Hey now, while certainly a buzz word, it wasn't meaningless.
Where before you had sites that delivered content to the masses, the web 2.0 craze was to allow user input. Accounts, logins, uploaded content and data. Like wikipedia, right? That interaction with the users, and content created by the users was the basis of the whole shindig. It was a neat and exciting change, and the talking heads and venture capitalists nearly had an stroke raving about it and certainly talked it up.

But it was a real thing.

Now a days we just take it for granted.

That coward can't be job hunting all that hard if he never sent me a resume. Or hey, maybe just just finally stopped browsing slashdot and got back to work.

Nothing. It's really not that special at all. And hence I don't think we should have special laws criminalizing it nor treat gay couples any differently then non-gay couples.

Same thing with black people. Remember all those special laws we had about black people?

Geeze man, part of explaining something is knowing your audience.
What part of "1-pbinom(38,54,.50)" didn't you get? Do you even know where you are?
~halfSarcasm

Slashdot's exclusive original content that distinguishes it from everyone else is the comments and community.

The columnists are:
eldavojohn (898314)
Samantha Wright (1324923)
phantomfive (622387)
And all the rest.

Their lengthy opinion pieces are stored under the not-read-so-much "journal" section of slashdot. But mostly it's just the comment sections.

If the DICE overlords wanted something more "traditional" they HAVE the resources at hand to give out front-page space to people with the writing skills, technical insight, and common sense needed to make an insightful piece. They just have to get off their asses and make an effort to make it happen. But apparently it's easier to go have someone's buddy write something out. Or hell, maybe Bennett bribed someone for this. That's the only explanations I can think of.

I am balls to the walls on board with tolerance. I strive for open-mindedness. It's important to me.

And yet, I expressed my distain for seeing the new Enders Game movie explicitly because it put money in Orson Scott Card's wallet, and he is actively campaigning for some really nasty ideas. I understand the view that the artist can be, and possibly even should be, separated from their works. It doesn't matter if $FAMOUS_PERSON made something, that doesn't make it meaningful. And no-name artists can make quality work. Nor does it really impact the latest dubstep remix if the artist doesn't believe in evolution.

You can appreciate a piece of work separate from the author.

However. Your actions DO impact the world outside of the piece of work. I didn't want to go see Ender's Game, not because I had any ill-will towards the story (it's ok), but rather because I didn't want to put money in the hand of someone who was going to give it to a hate-filled group who are actively working at making the world a worse place. If Card just happened to have a crazy belief? Eh, so what. Plenty of bigots out there. But no, he's an actively supporter of ... (oh, HAH, he's mormon too. Ugh, I wasn't expecting to stir up a mormon bashing thread.) But anyway, he was on the board of National Organization for Marriage from 2009 to 2013. And calls the criminalization of homosexuality. Up until the movie deal, at which point he quit the board, disavowed some quotes, and got generally quieter.

I'm all for open-mindedness, and he can believe in whatever he wants, and say whatever he wants, but there are some people I really don't want to help out financially. Even if they make pretty things.

Oh my god, I don't know why I found this so funny, but "moving the error correction process up to layer eight" is now my favorite euphemism. It's a feature!

Correct, and passion, tenacity, and/or experience sans degree don't trump a college degree.

I don't care how passionate you are if you can't learn anything.
I don't care how long you banged your head against that simple problem.
I know a couple of self-taught programmers who are simply incompatible with any other coder or codebase. They've got their one project at their company, and no-one else can touch it. And frankly they shouldn't touch anything else.

It's as if there is no trump, and there is no silver bullet guaranteed way to make a competent IT worker. Or a developer. Or an engineer. Because if there was a simple guaranteed path to becoming one of those, people wouldn't be bothering with anything else.

Passion is great if you capitalize on it. Tenacity is required to get anything done, but you have to know how to overcome problems. Most experience is good experience. Some experience just teaches you bad habits. Some experience is the same experience over and over again.

And a degree doesn't mean you're all that hot either. It just means you can pass a specific sort of hurdle. A big hurdle, sure, depending on the school and the degree. But there are plenty of grads who can't code.

Learn to conform? Is this some sort of subtle trolling that I'm not used to? Have we hit Poe's law?

This is like, milquetoast tyrany right here. Ok ok ok, here we go. Would you say that any of the captains of industry, the CEOs, the Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs of the nation simply "conformed"? Are these celebrated individuals? Do our leaders tell others to aspire to those roles?

Then no, learning to conform is not the one true way.

There's quite a bit of choice about how people want to live. And often people simply don't have the choice to conform. They simply won't fit in the same beige box that everyone else is in. And honestly? Get to know anyone in depth and you'll find that they're not so common. Tropes, trends, and commonalities to be sure, but no-one is a blank, lifeless, conforming sheep. And if they are, that's an amazingly rare social disorder that warrants some sociology study.

Now, that previous guy? Fuck him and his cigar. But I'm got my own tastes, thoughts, and passions. And as long as they don't harm anyone else, you can go fuck off in your beige box. (And embarrassing the kid is one of my duties. Gotta get that blackmail material while it's good.)

Because the vote for retroactive immunity for the telecoms happened in July, 2008. Four months before the general election. I'm sorry, but the election process takes a little while to select a candidate and while Obama's vote was a real eye-opener for me, at that point in time, the choices were between him and a war-monger getting on in the years with a complete balls-to-the-walls nutzo vice president on standby. I like McCain. Good guy. Skewed views on war from being a vet with the whole "we must not lose the war" mentality when it's not even a war. But Palin? Even a slight CHANCE of Palin? Oh god no.

We FINALLY convinced enough people that the Iraq war was a stupid bloody mistake and we wanted out. McCain wanted to "stick around a hundred years". Now, hey, with ISIS taking over things look different. Maybe another decade of troops dying daily might have made a different. Or maybe he would have invaded Iran. Or fought Russia over Georgia.

I still think it was the better of two choices. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. And this is exactly why Obama's lack of experience was a valid complaint.

To be fair, you're also mis-interpreting it. At the time a properly functioning army was quite "regular". As in... orderly, acting as one, well disciplined, didn't route, would stand in a line and get shot full of lead waiting for their leader to tell someone to drum out an order. Their weapons were standardized(ish), and their uniforms were, well, uniform. And they all shot as one in a well regulated action so the smoke didn't obscure their aim during firing and sparks didn't explode anyone's powder horns during reloading.

The problem with militia of the time was that they were quite irregular. Even called "irregulars". They had whatever weapons they had, which means when the line fires, half the shots aren't at ideal ranges. They run and save themselves rather than hold the line. Lacking strong leadership, they're more prone to that whole rape and pillage thing. They had no uniforms, so who knows who is the officers and who you're not supposed to shoot. Yeah, that's how they did it back in the day. Weird.

So, you're right in saying that a well regulated militia meant that it was a militia that was properly functioning (and more like a regular army). But a properly functioning militia was indeed well regulated using the term as we use it today. Back then the two were synonymous. The generals and higher ups like George Washington and Samuel Adams didn't have great things to say about the militia, but they were used constantly because, well, that's what we had.

Yeah, I agree you probably shouldn't just move to the coast and hope to land a job. That's crazy-talk from the stupidly over-optimistic guy telling you that hitchhiking your way there is a viable alternative. Don't listen to that guy.

But send me your resume at heckruler83@yahoo.com. I'll let you know what I think of it.

There's the up or out philosophy used by the military, financial industry, law firms, and academia. You either excel and move on to better things or you're fired. Needs a lot of people striving for the top. But it solves the peter principle. People are not allowed to simply remain incompetent in a position for too long.

He said build up a cushion. As in saving money. Shocking as this might be, a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck. My last boss made $100,000, his wife more than that, in Iowa, and they still had money woes. Which strikes me as crazy, but hey, not everyone has the best financial restraint.

Family. A lot of people get such a large benefit from their local family support group that they would be devastated if that simply went away. Ever look at how much quality daycare costs in Boulder Colorado?

Alternatively, the spouse. Changing cities is a major life change and it's best if everyone is on board. And they can have careers that anchor them to a city just as much as you want to leave it. Whose career is more important?

And lastly, friends. You know how most people get their jobs through "networking" rather than their resume or merit? Guess how many friends people typically have out of town.

Oh, but hey, you don't have any commitments or responsibilities as a 20-something tech professional and you think hopping on a greyhound to Silicon Valley is a viable choice for everyone else.

Personally I think that even if you're cash-strapped with family bonds, you can still shop around on the international/global market for a better job. The worst that happens is you decline the job for not paying enough. If you find something that warrants the move, and I mean it pays off the moving costs and counter-balances the lost roots and all that jazz, go for it.

THAT, is a motherfucking roundhouse to all the general pissing matches about sexism around here. It just doesn't apply here because they can select for the ideal, sex be damned.

Well said, coward.