cgoddard

For most people quitting your job is an extremely risky proposition. Even if you do have a financial safety net, there are no guarantees other employers will be jumping at the opportunity to give you a job.

There are humanist churches too that you can get involved with ... if you don't want to deal with the crazy dogma that is.

At the very least its heavily reliant on reinforcing cultural stereotypes that likely have no bearing on actual gender differences.

India, like China, also has a sex ratio skewed heavily towards men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio). Removing even more women from the pool in India would not be a good idea.

They looked very much alike because most of them were socialist dictatorships, or socialist oligarchies. Their economic system didn't decide the shape of government.

That's not so much an issue with grain prices. Rice and bread and such are the most basic of staple foods, and pricing people out of that market results in hunger and starvation.

That is where government is supposed to step in and provide at least a small incentive, or buy the supply for a more modest sum before distributing it. Protecting the life and health of citizens is pretty much the most fundamental role government is supposed to serve. If it is failing in that duty, it should be toppled.

Yeah i don't see what the story was here either. It sort of disgusts me to think anyone would read this and be enlightened or surprised. If you've never had to worry about being out on the streets yourself you've led a very privileged life.

Getting employed and staying employed when you're homeless is a lot more difficult. Psychiatric and substance abuse problems don't help either; even if you're a homeless person and lucky enough not to be struggling with one of those, jobs available are often patronizing and demeaning (shit jobs).

Poverty is structural. Why are people poor? Largely because they are working jobs that pay shit wages, or live in areas they are too poor to escape, where there are not quality jobs matching the skillset taught to them by society.

This article is elitist bullshit coming from someone who has lived their life completely alien to poverty, who struggles to understand it.

When every type of worker makes enough money to afford to live in a school district with resources and quality educators, have health care, buy groceries, and care for their kids, we'll be in a lot better condition as a society.

I'm curious. If you speak in an anechoic chamber like this, what does it sound (or not) like?

Theres a thing called professionalism. It is no more appropriate to invite the mocking of women in the workplace at a conference than it would be to mock multiculturalism, and support that only privileged white males deserve good jobs. It is not appropriate, and reflects very badly on the character and judgment of the execs at Dell. I wouldn't be surprised if this severely impacts their ability to recruit competent employees; no self-respecting man or woman should want to be employed by bigots.

There's nothing wrong with giving non-apologies in some circumstances. All it does is indicate in a diplomatic way that you weren't really sorry for what you did. If there was actually a really good reason for you to be sorry (ie. inviting an outspoken sexist radical to moderate at your event), that's a good reason for others to be pissed at your unapologetic response though!

Ummm ... since when are leather boots considered business attire? I'd also call that dressing down, though in a more rugged style.

I wish [I] had it 5+ years ago when it mattered [to me].

Most people don't drop 75+ dollars on Starbucks a month, and rent, food and healthcare expenses are a tad more important than buying faster, more expensive hard drives. Free software optimizations would actually be very much appreciated by a great deal of people with scarce disposable income.

This reminds me of that article in a New York publication a while back written by a woman marveling at how much money she saved by not eating out every meal. Like the advice given wasn't an obvious necessity already for 95+% of people.

It's ridiculous to design a system for the purpose of spying on its users, with users being aware of that. The only people that will be discussing illegal activities using that medium then will be those so oblivious and dense that they likely would have been caught any number of other ways without the eavesdropping.

Savvy criminals will migrate to darknets and other methods of communication that are more robust against eavesdropping.

Personally i think authorities should just give up on the idea of eavesdropping. With proper encryption modern communications can perhaps be intercepted, but never deciphered.

Honeypotting seem like a much better strategy for catching internet criminals. Why would you ever shut down a child porn site or copyright infringement hub when you can instead take over and catch gather loads of evidence for prosecution?

I'm sorry. A lot of this post just reads like a bunch of nonsense, especially this line: "It's a question of attention, awareness, reality & virtuality, mental health beyond the crude categories of psychiatry, desire, comfort, sacrifice, renunciation, virtue..."

I'm sorry, what exactly is "crude" about the concepts of desire, comfort, sacrifice, renunciation, and virtue? Also why is psychiatry slipped in there. That is a discipline, rather than an abstract concept.

As far as Zen and any type of Buddhism goes, if you're worried and anxious all of the time, or flying off the handle at simple things, you could probably benefit some from meditation. But as far as a way of life, it makes a lot more sense to me to try and fix the bullshit that makes modern life unpleasant and alienating, rather than checking out of the whole process.

The human mind is an amazing thing. It can adapt to many different ways of life and find happiness in them. Though i'd much rather spend my life having experiences, connecting with people, and trying to change the world for the better, than spend most of my time doing absolutely nothing.

I think you're being downvoted because your opinions are grossly misinformed. 40-50+% of the US population could be classified as introverts (1). This couldn't in any way be called "a small percentage".

Introversion is a personality trait, with advantages and disadvantages. To say that introverts "should think about getting some kind of therapy" simply for being introverts is simply irrational prejudice.

(1) http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-frequencies.ht...

i'm sorry. that tip is a good one, but not for the reasons you gave. it's only a good idea because saving more is almost always a good idea.

if someone is unlucky the money they set aside from this wouldn't be enough to cover the costs of repair / replacement. Warranties are similar to insurance, in that risk can be spread out over the pool of customers that bought the warranty. As long as its unlikely that a customer will have to use that warranty, a warranty can be offered for a price that's much less than the average cost of repair / replacement.

If you're the only one contributing into a warranty / insurance pool, risk isn't spread out at all. You might end up being fine, but its also possible that a lot of your stuff will break at once, and you won't have the money to replace everything. That might be unlikely, but you're still taking a personal risk.

But keep in mind each of those cancers is developing and evolving independently. Wiping out one type of cancer doesn't make it more likely for the other to proliferate on a population-wide scale. Sure, this treatment might not end up working for everyone, because some people's cancers might have developed chance resistance, but a whole bunch of people are going to be helped and cured without any ill evolutionary consequences.

Its fine to be less than perfect and to make mistakes, but if someone makes a mistake large and in public, they should apologize for it. Spending the least little amount of time talking to someone who was offended should be enough to clue in the clueless, and ensure a genuine apology.

An insincere apology shows that the person apologizing really cares less why anyone actually was offended, and is just as likely to say something equally offensive again.

There are proper places for sexuality, objectification, etc. A professional / workplace environment isn't one of them. It makes people uncomfortable and can contribute to a hostile work environment. The fact is people don't have as much choice over their coworkers as their friends, and they can't easily avoid unwanted interactions as easily as they can in choosing their social circles.

As far as sexism goes when you make assumptions about your audience, you make anyone who doesn't fit those assumptions feel unwelcome. It doesn't mean you should never make assumptions, but always be aware who you are excluding and if you have a good reason for excluding them.

For someone who's part of a group that hasn't been historically marginalized and discriminated against it's a lot easier to laugh off racist or sexist jokes regarding their own differences. With a bad historical precedent however, an otherwise harmless joke reinforces and reinvigorates past discrimination and marginalization, and actively contributes to a hostile culture and specifically a hostile work environment in this case.

Just because you wouldn't be offended by something doesn't mean lots of other people aren't, or that your harmless and thoughtless jokes aren't deeply offensive and repugnant for historical reasons you possibly haven't considered.

Yes, making assumptions about people based on their race, sex, heritage, etc. is not okay, especially not in a professional setting.

Exactly. It marginalizes women in the profession. It also supports sexual objectification as being okay in a workplace / professional environment.

What's most offensive about the incident wasn't the wording in the ad, but the fact that they were going to hire exclusively women as sex objects (eye candy) for a professional event. The ad simply provided advance notice and an opportunity to call them out on it before the event actually happened.

Behavior and humor in professional, work environments need to be held to a different standard than what might fly just between a group of friends or in a bar. In such an environment even usually harmless jokes contribute to a subtle if not overt sexist atmosphere which discourages female participation. Sure, there are always going to be some aggressive, driven women who will enter the field anyways and excel, but there are lots of other women who will end up being turned away, believe it or not.

Just because a form of sexism is pervasive doesn't mean it isn't also offensive and demeaning to people. Part of being professional and encouraging diversity is not promoting a frat-like or male-dominated business culture.

For software updates without updating the distro, backports can be turned on.

The reason that everything is packaged together like that is so library updates and other things can be tested and vetted for compatibility. Part of the challenge of allowing such a variety of OS and system configurations is that library or software package maintainers are unlikely to have tested their updated code on every possible distribution out there, and so that makes it the responsibility of the distro maintainers.

Believe it or not in practice this doesn't create many issues. It might be an obstacle for casual users who are trying to transition into power users, and are trying to tweak their system. But most other users aren't encountering the same frustration.

On any of the modern distros there should be no scenario in which a common user should have to run 'make' directly. Even for distros which don't use precompiled binaries the install process is simpler than that.