I actually moved further away from work and get to work quicker now because I take a regional train to work, instead of the subway. (Go-train instead of TTC subway in Toronto). I'm on a bit more of a schedule, but it's worth it. I often get to work much quicker than people who live in the city and have to deal with street cars and buses that stop every 200m. I'm just amazed at how close bus stops are together in Toronto. Like what's wrong with walking 3 minutes to improve the speed of a line.
Speed is actually a strange thing because in Europe stops are generally further apart (300-400m). In North America, they are much closer (200m). http://www.alanhowesworld.com/...
This slows down transit dramatically.
Now, I agree that this article is basically ridiculous because most bus services haven't exhausted the big improvement before they start optimizing sacrificing safety. Bus-only lanes, lane bypass, traffic light coordination, further stop spacing, express routes, simple routes... all need to be done before we even talk about the silliness in this article.
Most are switching to lower cost MERs anyways. I know I switched a long time ago to ETFs for pretty much this reason. The thing is the lower-level advisors weren't doing very much anyways. Pretty much why they could be automated. They just asked some basic pre-set questions and tossed you into one of the general recommendations. At best, their sales skills came into play.
You're pretty much only getting useful advice if you get real custom advisor, which is more for the wealthy.
The reality is that a lot of white collar jobs are not as 'thinking' as people like to think. In the end, they're as automatable as many of the manufacturing jobs. Never take someone's job loss as a joke. It's a person trying to make a living at the end of the day. But the sheer number of people who take a dismissive view of manufacturing or blue collar work because it is not 'educated' sometimes sickens me.
Some jobs are kind of protected by government, but even our most 'people' jobs could have parts of it largely automated. Does anyone think every teacher should be building their own lesson plans. Is every class that unique? Nope. Most of that could be automated and largely speaking, a teacher can be more of a class supervisor with premade lessons plans/tests. There might still be specialized courses for kinds with disabilities or something, just like their are special financial advisors high net worth people, but the general case is automated. Large parts of accounting, law, even medicine can be automated with just special cases being left to professionals were it not for legal issues.
I'm all for better ways to authenticate. Fingerprint, selfies, gestures, code generators...
But why must it always be framed as getting rid of passwords. Why not in addition to? As the old saying goes, good authentication involves 3 things.
Something you know (password) Something you have (token generator) Something you are (fingerprint, selfie)
They can play with these in terms of convenience and security, but I hope we never get rid of passwords. Maybe Amazon can use selfies for low value transactions, and then require a password for high value transactions or something like that.
While I agree with you in terms of job creation in terms of product industries, there are a lot of ways jobs are created.
There can be new demand of an existing product/service. Maybe you build a new subdivision and that needs people to build it. Or people/government decide they just want more of something.
There can be regulations. If the government mandated every 10000 lines of software must have 1 support developer.
There's plenty of way to create jobs. In the end, the government could if it chooses just make up work for everyone.
You need to worry as much as you're paid to worry.
That is something you need to learn in software or you will just drive yourself insane. We tend to take on a million and one roles from build specialist, security researcher, database admin, performance engineer...
Yes, many of us have the talent to be good in any one of those roles and many of us have a reasonable grasp of any of those other roles, but unless you're being paid for all those roles,you have to detach yourself somewhat.
well the guy below mentions Nazis, but gets downvoted because of the extreme example I'm assuming... but here's a quick google of more 'regular abuse by scientists'
And heck, I'd be willing to wager that scientists as a whole working with children... perhaps in anthropology or sociology abuse children the same as priests, UN peace keepers... And I'd also wager, their colleagues turn a blind eye to it just as every other group.
Are driverless cars really the big game changer for auto insurance? I'm in Ontario, Canada and I just don't see how this is going to change things. We already have 'no-fault' auto insurance, which basically means you buy car insurance to protect yourself and liability. You don't go around suing the other drivers or anything. When you make a claim, you just deal with your own insurance company. The rate you pay is still based on your risk.
So, we have driverless cars. You still buy insurance to protect yourself and liability. Maybe some of the risk metrics change. Like cars with a better record of being driverless get lower rates? But that's no different than rating cars for safety today.
I suppose some countries might need to change how their auto-insurance works. Moving more towards no-fault insurance. But it's not like the world doesn't have plenty of models to choose from that would better fit the driverless world. They don't have to reinvent the wheel as far as I can tell.
But it could also become a service provider. A lot of companies are trying to connect with users for legitimate purposes. There's a lot of money to made and saved.
As the article points out, companies could pay a fee to Whatsapp to use the chat feature. Instead of paying to use SMS.
It saves the companies a lot of money rather than trying to build out their own infrastructure and have customers download custom applications.
If they could make it 'secure' there is even more money to be made. I know my bank has started to use secure email in various forms.
1. Bruce is complaining about men not being sensitive in their open source groups. We're not talking apartheid or segregation here. Bruce's complaint is political correctness, so it is incumbent that such a person be politically correct to all.
2. We must insist on political correctness for all. Not just as a matter of speech, but as a mindset. When people buy into a narrative, they don't see any other voices. You can see that completely in Bruce's summary and post. He just buys the narrative that men are insensitive clogs and women are being excluded. Even his solution of teaching boys at a young age on how to be friends with women.
Political correctness for all its flaws (trust me, I'm a very direct person) does force you to think about the other person involved. That in my view is a good thing.
It does however still blind people who just buy into a narrative.
For example, nowhere does Bruce suggest anything that women need to do to be friends with men. Isn't that interesting? Women don't need to learn things that make them good friends for men. Things like being able to joke around, rough play, loyalty... Nope, the whole thing is about men learning to be friends with women.
That's a pretty offensive position.
I'll operate on either level. I'm inherently a very direct, handle yourself person. But if we're going to engage in this political correct talk, then we should be careful for all involved. Words definitely give insight in how you feel and act towards people.
I understand your intention, but I would urge you to change your mindset to focus less on stereotypes and more on behavior. I often find this kind of study/summary to be of the greatest irony.
Person complains men are insensitive or make assumptions about women, which is a great irony because that just making an insensitive assumptions about men.
Let me try another example. You are trying to point out problems within a group. Yet, you have chosen the word 'male' to represent this group.
Suppose we wish to talk about problems in urban Detroit (gangs, single motherhood...)
Would you state the problem in any way as: Black people are prone to violence and broken families?
No, because that would be so insensitive. You'd probably call that person a bigot.
You'd have to make it more specific. People in poverty, certain urban centers, certain historical background...
I was born in Apartheid South Africa. I know a little more about racial grouping. I also see the reverse now where the groupings and power plays have shifted. It's always tempting, but if you want to be better than a bigot, you have to check yourself and not fall into 'my tribe' thinking.
Now this is always a tricky area as how do you talk about systemic problems without 'grouping' people.
Well as I say, take two minutes and make sure you've tried your best to narrow your group as much as possible. You might not get it perfect, but at least you made the effort and can offend fewer people AND be more accurate.
It's almost pointless to talk about 'black' people as that is such a large group. Neil Degrass Tyson is black. Condoleeza Rice is black. One of the best IOS programmers I know is black. These people bare no resemblance to the image people have when they talk about 'black problems' perpetuated by both bigots and SJW. There are upscale blacks. There are ghetto blacks and every other subgrouping in between.
It's just as pointless to talk about 'white' people. There are rich white folk and downright poor ghetto white folks. You can for example talk about 'white privilege' but you better be careful about it. Tell some poor white kid from a broken home that he has 'white privilege'. Do you have any idea how harmful that is to that person?
Now ponder your choice of groups. You chose to group humans into two of the biggest groups possible. Male and Female.
And you make grand stereotypes about both, lumping in everyone. You insult anyone who identifies with either being male or female. You insult the female who prefers direct talk or believes she should fight the fight. You insult the male who prefers social grace.
Did it ever occur to you that many men get turned off by poor social behavior?
Perhaps the issue is less that of men vs women, but of people who lack social grace.
I would also imagine with all the tools available in the open source world, it might be interesting to find out why other open source cultures haven't developed. Or maybe they have? I haven't studied it. I'm generally just a deep user, as opposed to an active contributor, but I generally find people quite helpful. There are some assholes, but I've also had some very good conversations and help from a lot of people. Every open source project is started by someone.
Basically, take two minutes. Check your groupings. Even if you go in depth with nuance in the research, check your summary. Just do the black test. Change the 'bad' group to 'black' and see how it reads.
How does this read to you Bruce: How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of males behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of blacks behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
Even masked with the words minority, it still stings doesn't it? No matter how your phrase it, it stings a little doesn't it.
So for someone complaining about insensitive men... you might want to check yourself.
Artificial scarcity is what it is all about these days. Even in Canada, where I am.
This is all done to encourage transit or high density development. Not that those aren't worthy goals, but I'd prefer they actually tried doing things in a positive manner but you know... proper planning, building good transit... instead of making life so miserable, people are forced to change their ways.
They're also doing tolling here, and mandating density... all the while... not much new transit. Oh they keep saying it's coming.
Progressivism as a movement came up on both the left and the right under the basic premise.
We are in a more complex age so we need a more powerful government to manage it.
It sounds great, but in reality, the very process of institution building creates complexities that make the complex environment too difficult to manage.
They push big unions and big tie in with industry. These relationships become entrenched with special interests that become difficult to change. They create powerful bureaucracies to deeply regulate industry and then again special interest become a problem to update the regulations.
It's just one of life's interesting things.
I'm not wise enough to know if the 'free market' will be better or we can manage society better via progressivism/socialism. but in this progressive age, the problems it has are just full of irony at every level.
I'm in Ontario Canada and we have very powerful big governments today. But they're so powerful, they can't even implement a wage freeze for their already well paid public sector workers. Let that sink in. You want the power to control society and regulate it, but you can't even get a wage freeze though. Something a pizza store owner can do.
Similarly, the whole... we can turn societies into unions and think equality will come about is equally ridiculous.
I'm in Canada. If you manage to get into a well connected union, your life might be good. Maybe teachers, police officers, public sector workers...
But other unions get trampled.
If you want some grand irony. I'm in big union Ontario. Guess what job is actually prohibited by law from forming a union?
Perhaps the most vulnerable of all workers.. farm workers.
There are many child dreams. I have no idea what the answer is. You might say individual bargaining is a pipe dream. From where I sit in Canada, unions present the same problem as some workers will belong to unions that are exposed to the free market, areas where people want cheap goods (farm)... and they will lack protections. Meanwhile those that belong to powerful unions get to rip off society at the tax payer's dime.
I'd venture to guess, part of the reason small-c democrats became republicans is all these Democrats calling people rubes, rednecks, idiots, bigot, racist...
That may be qualities of some, just as some Democrats might be elitist communists. But that is sadly what happens when ideologies become so polarizing.
People ultimately drift to where they feel they belong. If you make your side so unwelcoming to the other side, the division is going to occur.
I agree with most of what you said, except that organizationally from a business standpoint, unless there is a group for it, it is not being funded.
Yes, most developers have had to do DevOps at some point. I've tuned databases, written scripts to automate environments and databases...
It really is a job in itself in any complex environment. It took me out of my comfort zone as I got into managing databases, replications, restores, virtual machines...
There is definitely a need for a develop with operations focus. Hence DevOps. Like I said, unless there is a group/title for it, business is clueless about it.
Actually EMR are shit because of the government... and yes, corporations. I'm in Canada. EMR are still shitty here.
I worked in the field and got out as soon as I could. It's a whole stinking mess.
The number one problem is that everyone (government, insurance, scientists...) main concern is easy categorization. It's just a freakin hard problem to solve. If you thought tech standards are hard to create, just imagine EMR.
Really, if we look at it from a use-case patient perspective. What would work is simply this: 1. A container to hold doctors notes in image/pdf/something format 2. A medical history of things you'd need to know if you end up in the ER. Current medications/allergies...
That would have been an amazing starting point. Instead everyone wants to go the big bang approach. The government bureaucrats want to be able to talk about data and attach costs to everything no different than insurance companies.
Security is shit but overengineered. Oh they want to have all these access levels for different people and privacy commission... but what does it all boil down to in the end?
EMR industry should exist. It is slowly improving in Canada. I'm finally starting to see blood tests... being sent electronically and what not. They really should have gradually went electronic instead of thinking it was going to be a big bang solve everything approach.
Originally the pioneers are normally more 'consistent and true'. However, as a movement becomes more general, it is going to get people belonging to it just as another other group.
For example, I left my faith of Islam. It's a huge deal. I was highly religious in my youth. It's not to my benefit in that sense. Loss of community support. Ostracized... But my brain is such that, once it sees it, it can't go back. It's been a real mental struggle fought with philosophy, identity, social belonging, truth, rationality...
Now, eventually, the agnostic/athiest movement will become the norm among Muslims, the same as it has in the West with Christianity (Bible Belt aside). And you will have people attaching itself to that agnostic/athiest label just because it is their team. They 'new athiests' will likely not be any less prone to irrationality/total nonsense than anyone else.
Let me give a little software example. The originators of Agile were really well versed in Agile. They saw all the problems of Waterfall. Came up with a new ideology and set of practices. They probably used it to create some really good software.
But as it became a movement, a lot more people just joined into it. They don't get the intellectual aspects of Agile. They just attach onto it as a movement. It gets all the bad aspects that come with any movement. Scrum becomes the most important part. Just as say not eating pork becomes the main part of Islam. It becomes a sense of identity and belonging no different than anything else.
So while I think there are varying stages to movements and at certain times, a particular movement might be 'more true or consistent', I have a general belief that overtime, every movement becomes prone to non-sense as it becomes generally accepted.
I'm in Canada. The average person is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Yeah, corporation suck, but it's not like governments are much better. They only take care of their own (those in government). I'm in Ontario. We're not in the best economic shape right now to say the least.
So if you're a government in tough times and you have some money to spend. You might think they spend it on those without. The poor. The displaced workers... but they don't. They never seem to have money for this.
But public sector unions, teachers, police officers... the money just flows.
Oh sure, corporations as the mantra goes might look after the one percent. Government, only looks after the top 10-20% (Which public sector unions are in the Canada) or other special interest groups.
So I don't rant about corporations because as a private sector worker, I don't see government giving a rats ass about me.
They're just too happy to enlarge themselves, then smile to me the private sector workers talking about free trade and blah blah blah.
It doesn't matter what government it is. Liberal, conservative, NDP.
They just don't give a crap about private sector workers.
On the contrary. Societal attitudes to free speech do matter. Only in some kind of pure libertarian world would what you say be the end all. But we don't live in that world.
You can't just deny someone's business because you don't want it. We live in a world where anti-discrimination is a big thing and is regulated. We live in a world where the channels of speech (Internet, tv, newspaper, movies...) are all considered outlets of speech and validly should not discriminate.
Actually I wouldn't be so quick to just say you're kidding.
I was Muslim (currently secular), and I am engineer. I guess I'm the target demographic.
I think people have covered the abuse of these statistics in other posts. Things like technical skill, Western grads might be more involved in engineering...
So I'll just add my anecdotal bit that might actually add some validity. I have a hard time with cognitive dissonance or whatever you wish to call it. But something is either true and I act accordingly. Or something is not true, and I drop it. Or I just don't know enough about it.
In my days as Muslim, I really did believe in Islamic law. I really did think suicide bombing and terrorism was a way to get the end result. It wasn't pretty, but if that's the goal, that's what we have to do. Now I didn't do anything, but the thoughts were in my head.
We sometimes look down at people with cognitive dissonance, but in a way, it's a good feature for society as whole. Other people just don't seem to have the same trouble with it as I do. To them Islam might just be a way of life. They will say they believe and then ignore most of the text and most of the rules.
I think the engineering mind might be very focused on goals and if they can be convinced of the goal, the rest kind of follows.
To whom does the minimum wage apply? The minimum wage law (the FLSA) applies to employees of enterprises that have annual gross volume of sales or business done of at least $500,000.
It also applies to employees of smaller firms if the employees are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, such as employees who work in transportation or communications or who regularly use the mails or telephones for interstate communications. Other persons, such as guards, janitors, and maintenance employees who perform duties which are closely related and directly essential to such interstate activities are also covered by the FLSA. It also applies to employees of federal, state or local government agencies, hospitals and schools, and it generally applies to domestic workers.
It's an interesting question. but we should remember these are multi-national corporations. They don't belong to America.
Everyone wants to be an exporter. Everyone wants to keep local jobs. It's part of our paradox.
I don't know how much money Disney makes overseas, but its probably a large amount. The people in those countries deserve a job working for Disney as much as an American. They also deserve a share of Disney's taxes paid.
I know H1Bs are a bit of a scam, but its really just a small piece of the puzzle.
We've all taken great advantage of free trade or migrant labor whether we want to or not. Ideally, this would have been nipped in the bud long ago. But who knows, maybe it has benefited the world. Or maybe it hasn't.
I'll say this though, America made some better decisions with respect to trade with its own inter-state commerce clauses.
What did the US did when say New York put in a minimum wage, but Southern states did not? You don't need a PHD to figure jobs would leave New York and end up in Alabama.
The US got a federal minimum wage. Theoretically, if you don't cross interstate commerce, I think you don't need to obey the federal minimum wage. But what constitutes interstate commerce has grown that its basically most workers.
Now the question I ask is where is this great wisdom when we signed free trade with countries? Should we not have a common minimum wage with countries we sign free trade deals with?
Slashdot Mirror
It is of course both frequency and speed.
I actually moved further away from work and get to work quicker now because I take a regional train to work, instead of the subway. (Go-train instead of TTC subway in Toronto). I'm on a bit more of a schedule, but it's worth it. I often get to work much quicker than people who live in the city and have to deal with street cars and buses that stop every 200m. I'm just amazed at how close bus stops are together in Toronto. Like what's wrong with walking 3 minutes to improve the speed of a line.
Speed is actually a strange thing because in Europe stops are generally further apart (300-400m). In North America, they are much closer (200m).
http://www.alanhowesworld.com/...
This slows down transit dramatically.
Now, I agree that this article is basically ridiculous because most bus services haven't exhausted the big improvement before they start optimizing sacrificing safety. Bus-only lanes, lane bypass, traffic light coordination, further stop spacing, express routes, simple routes... all need to be done before we even talk about the silliness in this article.
Most are switching to lower cost MERs anyways. I know I switched a long time ago to ETFs for pretty much this reason.
The thing is the lower-level advisors weren't doing very much anyways. Pretty much why they could be automated.
They just asked some basic pre-set questions and tossed you into one of the general recommendations.
At best, their sales skills came into play.
You're pretty much only getting useful advice if you get real custom advisor, which is more for the wealthy.
The reality is that a lot of white collar jobs are not as 'thinking' as people like to think.
In the end, they're as automatable as many of the manufacturing jobs.
Never take someone's job loss as a joke. It's a person trying to make a living at the end of the day.
But the sheer number of people who take a dismissive view of manufacturing or blue collar work because it is not 'educated' sometimes sickens me.
Some jobs are kind of protected by government, but even our most 'people' jobs could have parts of it largely automated. Does anyone think every teacher should be building their own lesson plans. Is every class that unique? Nope. Most of that could be automated and largely speaking, a teacher can be more of a class supervisor with premade lessons plans/tests. There might still be specialized courses for kinds with disabilities or something, just like their are special financial advisors high net worth people, but the general case is automated.
Large parts of accounting, law, even medicine can be automated with just special cases being left to professionals were it not for legal issues.
I'm all for better ways to authenticate. Fingerprint, selfies, gestures, code generators...
But why must it always be framed as getting rid of passwords. Why not in addition to? As the old saying goes, good authentication involves 3 things.
Something you know (password)
Something you have (token generator)
Something you are (fingerprint, selfie)
They can play with these in terms of convenience and security, but I hope we never get rid of passwords. Maybe Amazon can use selfies for low value transactions, and then require a password for high value transactions or something like that.
While I agree with you in terms of job creation in terms of product industries, there are a lot of ways jobs are created.
There can be new demand of an existing product/service. Maybe you build a new subdivision and that needs people to build it. Or people/government decide they just want more of something.
There can be regulations. If the government mandated every 10000 lines of software must have 1 support developer.
There's plenty of way to create jobs. In the end, the government could if it chooses just make up work for everyone.
You need to worry as much as you're paid to worry.
That is something you need to learn in software or you will just drive yourself insane. We tend to take on a million and one roles from build specialist, security researcher, database admin, performance engineer...
Yes, many of us have the talent to be good in any one of those roles and many of us have a reasonable grasp of any of those other roles, but unless you're being paid for all those roles,you have to detach yourself somewhat.
well the guy below mentions Nazis, but gets downvoted because of the extreme example I'm assuming... but here's a quick google of more
'regular abuse by scientists'
http://www.thestar.com/news/ca...
http://www.documentary.org/mag...
And heck, I'd be willing to wager that scientists as a whole working with children... perhaps in anthropology or sociology abuse children the same as priests, UN peace keepers... And I'd also wager, their colleagues turn a blind eye to it just as every other group.
Scientists are pretty regular people.
Find a field that is not corrupted by politics.
Police, medicine, education, finance, law, military...
war on drugs, prison industries, bailouts, industrial complexes, unions....
Why do you think 'science' will be any different?
The more science gets involved in politics, the more it will be corrupted, just like every other field in all kinds of ways.
Are 'scientists' any more moral than the priesthood, police officers, teachers, lawyers, bankers, military members...?
I still don't see how this changes things.
The robo-cab companies would have insurance the same way.
Whether you own the robo-car or some cab company owns the car, the car is still insured and life goes on.
Are driverless cars really the big game changer for auto insurance?
I'm in Ontario, Canada and I just don't see how this is going to change things.
We already have 'no-fault' auto insurance, which basically means you buy car insurance to protect yourself and liability.
You don't go around suing the other drivers or anything. When you make a claim, you just deal with your own insurance company.
The rate you pay is still based on your risk.
So, we have driverless cars. You still buy insurance to protect yourself and liability.
Maybe some of the risk metrics change. Like cars with a better record of being driverless get lower rates? But that's no different than rating cars for safety today.
I suppose some countries might need to change how their auto-insurance works. Moving more towards no-fault insurance.
But it's not like the world doesn't have plenty of models to choose from that would better fit the driverless world.
They don't have to reinvent the wheel as far as I can tell.
It could be ads.
But it could also become a service provider.
A lot of companies are trying to connect with users for legitimate purposes. There's a lot of money to made and saved.
As the article points out, companies could pay a fee to Whatsapp to use the chat feature. Instead of paying to use SMS.
It saves the companies a lot of money rather than trying to build out their own infrastructure and have customers download custom applications.
If they could make it 'secure' there is even more money to be made. I know my bank has started to use secure email in various forms.
A few things.
1. Bruce is complaining about men not being sensitive in their open source groups. We're not talking apartheid or segregation here. Bruce's complaint is political correctness, so it is incumbent that such a person be politically correct to all.
2. We must insist on political correctness for all. Not just as a matter of speech, but as a mindset. When people buy into a narrative, they don't see any other voices. You can see that completely in Bruce's summary and post. He just buys the narrative that men are insensitive clogs and women are being excluded. Even his solution of teaching boys at a young age on how to be friends with women.
Political correctness for all its flaws (trust me, I'm a very direct person) does force you to think about the other person involved. That in my view is a good thing.
It does however still blind people who just buy into a narrative.
For example, nowhere does Bruce suggest anything that women need to do to be friends with men. Isn't that interesting? Women don't need to learn things that make them good friends for men. Things like being able to joke around, rough play, loyalty...
Nope, the whole thing is about men learning to be friends with women.
That's a pretty offensive position.
I'll operate on either level. I'm inherently a very direct, handle yourself person. But if we're going to engage in this political correct talk, then we should be careful for all involved. Words definitely give insight in how you feel and act towards people.
I understand your intention, but I would urge you to change your mindset to focus less on stereotypes and more on behavior.
I often find this kind of study/summary to be of the greatest irony.
Person complains men are insensitive or make assumptions about women, which is a great irony because that just making an insensitive assumptions about men.
Let me try another example.
You are trying to point out problems within a group. Yet, you have chosen the word 'male' to represent this group.
Suppose we wish to talk about problems in urban Detroit (gangs, single motherhood...)
Would you state the problem in any way as:
Black people are prone to violence and broken families?
No, because that would be so insensitive. You'd probably call that person a bigot.
You'd have to make it more specific. People in poverty, certain urban centers, certain historical background...
I was born in Apartheid South Africa. I know a little more about racial grouping. I also see the reverse now where the groupings and power plays have shifted. It's always tempting, but if you want to be better than a bigot, you have to check yourself and not fall into 'my tribe' thinking.
Now this is always a tricky area as how do you talk about systemic problems without 'grouping' people.
Well as I say, take two minutes and make sure you've tried your best to narrow your group as much as possible. You might not get it perfect, but at least you made the effort and can offend fewer people AND be more accurate.
It's almost pointless to talk about 'black' people as that is such a large group. Neil Degrass Tyson is black. Condoleeza Rice is black. One of the best IOS programmers I know is black. These people bare no resemblance to the image people have when they talk about 'black problems' perpetuated by both bigots and SJW. There are upscale blacks. There are ghetto blacks and every other subgrouping in between.
It's just as pointless to talk about 'white' people. There are rich white folk and downright poor ghetto white folks. You can for example talk about 'white privilege' but you better be careful about it. Tell some poor white kid from a broken home that he has 'white privilege'. Do you have any idea how harmful that is to that person?
Now ponder your choice of groups. You chose to group humans into two of the biggest groups possible. Male and Female.
And you make grand stereotypes about both, lumping in everyone. You insult anyone who identifies with either being male or female. You insult the female who prefers direct talk or believes she should fight the fight. You insult the male who prefers social grace.
Did it ever occur to you that many men get turned off by poor social behavior?
Perhaps the issue is less that of men vs women, but of people who lack social grace.
I would also imagine with all the tools available in the open source world, it might be interesting to find out why other open source cultures haven't developed. Or maybe they have? I haven't studied it. I'm generally just a deep user, as opposed to an active contributor, but I generally find people quite helpful. There are some assholes, but I've also had some very good conversations and help from a lot of people. Every open source project is started by someone.
Basically, take two minutes.
Check your groupings.
Even if you go in depth with nuance in the research, check your summary. Just do the black test. Change the 'bad' group to 'black' and see how it reads.
How does this read to you Bruce:
How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of males behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of blacks behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
Even masked with the words minority, it still stings doesn't it? No matter how your phrase it, it stings a little doesn't it.
So for someone complaining about insensitive men ... you might want to check yourself.
Artificial scarcity is what it is all about these days.
Even in Canada, where I am.
This is all done to encourage transit or high density development. Not that those aren't worthy goals, but I'd prefer they actually tried doing things in a positive manner but you know... proper planning, building good transit... instead of making life so miserable, people are forced to change their ways.
They're also doing tolling here, and mandating density... all the while... not much new transit. Oh they keep saying it's coming.
Ah well... misery loves company!
It is kind of interesting from a political angle.
Progressivism as a movement came up on both the left and the right under the basic premise.
We are in a more complex age so we need a more powerful government to manage it.
It sounds great, but in reality, the very process of institution building creates complexities that make the complex environment too difficult to manage.
They push big unions and big tie in with industry. These relationships become entrenched with special interests that become difficult to change. They create powerful bureaucracies to deeply regulate industry and then again special interest become a problem to update the regulations.
It's just one of life's interesting things.
I'm not wise enough to know if the 'free market' will be better or we can manage society better via progressivism/socialism. but in this progressive age, the problems it has are just full of irony at every level.
I'm in Ontario Canada and we have very powerful big governments today. But they're so powerful, they can't even implement a wage freeze for their already well paid public sector workers. Let that sink in. You want the power to control society and regulate it, but you can't even get a wage freeze though. Something a pizza store owner can do.
Similarly, the whole... we can turn societies into unions and think equality will come about is equally ridiculous.
I'm in Canada. If you manage to get into a well connected union, your life might be good. Maybe teachers, police officers, public sector workers...
But other unions get trampled.
If you want some grand irony.
I'm in big union Ontario. Guess what job is actually prohibited by law from forming a union?
Perhaps the most vulnerable of all workers.. farm workers.
There are many child dreams. I have no idea what the answer is.
You might say individual bargaining is a pipe dream. From where I sit in Canada, unions present the same problem as some workers will belong to unions that are exposed to the free market, areas where people want cheap goods (farm)... and they will lack protections. Meanwhile those that belong to powerful unions get to rip off society at the tax payer's dime.
The only thing you can say with complete confidence is get a job with the government.
If it ever goes down... well the whole society has collapsed anyways.
I'd venture to guess, part of the reason small-c democrats became republicans is all these Democrats calling people rubes, rednecks, idiots, bigot, racist...
That may be qualities of some, just as some Democrats might be elitist communists. But that is sadly what happens when ideologies become so polarizing.
People ultimately drift to where they feel they belong. If you make your side so unwelcoming to the other side, the division is going to occur.
I agree with most of what you said, except that organizationally from a business standpoint, unless there is a group for it, it is not being funded.
Yes, most developers have had to do DevOps at some point.
I've tuned databases, written scripts to automate environments and databases...
It really is a job in itself in any complex environment. It took me out of my comfort zone as I got into managing databases, replications, restores, virtual machines...
There is definitely a need for a develop with operations focus. Hence DevOps. Like I said, unless there is a group/title for it, business is clueless about it.
So it is a good thing.
Actually EMR are shit because of the government... and yes, corporations. I'm in Canada. EMR are still shitty here.
I worked in the field and got out as soon as I could. It's a whole stinking mess.
The number one problem is that everyone (government, insurance, scientists...) main concern is easy categorization. It's just a freakin hard problem to solve. If you thought tech standards are hard to create, just imagine EMR.
Really, if we look at it from a use-case patient perspective.
What would work is simply this:
1. A container to hold doctors notes in image/pdf/something format
2. A medical history of things you'd need to know if you end up in the ER. Current medications/allergies...
That would have been an amazing starting point. Instead everyone wants to go the big bang approach. The government bureaucrats want to be able to talk about data and attach costs to everything no different than insurance companies.
Security is shit but overengineered. Oh they want to have all these access levels for different people and privacy commission... but what does it all boil down to in the end?
EMR industry should exist. It is slowly improving in Canada. I'm finally starting to see blood tests... being sent electronically and what not. They really should have gradually went electronic instead of thinking it was going to be a big bang solve everything approach.
I think there is a certain nature of movements.
Originally the pioneers are normally more 'consistent and true'.
However, as a movement becomes more general, it is going to get people belonging to it just as another other group.
For example, I left my faith of Islam. It's a huge deal. I was highly religious in my youth. It's not to my benefit in that sense. Loss of community support. Ostracized... But my brain is such that, once it sees it, it can't go back. It's been a real mental struggle fought with philosophy, identity, social belonging, truth, rationality...
Now, eventually, the agnostic/athiest movement will become the norm among Muslims, the same as it has in the West with Christianity (Bible Belt aside). And you will have people attaching itself to that agnostic/athiest label just because it is their team. They 'new athiests' will likely not be any less prone to irrationality/total nonsense than anyone else.
Let me give a little software example.
The originators of Agile were really well versed in Agile. They saw all the problems of Waterfall. Came up with a new ideology and set of practices. They probably used it to create some really good software.
But as it became a movement, a lot more people just joined into it. They don't get the intellectual aspects of Agile. They just attach onto it as a movement. It gets all the bad aspects that come with any movement. Scrum becomes the most important part. Just as say not eating pork becomes the main part of Islam. It becomes a sense of identity and belonging no different than anything else.
So while I think there are varying stages to movements and at certain times, a particular movement might be 'more true or consistent', I have a general belief that overtime, every movement becomes prone to non-sense as it becomes generally accepted.
It's not just corporations.
I'm in Canada. The average person is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Yeah, corporation suck, but it's not like governments are much better. They only take care of their own (those in government).
I'm in Ontario. We're not in the best economic shape right now to say the least.
So if you're a government in tough times and you have some money to spend. You might think they spend it on those without. The poor. The displaced workers... but they don't. They never seem to have money for this.
But public sector unions, teachers, police officers... the money just flows.
Oh sure, corporations as the mantra goes might look after the one percent.
Government, only looks after the top 10-20% (Which public sector unions are in the Canada) or other special interest groups.
So I don't rant about corporations because as a private sector worker, I don't see government giving a rats ass about me.
They're just too happy to enlarge themselves, then smile to me the private sector workers talking about free trade and blah blah blah.
It doesn't matter what government it is. Liberal, conservative, NDP.
They just don't give a crap about private sector workers.
On the contrary. Societal attitudes to free speech do matter.
Only in some kind of pure libertarian world would what you say be the end all. But we don't live in that world.
You can't just deny someone's business because you don't want it.
We live in a world where anti-discrimination is a big thing and is regulated. We live in a world where the channels of speech (Internet, tv, newspaper, movies...) are all considered outlets of speech and validly should not discriminate.
Actually I wouldn't be so quick to just say you're kidding.
I was Muslim (currently secular), and I am engineer. I guess I'm the target demographic.
I think people have covered the abuse of these statistics in other posts. Things like technical skill, Western grads might be more involved in engineering...
So I'll just add my anecdotal bit that might actually add some validity. I have a hard time with cognitive dissonance or whatever you wish to call it. But something is either true and I act accordingly. Or something is not true, and I drop it. Or I just don't know enough about it.
In my days as Muslim, I really did believe in Islamic law. I really did think suicide bombing and terrorism was a way to get the end result. It wasn't pretty, but if that's the goal, that's what we have to do. Now I didn't do anything, but the thoughts were in my head.
We sometimes look down at people with cognitive dissonance, but in a way, it's a good feature for society as whole. Other people just don't seem to have the same trouble with it as I do. To them Islam might just be a way of life. They will say they believe and then ignore most of the text and most of the rules.
I think the engineering mind might be very focused on goals and if they can be convinced of the goal, the rest kind of follows.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage...
To whom does the minimum wage apply?
The minimum wage law (the FLSA) applies to employees of enterprises that have annual gross volume of sales or business done of at least $500,000.
It also applies to employees of smaller firms if the employees are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, such as employees who work in transportation or communications or who regularly use the mails or telephones for interstate communications. Other persons, such as guards, janitors, and maintenance employees who perform duties which are closely related and directly essential to such interstate activities are also covered by the FLSA. It also applies to employees of federal, state or local government agencies, hospitals and schools, and it generally applies to domestic workers.
It's an interesting question.
but we should remember these are multi-national corporations. They don't belong to America.
Everyone wants to be an exporter.
Everyone wants to keep local jobs.
It's part of our paradox.
I don't know how much money Disney makes overseas, but its probably a large amount. The people in those countries deserve a job working for Disney as much as an American.
They also deserve a share of Disney's taxes paid.
I know H1Bs are a bit of a scam, but its really just a small piece of the puzzle.
We've all taken great advantage of free trade or migrant labor whether we want to or not. Ideally, this would have been nipped in the bud long ago. But who knows, maybe it has benefited the world. Or maybe it hasn't.
I'll say this though, America made some better decisions with respect to trade with its own inter-state commerce clauses.
What did the US did when say New York put in a minimum wage, but Southern states did not? You don't need a PHD to figure jobs would leave New York and end up in Alabama.
The US got a federal minimum wage.
Theoretically, if you don't cross interstate commerce, I think you don't need to obey the federal minimum wage. But what constitutes interstate commerce has grown that its basically most workers.
Now the question I ask is where is this great wisdom when we signed free trade with countries? Should we not have a common minimum wage with countries we sign free trade deals with?