replying to undo mod. Argh.

Have either of you read your responses on this thread? Your back-and-forth arguing on the issue, employing various debate tactics and resorting to name-calling and other nastiness? What you're doing is representative of what men do on the internet, and a very good reason why there are little to no women here, or on Wikipedia

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Both of you are representative of the actual problem. Have y'all ever been on Pinterest or on a women-dominated post on Facebook? There's none of this argumentative debate theatrics crap. Instead, women tend to be more social and cooperative, and when they do disagree, they tend to do so in mild terms while giving ample credence to the possibility of having been wrong. Compare this with Wikipedia or especially /., where a flame war breaks out just about every hour on various edits. Men tend to imbue their posts with the righteousness of true Alpha Male status. And then when another man challenges or rebuts, we whip out our penises and flog both our keyboards and the internet with our righteous hairy sausages of justice until the inevitable Hitler ejaculation erupts. It's no wonder women tend to shy away from Wikipedia, /., and most male-dominated job fields in Tech. They don't want to participate in being antagonistic status jockeys--and when we do stop doing so, women are able to come in and do some amazing work.

Given your perspective then, I have to ask: is the mutual cannibalization of Uber with Lyft a sign that they're already beginning to peak and thus to fade? And will the regulated taxi services survive?

A really BIG world-war, with die-offs in the millions. Once that's done, we won't need to worry about a post-human economy. Everything will be right-sized... whether we like it or not.

I do it on occasion to fulfill the need to pick a fight. Sometimes the aggression just comes surging forth and rather than go down to a bar or a club and risk life, limb, and jail time, I come on here or on other sites to troll. Not saying I'm proud of it, but getting into a rhetorical fight is almost as satisfying as getting into a physical fight. I don't care about politics or philosophy, I just focus on some guy (usually another troll) who's a little too certain for my tastes, and go at it. Then afterwards, win or lose (and I lose a LOT more than I win, but that isn't the point), I feel better and I'm able to rejoin the real world and be decent and human and polite.

I'm not saying I'm evil or sociopathic, I'm just saying I troll because sometimes a man has just gotta get into a fight. Given that, sometimes I think the trolls over on Jezebel are doing the same thing... they're not necessarily misogynistic so much as itching for a fight with their female counterparts.

I agree with you in principle, but the rocket scientists are outnumbered by the businessmen (primarily Finance) and the blue-collar voters who do the grunt work. They're the ones who stand to lose the most because they both benefit from an inefficient economic structure like that of ULA or a government contractor firm in general. The executives get to charge astounding amounts of money, and the blue collar workers get a protected job that's shielded more than most from economic fluctuations prevalent in private industry. Hmmm... now that I think about it, you could cast this as a caste struggle: the upper and lower class uniting against the middle class. White collar workers like yourself are cheering on SpaceX, but SpaceX would undo the economic structure that benefits the upper class and the working class.

My I.Q. score is 119, which is pathetic because I couldn't even muster up enough Brawndo to bust out one more point and make it an even number. I punch myself in the balls every morning for breakfast, and have been doing so since I was four. I can read, but only out loud and I still haven't mastered punctuation. I believed everything I read, saw, and heard as a teenager and as such contracted every venereal disease known to man, got convicted for cattle buggery, and am forbidden to set foot inside the state of Rhode Island. When asked to program using Vi, I do so in EMacs, and I do so by flogging my keyboard with my limp penis. I blame Obama for having the nerve to be Dubya's father, I choke on chewing gum when attempting to walk, and I make all my phone calls while I'm on the toilet experiencing my weekly bout of dysentery. I keep on trying to run Android on my iPhone 3G, Windows on my Linux desktop, and I still cannot wear matching socks. I, sirs, am a complete retard.

Is THAT where you went, Joe DiMaggio?

The WASP community has been doing that to minorities for over a hundred years now. Redlining, anti-Catholic leagues, race riots targeting Chinese, marijuana laws... take your pick. Those were all legally valid (or overlooked) political tactics used by government and/or WASPs to screw over Americans who weren't like them.

Gotta second this--there is no such thing as The American People. There is no singular voice of authority and righteousness that has coalesced from a totalitarian and enlightened gestalt of minds. Rather, there are the American Peoples, many of whom bear conflicting interests and actively fight their disagreements out using the political theater. Those Senators are representing people who will be directly harmed by SpaceX's success. Those people and their employers have hired lobbyists to advocate on their behalf, which is totally within their constitutional rights. We just don't like it because their needs directly conflict with ours.

Those senators are doing exactly what they should be doing: protecting the interests of their constituents. If SpaceX continues to be effective and successful, then Boeing and ULA will start losing money, and that means they'll start cutting back on employment at those factories, which are in the jurisdiction of those senators. Which means unemployed voters, and large amounts of unemployed voters trump any economic benefit that cheaper spaceflight may bring. Especially when we're talking working class people who are unable to migrate to new jobs/locations. Before that happens, a lot of the potentially affected voters (and their employers) are hiring lobbyists to advocate on their behalf to stop SpaceX by any means necessary. This is exactly how democracy functions, and those senators are doing their jobs--as much as we may dislike it.

Any options for those of us who aren't running Android? Any workarounds or recommendations? This is a great idea, I just haven't read any suggestions or tips on this thread about how to record using iPhone or Windows phone.

What if we figured out a way to empower the service reps to fuck over their management but still stay within legal employment guidelines? After all, they've got to be the ones who hate all of this the most because they're being paid to be bad guys. And not just that, they probably were in circumstances that compelled them to choose that employment. Like, calling up a service rep and tieing up their line for twenty minutes with complaints and threats to cancel service, but then using the rep's authorization system to get discounts and freebies that end up benefiting you, benefiting the rep, and fucking over the operating costs of Comcast in the long term?

Not anymore. Fat devs and programmers don't get hired on as full time staff anymore. If they manage to get hired at all, they'r contractors. If you're under thirty and skinny, basically, then you will be hired because you're perceived as being a minimal risk in light of rising health care costs. Oh, and you send the informal corporate message that Health is In.

Dude, I got no problem with socks and sandles guys. Knock yourself out--hell, send me photos of yourself giving me a goatse in socks and sandles and I'll critique your thread counts and anal wrinkles. What I have a problem with are senior devs that smell like they live in a dumpster that's been coated with the oils from their armpits, wear clothes that came from said dumpsters, and who insist on eating only vegan bean soup from Whole Foods for every meal because they are recovering from an eating disorder (and gawd forbid I should eat anything else other than vegan bean soup from Whole Foods around them because I might trigger their eating disorder again or a sudden food allergy they didn't know they had until yesterday). AND said dudes make a LOT of money--more than enough to hire a therapist to help coach them through managing sensory input and a maid service for their clothes.