Nothing you're saying holds up to reality. I challenge you to give one example, from anywhere in the diversity of the whole world through all history, where good infrastructure and an educated general population was created without strong central government. I have been asking for an example of this for almost a decade now, and it seems to be how you get a libertarian fundamentalist to shut up or change the subject.
So.... got anything to bring to the table for discussion?
It's like you don't understand what freedom means. I'm going to guess you've never spent much time living in a country without all the social services you take for granted and malign. There is no meaningful freedom without a strong, well run central government. Unless, again, you want to point to places like Somalia as "free".
Don't actually explore reality, though. Go back to theorizing that pure libertarianism would somehow miraculously play out differently than it has in every "free" area throughout all of human history.
No, the surest way to quench an economy is to let the infrastructure crumble, reduce public education, eliminate social services, and/or run these programs at a huge deficit until you go bankrupt.
You want a first world country? Fucking pay for it. None of the rich you are so defensive of are going to suffer under a reasonable tax code like we had in the 90's. They actually will suffer if we dismantle the beautiful country we've built over the past 60 years despite the whining of people like yourself.
No, but the public sector is generally underpaid compared to the private sector, so the comparison is a bit off.
This is why the idea that privatizing saves money is a joke. The government is inefficient compared to the impossible ideals we hold it up to... but not compared to most large industry.
You are correct, but I imagine that what you do creates less value and is less unique than what they do. We're not paid by how long and hard we work, but rather by the combined perception of how much value we provide and how hard it would be to replace us. Is it always fair? No. Is it always unfair? Also no.
Not that this has anything to do with global warming, but I went on a whiskey distillery tour earlier this year where they had you stick your head near the opening of a fermenting tank to get a whiff. They explain you'll get a nose full of carbon dioxide. Everyone on the tour who tried it recoiled like they were punched in the nose. That shit burns more than the whiskey.
Quite so. My grandfather was held in a communist prison for 5 years without trial in the late 40's. He eventually admitted he was a spy, even though he wasn't.
Let me tell you, watching the US struggle with these basic issues is a laughing embarrassment, considering how I was told so many times growing up that the best thing about America was that such a thing that happened to my grandfather could never happen here.
Right on. HTML+Javascript is a great place to start. It's simple enough that you can see results right away. You can put it online and then play it anyplace to show friends and family what you're making. You can easily tinker with it after the class is over. 2D games will give a far quicker reward for their efforts. The problem space is far smaller so experimentation is more likely to have understandable results. Scripting/running is more straightforward than compile/debug. These all result in maximizing fun over tedium, which I think is important in the early development of a coder.
I made this transition myself around 2001 and more-or-less successfully managed a team until 2007. It was a great experience, and the right move for me (and IMO for the company). While there's a lot of challenges you'll have to work through, there's only one major thing I look back on that I regret:
I wish I had spent more of my time selling and promoting my team's work to the rest of the company.
I had a great team of people and we accomplished a lot of amazing things. We mostly built internal tools for employees to run the company with high efficiency. I thought that our contributions would be automatically appreciated. I also thought my time was best spent in the trenches with my people getting the maximum amount of stuff done. Looking back, I think I was wrong on both counts.
The people making decisions in the company didn't interact with us that much directly, nor did they interact that much with the people who were benefitting from our work. So it wasn't clear to them how much value we were bringing. That ended up leading them to undervalue our contribution when they planned things, and undermined respect for my team. My team and the whole company would have been better served if I had periodically set aside time to present to the various department managers and the board exactly how what we were doing drove the company and each department forward.
To summarize: perception can trump reality. Developers tend to focus on the latter. Tools tend to focus on the former. A great manager delivers on both.
IANAL, but there are limitations on free speech as it pertains to publishing defamatory information, particularly about private individuals. The judge apparently feels this is one of those cases, and I'm inclined to agree.
So, what you're saying is that we don't have rule of law in the US, just rule of judge's opinion?
Not at all. I'm saying that laws are an attempt to document an intent, and that is an inherently imperfect process. A judge's opinion is a necessary complement to the rule of law. And you can rarely sway a judge's opinion with loopholes.
There's a great diversity of judges and situations, and there are limits to their power in a trial. But my point stands: it's not a good strategy to piss off the judge by being clever.
By "carefully toeing the line" I presume you mean "not actually violating the restraining order"?
In my limited experience judges don't find it clever if you violate the spirit of the law without violating the letter. If the restraining order specified no harassment, for example, and he was going to argue that forwarding upsetting posts to family members doesn't precisely meet the definition of harassment set forth on paper, the judge will most likely (and justly, in my opinion) hand him his ass.
It seems that revealing compromising personal to the public and promoting it to family members is pretty straightforward harassment. I hear there's precedent that unless you're a public figure your right to privacy can trump someone's right to free speech.
"his daughter released the tape to retaliate against him"
Really! I wonder where she learned about such vengeful behavior? Though I'd have to say her releasing the truth about you for any reason is far less questionable than you beating her like that. And I'm not even against restrained use of corporal punishment in some cases - but what you did, to a girl that age, for the crime committed?
Sir, you are a shitty father. If your daughter knows well enough that you're going to beat her in a scandalous way that she sets up a camera to catch you in the act, you have failed utterly as a parent. If she's able to cause a national sensation by showing a few minutes of what she grew up with, you are a lousy human being. It is a travesty that one as you has ever sat on the bench and decided the fates of others.
Why do you care about any of this? Ignore them and their products. Why is that so hard for you people?
Oh for heaven's sake, stop it. I've been a nearly-exclusive Apple user for over a decade now - absolutely love their stuff. This does not preclude me from recognizing when Apple does stuff that will suck for me.
There is a possibility they will lock down OS X like they have with with iOS. That scares me because then I'd have to go use something I like much less - like Linux or Windows - just to be able to get the shit done that I need to get done. So you know what? As a customer I get to complain, and so does elrous0 or whoever wants. It doesn't make anyone an asshole to passionately request features from a company. Apple isn't part of you and criticism of their roadmap does not reflect on you personally. However, your neurotic need to defend them does.
I was skeptical of the glossy screen when I got my last MacBook Pro, so I figured I'd try a little real work at the Apple Store before buying it. Within minutes I found that I had to bob my head up, down, left, and right to see around spots of screen glare that obscured content and controls. That seems a ridiculous trade-off to me.
I know that in your home you can set things up so that there is no screen glare. Does anyone really stay that static any more? I take my laptop all over the place and use it in different environments that I don't control - I'd have to find a "good spot" in each case or bob my head around dodging screen glare. I guess this is something you're supposed to get used to? I don't mind that
Totally agree with your comment on leadership. It's hard for us worker types to admit (I know, I'm one) but effective leadership is a far rarer talent than technical and creative skill. How many great technical and creative people do you know? Now how many great leaders do you know?
I love cool technology, but the fact is it's not very useful unless you can get it into people's hands, and the more hands the better. If that means an arrogant bastard like Steve needs to head a technology company, so be it. That's better than great ideas dying on the vine because nobody knows how to focus and market them. I think Steve makes an amazing case for that in this video, where he deftly answers a tough pointed question from a developer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE
"he either openly ripped most of it off from the Palo Alto Research Center"
Apple paid Xerox for the tech. You may think they got a good deal, but there was no theft or coercion and Xerox took it. That isn't ripping off.
"Apple nearly died in the early 90's"
That is correct, they almost died after Steve was booted. If you don't see how that fact, combined with their mind-blowing recovery after his return, indicates that he was an amazingly effective leader, then you seem to be lacking basic comprehension skills. I'm much more of a technical and creative guy than a leader, so it pains me to say this, but being an effective leader (what Steve did) is a much harder and rarer talent than being technologically proficient or creative. I've known many, many people with amazing minds for technology and creativity. I don't know if I've met _any_ great leaders personally.
Hate him all you want, he had an impact. Your comments on the stock price indicate a profound misunderstanding of the market. Did you not notice that the stock closed higher today than it was before the iPhone 5 non-announcement? Why would anyone laugh their ass off at meaningless short term market fluctuations unless they were a creepy obsessive trying to feel better about their inability to make sense of the world?
The part that weirds me out is how some well-known terrorist leader gets taken down and we're all of a sudden concerned about who we're killing over there? What about all the innocent people we're killing all the time? Nobody seems to care much about that.
You've got it backwards. The only fools saying "it's all about tax rate" are the ones opposing taxes. Certainly taxes have an effect, but it is only the simpletons in the conservative camp that think the formula is as simple as lower taxes = more jobs.
The tax rate declining with wages and jobs proves one thing: cutting taxes alone will not create jobs, much to the chagrin of every Republican candidate at the moment.
Actually the 30% that Apple takes is analogous to the "tax" in your analogy. They take that from everyone and use it to build the infrastructure (Xcode, iOS, AppStore, etc) that allows anyone to succeed. Should we "cut taxes", and let Xcode and iOS stagnate? And then tell developers to stop freeloading and write their own tools and infrastructure? How do you think that would play out?
That may be true, but I've never worked with a group large or varied enough in skill where everyone didn't have cvs commit access. So this has never come up.
I totally accept that CVS doesn't work for him or for open-source projects. It's the whole "if you use CVS you're stupid" thing that seems a bit narrow minded. In some environments it is perfectly fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing you're saying holds up to reality. I challenge you to give one example, from anywhere in the diversity of the whole world through all history, where good infrastructure and an educated general population was created without strong central government. I have been asking for an example of this for almost a decade now, and it seems to be how you get a libertarian fundamentalist to shut up or change the subject.
So.... got anything to bring to the table for discussion?
It's like you don't understand what freedom means. I'm going to guess you've never spent much time living in a country without all the social services you take for granted and malign. There is no meaningful freedom without a strong, well run central government. Unless, again, you want to point to places like Somalia as "free".
Don't actually explore reality, though. Go back to theorizing that pure libertarianism would somehow miraculously play out differently than it has in every "free" area throughout all of human history.
No, the surest way to quench an economy is to let the infrastructure crumble, reduce public education, eliminate social services, and/or run these programs at a huge deficit until you go bankrupt.
You want a first world country? Fucking pay for it. None of the rich you are so defensive of are going to suffer under a reasonable tax code like we had in the 90's. They actually will suffer if we dismantle the beautiful country we've built over the past 60 years despite the whining of people like yourself.
Okay now, here you go, you forgot your meds. And here's some water. Okay, let's go back.
Sorry about that moozey, he manages to get out of the cage sometimes.
No, but the public sector is generally underpaid compared to the private sector, so the comparison is a bit off.
This is why the idea that privatizing saves money is a joke. The government is inefficient compared to the impossible ideals we hold it up to... but not compared to most large industry.
You are correct, but I imagine that what you do creates less value and is less unique than what they do. We're not paid by how long and hard we work, but rather by the combined perception of how much value we provide and how hard it would be to replace us. Is it always fair? No. Is it always unfair? Also no.
Not that this has anything to do with global warming, but I went on a whiskey distillery tour earlier this year where they had you stick your head near the opening of a fermenting tank to get a whiff. They explain you'll get a nose full of carbon dioxide. Everyone on the tour who tried it recoiled like they were punched in the nose. That shit burns more than the whiskey.
Quite so. My grandfather was held in a communist prison for 5 years without trial in the late 40's. He eventually admitted he was a spy, even though he wasn't.
Let me tell you, watching the US struggle with these basic issues is a laughing embarrassment, considering how I was told so many times growing up that the best thing about America was that such a thing that happened to my grandfather could never happen here.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! We've got someone suggesting genocide in just three comments!
You, sir, are everything that has ever been wrong with the world. Have a cigar.
Right on. HTML+Javascript is a great place to start. It's simple enough that you can see results right away. You can put it online and then play it anyplace to show friends and family what you're making. You can easily tinker with it after the class is over. 2D games will give a far quicker reward for their efforts. The problem space is far smaller so experimentation is more likely to have understandable results. Scripting/running is more straightforward than compile/debug. These all result in maximizing fun over tedium, which I think is important in the early development of a coder.
I made this transition myself around 2001 and more-or-less successfully managed a team until 2007. It was a great experience, and the right move for me (and IMO for the company). While there's a lot of challenges you'll have to work through, there's only one major thing I look back on that I regret:
I wish I had spent more of my time selling and promoting my team's work to the rest of the company.
I had a great team of people and we accomplished a lot of amazing things. We mostly built internal tools for employees to run the company with high efficiency. I thought that our contributions would be automatically appreciated. I also thought my time was best spent in the trenches with my people getting the maximum amount of stuff done. Looking back, I think I was wrong on both counts.
The people making decisions in the company didn't interact with us that much directly, nor did they interact that much with the people who were benefitting from our work. So it wasn't clear to them how much value we were bringing. That ended up leading them to undervalue our contribution when they planned things, and undermined respect for my team. My team and the whole company would have been better served if I had periodically set aside time to present to the various department managers and the board exactly how what we were doing drove the company and each department forward.
To summarize: perception can trump reality. Developers tend to focus on the latter. Tools tend to focus on the former. A great manager delivers on both.
Cheers, and good luck!
IANAL, but there are limitations on free speech as it pertains to publishing defamatory information, particularly about private individuals. The judge apparently feels this is one of those cases, and I'm inclined to agree.
So, what you're saying is that we don't have rule of law in the US, just rule of judge's opinion?
Not at all. I'm saying that laws are an attempt to document an intent, and that is an inherently imperfect process. A judge's opinion is a necessary complement to the rule of law. And you can rarely sway a judge's opinion with loopholes.
There's a great diversity of judges and situations, and there are limits to their power in a trial. But my point stands: it's not a good strategy to piss off the judge by being clever.
Cheers.
By "carefully toeing the line" I presume you mean "not actually violating the restraining order"?
In my limited experience judges don't find it clever if you violate the spirit of the law without violating the letter. If the restraining order specified no harassment, for example, and he was going to argue that forwarding upsetting posts to family members doesn't precisely meet the definition of harassment set forth on paper, the judge will most likely (and justly, in my opinion) hand him his ass.
It seems that revealing compromising personal to the public and promoting it to family members is pretty straightforward harassment. I hear there's precedent that unless you're a public figure your right to privacy can trump someone's right to free speech.
"his daughter released the tape to retaliate against him"
Really! I wonder where she learned about such vengeful behavior? Though I'd have to say her releasing the truth about you for any reason is far less questionable than you beating her like that. And I'm not even against restrained use of corporal punishment in some cases - but what you did, to a girl that age, for the crime committed?
Sir, you are a shitty father. If your daughter knows well enough that you're going to beat her in a scandalous way that she sets up a camera to catch you in the act, you have failed utterly as a parent. If she's able to cause a national sensation by showing a few minutes of what she grew up with, you are a lousy human being. It is a travesty that one as you has ever sat on the bench and decided the fates of others.
Why do you care about any of this? Ignore them and their products. Why is that so hard for you people?
Oh for heaven's sake, stop it. I've been a nearly-exclusive Apple user for over a decade now - absolutely love their stuff. This does not preclude me from recognizing when Apple does stuff that will suck for me.
There is a possibility they will lock down OS X like they have with with iOS. That scares me because then I'd have to go use something I like much less - like Linux or Windows - just to be able to get the shit done that I need to get done. So you know what? As a customer I get to complain, and so does elrous0 or whoever wants. It doesn't make anyone an asshole to passionately request features from a company. Apple isn't part of you and criticism of their roadmap does not reflect on you personally. However, your neurotic need to defend them does.
Yes, like reading about it on slashdot and complaining that he's wasting time :)
I was skeptical of the glossy screen when I got my last MacBook Pro, so I figured I'd try a little real work at the Apple Store before buying it. Within minutes I found that I had to bob my head up, down, left, and right to see around spots of screen glare that obscured content and controls. That seems a ridiculous trade-off to me.
I know that in your home you can set things up so that there is no screen glare. Does anyone really stay that static any more? I take my laptop all over the place and use it in different environments that I don't control - I'd have to find a "good spot" in each case or bob my head around dodging screen glare. I guess this is something you're supposed to get used to? I don't mind that
I'll stick with anti-glare, thanks.
Totally agree with your comment on leadership. It's hard for us worker types to admit (I know, I'm one) but effective leadership is a far rarer talent than technical and creative skill. How many great technical and creative people do you know? Now how many great leaders do you know?
I love cool technology, but the fact is it's not very useful unless you can get it into people's hands, and the more hands the better. If that means an arrogant bastard like Steve needs to head a technology company, so be it. That's better than great ideas dying on the vine because nobody knows how to focus and market them. I think Steve makes an amazing case for that in this video, where he deftly answers a tough pointed question from a developer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE
Cheers.
Most of what you say is true, however:
"he either openly ripped most of it off from the Palo Alto Research Center"
Apple paid Xerox for the tech. You may think they got a good deal, but there was no theft or coercion and Xerox took it. That isn't ripping off.
"Apple nearly died in the early 90's"
That is correct, they almost died after Steve was booted. If you don't see how that fact, combined with their mind-blowing recovery after his return, indicates that he was an amazingly effective leader, then you seem to be lacking basic comprehension skills. I'm much more of a technical and creative guy than a leader, so it pains me to say this, but being an effective leader (what Steve did) is a much harder and rarer talent than being technologically proficient or creative. I've known many, many people with amazing minds for technology and creativity. I don't know if I've met _any_ great leaders personally.
Hate him all you want, he had an impact. Your comments on the stock price indicate a profound misunderstanding of the market. Did you not notice that the stock closed higher today than it was before the iPhone 5 non-announcement? Why would anyone laugh their ass off at meaningless short term market fluctuations unless they were a creepy obsessive trying to feel better about their inability to make sense of the world?
Good luck, sir. And stay classy.
The part that weirds me out is how some well-known terrorist leader gets taken down and we're all of a sudden concerned about who we're killing over there? What about all the innocent people we're killing all the time? Nobody seems to care much about that.
You've got it backwards. The only fools saying "it's all about tax rate" are the ones opposing taxes. Certainly taxes have an effect, but it is only the simpletons in the conservative camp that think the formula is as simple as lower taxes = more jobs.
The tax rate declining with wages and jobs proves one thing: cutting taxes alone will not create jobs, much to the chagrin of every Republican candidate at the moment.
Actually the 30% that Apple takes is analogous to the "tax" in your analogy. They take that from everyone and use it to build the infrastructure (Xcode, iOS, AppStore, etc) that allows anyone to succeed. Should we "cut taxes", and let Xcode and iOS stagnate? And then tell developers to stop freeloading and write their own tools and infrastructure? How do you think that would play out?
That may be true, but I've never worked with a group large or varied enough in skill where everyone didn't have cvs commit access. So this has never come up.
I totally accept that CVS doesn't work for him or for open-source projects. It's the whole "if you use CVS you're stupid" thing that seems a bit narrow minded. In some environments it is perfectly fine.
Cheers.