. After the voters approved a constitutional amendment known as the TAxpayer Bill Of Rights which mandated voter approval for most tax hikes other than those that adjust for inflation. This was pretty reasonable, but it meant we had to be flexable when working with a limited budget (our constitution also forbids us from running up much in debt, but TABOR does direct extra funds into a rainy day fund to help with shortfalls). TABOR worked well for us until the teacher's union got a referendum approved that also amended the state constitution to mandate constant increases in the education budget at rates significantly faster than inflation. As a result of this measure, we have seen education eat up more and more of our budget, leaving less for higher ed, roads, law enforcement, and everything else. Education is no more crucial a public service than anything else.
Also as a college student, I must say I am beginning to suspect more and more that the reason the colleges make you jump through so many needless hoops in the name of "tradition" is because they are sheltered from competition. Seeing as how they get government funds either way, there isn't much concern about for-profit colleges competing with them. Actual career training would help me, taking a foreign language class, a minor, dozens of electives, and other needless fluff doesn't do squat.
A citizenry incapable of evaluating arguments and ignorant of history is more easily duped.
Yes, but that is an excuse to cover the subject in high school and make it available in college, not to devote extensive amounts of time to it. Your view of what is important doesn't matter nearly as much as a prospective employer's view.
It has long been a dream of fascists to eliminate such forms of education for precisely that reason.
Actually most fascist governments have been thrilled to have science, math, and other intellectual pursuits. It makes an excellent tool to manipulate the masses. I hate to prove Godwin's law, but Nazi Germany was perhaps the most scientifically advanced society in the world at its time. The USSR also devoted large amounts of money to science (though rarely could they actually put any of their discoveries to good use. Heck Woodrow Wilson was the first President with an advanced college degree and when WWI ended he tried to convince the US to continue with its "War Socialism" (the term for the centralized comand and control economic policies we enacted during WWI and abolished at the end), when members of congress refused and when there was public outcry he used his education to try to "prove" that others were just simply not smart enough to know he was right, but that his educated opinion should be the only one people listen to. Crying out the term "science" is no substitute for the democratic process.
And before anyone starts, you should already have noticed that the same phenomenon occurs with science degrees. Some of those who think science degrees are great as long as science graduates are making useful widgets tend to get very agitated when science graduates start using their education to hold policy makers to account (climate change is an obvious example, as is teaching evolution in schools).
Global Warming can be studied, but there are a mix of political, scientific, and economic realities here. A scientist can study global warming, but that doesn't mean that it is economically worth the money to fight it or that one method of fighting it is economically better than the other. There is also the question of whether or not it is worth the loss of freedom that companies and individuals will suffer from due to regulation. There is also the political reality that while fighting it might possibly be in every countries best interest (debatable) it is pretty much undeniable that the countries that bother to act will suffer economic losses for it (a "tragedy of the commons") but turning it over to some international agency (such as the U.N.) likely will leave it open to corruption and political gaming (as well as a serious threat to the sovereignty of different nations). As for the teaching of evolution, that is not exactly a purely scientific issue. Yes, evolution is a proper scientific theory and creationism is not, but school curriculum and standards are something to be decided upon by the publicly elected or appointed officials (such as the school board, state legislature, and to some extend the federal, county, and municipal government) and/or by those involved in education (such as the PTA, student council, the school's administration, teachers, and staff). I would much rather those involved make a decision. I personally believe evolution should be taught, but if whatever powers that be oppose that, then the law is the law, whether or not it is actually scientific has very little meaning (of course ID may be taught in a way that violates the establishment clause or some other legal code, but that is once again a legal question, not a scientific question.
Beware those who say that all education must be "useful". They often have a hidden agenda.
I wouldn't describe pragmatism as a "hidden agenda". It is pretty open. There is no vast right wing conspiracy here, there is just a question of what level of education is practical.
Academia rightfully doesn't give a sh** about weather it's preparing you to shuffle work around or not. That's not it's goal, and I don't think it should be. It's goal is for you to learn things, and perhaps eventually further the field for the few that choose to continue. Learning for learning's sake is their goal and an admirable one.
I hate to break it to you, but I don't give a damn about the goal of learning. I am in college entirely for the hope of a better career. I wouldn't even consider college more than a formality. Knowledge is only valuable when it is useful. If you are a doctor you likely will not benefit any from studying Greek artwork career-wise. If you enjoy it then studying for the purpose of enjoying it might be worth it to you, but it likely won't be of any real use to spend the time and money studying it for no real reason.
Learning, like many things in life, requires the investment of time and money, both of which are finite resources with alternative options for use, therefore learning "for learning's sake" is not always a wise choice. Sometimes it is best to be rationally ignorant if your time and money would better be spent elsewhere.
I find it problematic that academia is much more concerned with idealistic views of learning and jumping through their hoops than with the pragmatic goal of preparing their customers for a career.
It's well known that people anthropomorphize computers in order to deal with them in our own frame of reference,
It'll only get worse as technology progresses.
In WWII pilots would often nickname their aircraft and paint pictures on them (the infamous "nose art"). I wonder if someday companies will tolerate us doing more to customize our computers than just changing the background. Probably not, but it would be cool.
I can't seem to visualize helicopters without thinking of the letters R-O-T-F-L for some reason. I wonder why.
There is no "normal"
Yeah, you just keep saying that.
Or, as another example, this story is tagged 'sendthemtothekitchen'. This sort of juvenile joke contributes to an atmosphere in which women do not feel welcome.
Erm, would it be bad to add that I just tagged the story that because of your post?
You've provided a nice illustration of the problem. If it turns out that, say, 10% of FOSS developers are black, do you think that would make nigger references OK as long as we kept them under 1%?
Do you ever actually read usenet post or forums? They are filled with personal attacks. Calling some chick a bitch is far different than saying "all women are cunts".
It's a problem when the offshore camera looks like a canon, has a not-quite-canon-but-damn-close logo, and tells the computer it's a canon, but actually installs a rootkit and fails after a month.
That would put the vendor in violation of trademark law and laws that forbid hacking.
I guess if you call a codec 3rd party software you are right, anything quicktime can play it can re-encode and other than drm protected windows media files and some old windows codec AVIs i have no problem opening any media file in QuickTime.
Funny, other than Apples formats and MPEG, it appears as though QuickTime is limited out of the box. It isn't like VLC, or even RealPlayer for Christ's sake. Everything requires a 3rd party codec. Windows Media Player seems to have this habit too.
Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though.
Funny, every time I just decide to forgo syncing and just copy the files to my iPod running in disk mode, it never seems smart enough to figure out they are there.
I can't seem to get my Shuffle to support anything other than Apple's formats or MP3. No WMA support, no OGG, no Real Media support. I don't want to re-encode as that is slow and causes very noticeable loss of quality. I could understand not supporting DRMed stuff, as part of the point of DRM is for nothing to work with it, but really, how annoying.
Insurance companies do this all the time - refuse care/coverage due to expense, experimental status, outcome potential. That last hope treatment is many times rejected as it rarely works - not because it is a bad idea (you are about to die if you don't try it but you have a 5% chance if you do) but because it costs money and the CEO wants to upgrade the kitchen in his yacht.
Mine sure as hell didn't. I had an expensive, and somewhat experimental surgery on my eyes to correct a condition that was likely to eventually require a cornea transplant. They covered their share of it. Turns out the experimental surgery caused complications. They covered the surgery to fix that. Then it turned out the surgery didn't work, and they covered their share of the procedure to undo the surgery. They could probably have weaseled their way out of the contract, and argued that it could be considered "cosmetic" because it would be treatable at the time with glasses (even though it would likely degenerate eventually). During this process I even forgot to do some unrelated paperwork on time which would have made it legal for them to drop me, but they were flexible and didn't. Afterwords they covered both my prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses (albeit I did have to wait a year). My understanding is they will also cover a cornea transplant if need eventually be. While true, the procedure did ultimately fail, I knew I was taking a risk with a roughly 95% chance of success so my reasons for taking the risk are obviously justified, and I am amazed my insurance company was so helpful. I looked it up and this option would not likely have been covered by the NHS in Britain, and until recently, it wouldn't have even been legal in Canada even out of pocket. I also happened to have one of the nations leading corneal experts as my doctor, something I am incredibly lucky to have had.
From personal experience, I would say these sob stories are bullshit.
You're so concerned about the "socialism" bogeyman you can't see the forest for the trees. There is no capitalism in health care as it exists today. There is no real free market for health care except for things that aren't covered by health insurance. Public health care actually creates freedom because you're not dependent on a corporation to take care of you.
Things that aren't covered by insurance, such as cosmetic surgery and LASIK have consistently declined in price. They are free markets, and they work wonderfully. The fact is the more distorted a market is, the less effective it is. The most regulated sector of the economy is healthcare. Also at the top of this list are airlines, utilities, low income mortgages, and labor. In all of these cases the government came in to solve a percieved "market failure" and delivered a cure far worse than the disease. Rather than adding more power to this particular sector, why not strip regulations out. Allow hospitals to decline care for non-emergencies, remove employer mandates, ban states from discrimination against out of state insurance companies, eliminate mandates that all insurance must cover some particular condition, allow for more a-la-carte purchases of care or coverage, streamline FDA approval (or make it so that approval is automatic if the drug has already been approved for use in numerous other 1st World Countries), and enact broad tort reform that would halt the need to perform "defensive medicine" and pay massive malpractice insurance coverage rates (this would likely benefit a large portion of our economy, not just medicine). Unlike the socialized option or the current market, this would actually be a relatively free market, and unlike the heavily subsidized "public option" which could run up cost in the trillions, this plan doesn't cost anything. If we wanted to do something that does cost money, we could eliminate the restrictions on health savings account, or better yet, switch to a tax code like FairTax that doesn't discourage saving like the current code does (although FairTax essentially doesn't cost anything, as it is roughly revenue neutral assuming it is passed without adding special exemptions or other crap in).
I've already called my preferred class-action group and they're salivating over the prospect of several billion dollars from nVidia over this.
Good luck with that. Maybe they'll win, in which case they'll get millions and you could possibly have five whole dollars coming to you if you fill out a few forms to get your part of the settlement.
I hope ATI never pulls this feature.
You mean like when ATI nixed support for all graphics cards not made within the past year or so, thus making them unusable on recent versions of X server and on Windows 7?
Face it, Intel is the only company with good support for Open Source, and generally their embedded cards are supported for a while. The problem is of course, Intel's embedded cards are crap. They may be crap performing at its best, but it is still crap. Fortunately rumor has it Intel is headed for the performance market soon, so we'll see.
I doubt it's illegal. What do you think software license agreements are for?
Hell if I know, I didn't read it.
How many vendors right now are still deploying products that don't have ipv6? how many of these companies who could provide firmware updates won't so that they can simply force hardware upgrades on users? ipv6 can be easily switched in 6months if the networking hardware companies were willing to provide free firmware updates for hardware up to 2 years old. If they did that we'd be talking about ipv6 coming in 6months instead of the current situation of non-existance.
Your forgetting the other side of the story. Even if companies were willing to support legacy hardware with current updates, how many users do you think would be willing to go through with patching everything? How many Grandma's do you expect will want to learn how to flash the firmware on their DSL modem and then apply a hotfix their e-mail client and patch their OS to support this new protocol? How many do you think would just be irritated and confused by this change? If you thought people panicked over DTV, something users didn't even have to really re-configure assuming they bought proper hardware, imagine that with user error thrown into the mix?
When millions of other people have dollars and a good chunk of them are ignorant, your dollar won't be missed.
The fact that they are ignorant shows one thing quite clearly, they don't really mind. I could get up on some ideological high horse, but really, nobody cares. IPv6 may matter to you, but until IPv4 exhaustion causes enough problems, nobody else really has a reason to notice or care.
the third lets everyone hear what evils the company did and how they handle it
Evil? Really? They didn't correctly provide access to all computers using a protocol that has below 1% usage. That may be an obscure breach of contract, but calling that evil seems a bit much wouldn't you say?
thus making more people make decisions of their own.
Yes, it is your job to makes sure people make the decisions we want. If nobody cares then it is your right to impose caring upon them!
Seeing as how all of the duopolies and monopolies and x-opolies are still thriving despite the silent treatment, I would think a more aggressive approach is the only way to fight back.
More aggressive? It's their equipment, not ours? It isn't like there is a right to IPv6 access, they can choose whether or not to sell such services using their facilities. There is no monopoly either. You can use Verizon's fiber, your phone companies DSL, your cable company's cable, a satelight based service, a cell tower based service, or just forgo internet access and rely upon hot spots, your local library, or just do without. Actual real monopolies are extraordinarily rare and there are generally two ways they emerge. The first is by providing better service to their customers than all other competitors (your view of "better" might be different from the customers, but your view doesn't matter, while the customer's does). This is how Microsoft, Standard Oil, A & P, Ford, U.S. Steel, and Wal-Mart have gotten huge, and all either now or at one time had massive shares of their markets (though it is debatable how much of a "monopoly" each might have been). The second way is by getting a countries government to protect them or fund them. Amtrack, the former "Ma Bell" AT&T, countless local utilities, the health care companies is many countries and in a few states such as Massachusetts and Tennessee, most educational facilities at both primary and secondary levels, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Postal System (at least in the USA), the Social Security "survivor's insurance" pension system, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, the FDIC, the now dead proposal of a "Public Option" in health care, National Flood Insurance, and in a sense most labor unions all essentially function as monopolistic companies whom are or at one time were protected by the government. The difference between monopolies in the first and in the second is that those in the first category generally are forced to serve customers well to prevent new competition from arriving and ousting them. As you can see, this is generally futile as many of these companies don't retain their dominance for long either due to new technology ousting them due to their slower response time than small companies, or due to some competitors finding a way to beat them by doing better. Companies in the second category generally have no reason to care what their customers thing. Either regulation clears the field for them or they are subsidized to the extent that nobody can challenge them. Verizon is most certainly in the first category in the few areas it may have something even vaguely resembling a monopoly, and if they do something that angers their competitors, eventually their monopolies shall be usurped.
That's not really a fair argument. After all, who ever died from not smoking?
Probably a few have died from trying to quit due to the stress it causes.
Is porn worse that facebook or twitter?
Will Facebook or Twitter be as likely to get your organization sued for sexual harassment? Don't go into bullshit relativism here, just go with Occam's Razor.
It's completely beyond my comprehension why anyone would think it's ok to surf for porn at work.
You must be new here.
On the otherhand, check out this cool site called goatse ....
Nobody actually cared, even the bosses,
You are just a goldmine for a sexual harassment lawyer.