pstack

I can't tell if people here are being intentionally thick or not.

"Is bro supposed to be sexist or is it meant to be ironic?"

"Man referred to manual, not men!"

I can't even imagine many of you people watching a stand-up comic. Your heads must verge on exploding. The diagram for the pun/humor here would be about as simple as a diagram could be.

I joined Sun slightly after Sun Quentin and from about that point on, it felt like a very different place. That is, very engineer-friendly and exciting, but I joined the tech workforce at about the time when you had to start being more bland and concerned with everything you did and said. I'm not talking about whining about politically correct things. I'm talking about simple sarcasm and humor or being just a little odd for the fun of it. It sounds like they used to be joyous fun times in the industry, but for most of my time, I've felt very constricted and aware of my every word. To the point that I wouldn't even, say, talk about playing video games, because you never know who might overhear and equate video games with being a child and wonder what is wrong with you.

Still, I am grateful to have Sun on my resume and to have been there near the tail end of the good times. It is one of the most memorable periods of my entire life.

Frankly, the entire religion aspect of the discussion doesn't belong here.

As an atheist, I'm entirely fine with you finding comfort in whatever you like, even if it is completely irrational. It is your business. I also accomplish nothing by being "militant" toward people simply for believing in something. That is best reserved for situations where that belief or things drawn from it are imposed upon the rest of society. For example, in public education, science, politicians, taxation, decisions of national importance. Things where that belief impacting beyond the scope of an individual's life are forced upon everyone and on behalf of everyone.

However, it is also quite ridiculous to use this opportunity about an important topic to start telling people they should somehow convince themselves to believe in something metaphysical, because "it'll bring you peace". You aren't the Hare Krishna and this isn't the local airport. Let's leave the discussion at something like "I'm religious and find some solace and peace in my religion that helps me cope with potential mortality".

Telling people they should "believe in jesus" and linking to ridiculous books or interviews about why they should believe in jesus in incredibly self-serving, inappropriate, and counter-productive.

There's no discussion to be had. A toddler may feel at ease because someone convinced him his flashlight will fend off the monsters in his closet and under his bed. It helps the kid sleep, but there's no enlightened, meaningful, or useful discussion to be had from that.

If I tell you "I believe in the healing power of crystals and wear them around my neck and it has helped me come to a certain peace with my mortality", you would either say "well, good for you if that helps your mental state cope with things" or "you're fucking nuts". Neither avenue is going to progress, inform, or help anyone.

It doesn't help that life or death issues for men, like testicular cancer, are almost completely ignored. About a decade ago, I had the same concern as you and after a scary doctor visit (which included his female assistant observing, which added to the discomfort but that all mitigated by the more terrifying prospect of this being a life-threatening concern) followed by an ultrasound at the hospital, I was relieved to find out it was nothing to be worried about.

After that, though, I started to think. I realized that the only reason I knew to be concerned was because just shortly before that, I'd heard Lance Armstrong's story in a sport's magazine.

I realized that every single male 20-34 knows about breast cancer and ovarian cancer and that women are supposed to be regularly checked all all of these concerns promoted by countless events and product promotions and charities . . . but very few of them probably have the slightest clue about their own medical concerns that they should be looking after. Because nobody bothers to emphasize the need to inform them and educate them.

Well, the author was apparently there with her when this occurred. Doesn't sound like he spoke up about it. Frankly, that seems weird to me. If this happened to a friend I was out with, I would be expected to say something. Unless he was oblivious to this occurring, I don't understand how someone would just let a stranger grab their friend without stepping in.

As to stepping in and "adding yourself to the situation" with a stranger? I don't know about that, so much. I've had my fair share of trying to be the considerate stranger stepping in to help out, only to be screeched at by the person I was speaking up for. It often doesn't pay to try and help people out. (Not saying you shouldn't do it, anyway, just on principle).

I know that, without reservation, my fiance would respond to such a situation with a "dude, what the fuck?! Get off me!" rather than demurely accepting the situation and biting her tongue until she could get home and blog about it.

Don't characterize my statement to be blaming the person who was "victim" here. I'm just reiterating that the original poster is not being unreasonable to suggest such a response might have been appropriate and even expected. Given the circumstances, I'm actually somewhat baffled as to why it did not happen. The person was at local meeting with other people and her male friend. She wasn't some lone girl on a subway train packed to the gills where some vile beast was surreptitiously pawing at her.

She certainly isn't obligated to say or do anything, but suggesting she or questioning why she didn't is an entirely rational way to follow up to hearing a story like this.

Repeating your accusations doesn't make them true.

Knock your vile rhetoric and bullying off for five seconds and quote, for all of us, the specific sentence or more from Merritt's comment where he shamed the author, implied or supported censoring her, or said that she should not be able to post about her experience.

It is a simple request. I'm not asking you to irrefutably prove your ability to bend spoons with your mind. Merritt's comment was quite short. Just copy and paste the precise part of his or her message where what you keep attacking them for is actually stated or even implied.

Don't worry, we'll all wait. Go ahead.

Hbags, you are full of shit.

Merritt said the behavior was unacceptable and the way to fix it is to address it when it occurs. Followed by the comment:

--- "Running off to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly". ---

Then said that a story about a bad situation where the person spoke up about it would be a great story that would spread "like wildfire".

At absolutely NO point in Merritt's short post was it said that if you don't speak up when you are uncomfortable or accosted, you should never be allowed to say anything about it.

You owe Merritt an apology for straight out lying about the content and intent of their comment and repeatedly attacking their character based solely on the things you invented (then repeated) in this thread.

So, anyone who has any sort of income at all should be humble and content, because while someone may be artificially hindering their income and networth, at least they aren't a homeless person on the street with no income. I guess . . .?

I think everyone on the internet should be forced to use their real identity, except for me, because I have a completely legitimate reason for wanting privacy and anonymity!

Of course. In most states, you can be fired for anything, except race, sex, and religion. And in the rest, good luck proving you were fired for those reasons.

You could not hide slavery, a woman's inability to vote, internment camps, segregation, or any of these other things.

Spying on your own people, however, is something that has always been hidden in this country except the times it has arisen to the public eye (think of the communism-witch-hunts of American citizens by the government and fellow citizens).

... only to retreat and be hidden again and forgotten again.

At best, these people believe it is an obligated imperative to spy on our own citizens in order to keep them safe after the sickening mandate congress and the American public gave them weeks after 9/11 and ever since. "They are scared and they demand their government protect them, so we are going to protect them, even if it means violating everything we stand for".

At worst, they believe they need to control the public for their own benefit. Be that to accommodate lazy police work and law-enforcement work or to facilitate further abuse of the public at large by politicians and aristocrats. My vote is for a little bit of "at best" for the more naive and less involved politicians and "at worst" for those further to the inside. After all, there is nothing about spying on lovers, potential love interests, collecting dirt and blackmailing and threatening journalists, activists, and fellow politicians that is anything but vile and self-serving. Oh, and don't forget its primary use - not as a terror-prevention, but as a tool to protect American "economic interests" (if you recall the speech a few months ago, he listed "terrorism" as the last concern, after protecting our energy supply and then economic interest).

So I lean toward the more malevolent intent.

Either way, they will continue with this mindset and the only thing anyone will accomplish is some public dressing-down of certain scape-goats while the whole spying machine retreats back into the dark and continues to operate in silence.

Quite simply, none of us will ever know if they have actually stopped or not. Even if they do. Which they won't. They are above the law. Our only possible recourse is the widespread utilization of security measures that we must find a way to turn into common-practice. To the point that your great-grandmother wouldn't even think of sending a birthday card to little Billy without encrypting it.

Even that requires some degree of faith that the unlimited spending machine of the US Government (or the combined governments of Five Eyes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement), etc) haven't compromised its security. And assuming that utilization of such measures aren't simply outlawed (not an irrational concern, given that such security measures are -- or were a decade ago -- disallowed from inclusion in software for international distribution due to classification as a munition).

Only 10? I've backed almost 700 crowd-funded projects. Almost all video games. Even accounting for those sure to say "I give up and can't finish the game, but I'm keeping your $50k" and those that have to delay their project into 2015 or 2016, I plan to be playing two or three dozen crowd-funded 2014 games this year!

The whole "and should end" thing always makes me laugh. Oh, we just determined that violating the constitutional limitations on government is against the constitution, so we're going to stop violating the constitution, now.

None of these idiots thought they were doing anything but violating the law for the past several decades. They just didn't care. And they still don't. And they won't. This big display right now is nothing but that - a display. At most, they'll throw out some "oh, gosh, we will put in regulations or stop it all together"... while they continue to do exactly as they please behind the scenes.

There is no return from this. It is done.

It's more than one every other minute only for ONE company!

I can't even fathom how many there must be if you throw in Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AT&T, Sprint, and countless others.

Exactly. I think people get hung up over what level of math and what type of programming.

Sure, you use general math in almost all programming. Up to basic algebra and maybe a little more. I've done well enough for myself, but never received more than a basic junior high algebra class. Of course, I'm not writing cryptographic systems, graphic engines, or some sort of predictive engine, either.

Others, say John Carmack, need an obscene amount of match knowledge (among other things).

You wouldn't know it by the prices.

Don't we all just assume this is going on? Also, if it's alright to pay major gaming sites and magazines and personalities to talk about your product, why not some knucklehead with a bunch of youtube followers? It's no less sleazy.

The great thing about modern society is that most consumers have evolved enough savvy to be suspect of almost all brand-encounters. Even to the point of alerting to a lot of sure false-positives.

Exactly.

Not being content with what we have and not being endlessly amazed by it is what propels us to drive for even greater advancements instead of standing around like remnants from an ancient society completely gobsmacked by a guy making a quarter appear out of our ear.

Yes, we live in the most advanced times ever and there's lots of awesome stuff. Let's go make more awesome stuff.

The answer is to work on the issue from all appropriate angles, but also taking accountability for your own safety and protection. All the cultural programs and political promises and media campaigns and jail sentences are not going to help the individual who is accosted by that one person who is not hindered by any of those previous things.

It is the same reason, in America at least, you take responsibility for your own protection. When it comes down to it, nobody else is going to be there to help you when you are mugged or raped or you are the victim of a home invasion. There will be people to come clean up the mess afterward and possibly someone to try and hunt down the culpable person afterward, but they will not be there when you are actually being harmed or killed or maimed.

Also, I have no idea why that weird semi-delusional rambling craziness was linked here, anyway. It looked like a ranting instant message.

Email is just fine. It lets you address things as you like, puts no time pressure on you, and gives you a written record of your discussions. It's also low-overhead and universal.

Don't blame email, if you can't create a few simple inbox filters to manage the cruft for you. It has been many years since people actually suffered from the weight of zillions of spam messages in their inbox. We've largely addressed the spam thing. The non-spam stuff is going to be dumped on you, whether it's in email or phone calls or text messages or instant messages or facebook messages or instagram messages or whatever the fuck it is teenagers are doing these days that makes email "irrelevant".

The video was completely void of real content and seemed more created as an attempt to self-justify and rationalize the choice for the author of it to rent, instead of buy a home.

There are different markets, different economies, different lifestyles, and different situations. For some in some places, renting is wiser. For others, owning a home.

I sure delight in knowing that the home I bought in 2010 for $195k with 20% down and a $160k mortgage at 4.85% is not only worth $220k today, but costs me the same about ($1,200) for mortgage, insurance, and property tax as I used to pay just for my rent. And the place is 3,000sqft versus 1,000sqft of the apartment. And I get all the benefits of a home, such as a lawn, storage, nobody pounding on the floor because I'm listening to music, pets, a security system, and nobody else with a key to let themselves in whenever they feel like it.

In addition, that $1,200 I paid in rent started as $1,000 only four years earlier. In twenty years, it'll probably be at least $2,000+ while my mortgage will still be $850 (not counting insurance/tax). And, in the end, I'll have actual property that is worth something.

I see so many of these arguments back and forth and it always sounds more like people trying to convince themselves that they made the right decision than trying to convince someone else what decision to make. It's a lot like parents frustrated by their kids trying to convince other couples that they should have kids. Or a married couple always trying to convince their friends that they should get married.

It all comes down to individual situations and opportunities. Where that guy lives and with his opportunities in that market, his decision very well may be appropriate for him. For others, not so much. And that's okay.

After all, my next step is to buy more property. Real-estate is a dandy way to counter inflation and when I buy a couple more properties, I'm going to need people like the guy who made that video to be willing to pay me rent.

Even if many people felt they could actively do something about it, they are in direct opposition to all of the people who mindlessly undermine their country by spouting rhetoric like "well, we have to give up some privacy if we want to be safe" and have convinced themselves that the government has done nothing against any American and are only interested in "bad guys" (despite the countless documented cases of the government spying on girlfriends, attractive strangers, blackmailing politicians, activists, etc).

There are so many hurdles, well beyond apathy. If there were real meaningful action anyone could take, they would also face the threat of a government that attacks those who criticize it. If that weren't an issue, you would still have to contend not with the apathetic, but with those who enthusiastically accept and promote what is being done in some bizarre sense of self-preservation from a big scary world, because they're deathly afraid that some evil underwear bomber is going to blow them up next time they're on vacation to grandma's house.

Which is kind of bizarre, because how much extra effort would it have taken them to pave a walkway to the door and have some lights on a randomized timer during the night, to give the impression that someone uses the home? Although, I guess that would be creepy if you lived in the neighborhood and never saw the people, too.

This is entirely common, all over the world. Maintenance, accesses, and vents to the New York subway system are hidden behind non-existent town and row-houses and you can discover them if you pan around Google Maps for awhile.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/01/29/the-fake-townhouses...

Because nobody but yuppies would prefer not to have a giant substation or maintenance station of various sorts slammed right into the middle of a neighborhood?

Also, for things that would otherwise simply not be covered at all, it keeps kids and vandals away and other potential liabilities.

I don't think I've ever used antibiotics, but I'm concerned that in the next decade (when I'll be in my mid 40s), I will have a fairly major surgery that exposes me to a lot of potential infection. The idea of not having proper antibiotic solutions by that time (compounded by the notorious lack of protection from infection in hospitals) has be terrified.

Right. My point was simply that there's little point to them being concerned about their ISP in the first place if they're exposed elsewhere along the chain (unless they're simply worried about being locked-down from accessing certain servers for some reason, I guess?).

That's why I said it is what we have today. Right down to spying on dissidents and political adversaries and blackmailing and extorting them for personal, political, and economic gain.