I generally consider sexual harassment laws to be a necessary evil, much like laws against racial discrimination. We're probably better off with them, but I don't like that we need to have them.
Your bit at the end that private ownership of land isn't an inherent right is meaningless. Whether a right is inherent or not all depends on your perspective, it's just a pointless matter of philosophy. One person could say that the right to life isn't an inherent right, another person could say that the right to chocolate is an inherent right that is merely trampled by less enlightened governments, and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
You're right that my argument about free speech is absolutist, and that's because I believe it's an absolute right which should come before all others. It's true that defamation can cause serious losses, both emotional and financial, but I simply think that this is not something that government should protect against. If somebody says something that hurts your feelings then that's just too bad. If somebody says something that causes you to lose money then that's the business of the people who ceased to be your customers, and not the business of the government.
If you don't believe the government should stop people from doing bad things to other people, why have a government at all? What use are they? This is a ridiculous absolutist argument. Governments exist to stop bad things, thus they must stop all bad things? That's insane. There's a line you draw. On one side are the bad things you think the government should stop, and on the other side are the bad things you think the government should not stop. I can't imagine that you put nothing on the other side of that line. It is a perfectly reasonable position to think that government should stop murder and rape but not slander, even if you might disagree with it. Just because slander is bad doesn't mean that the government should step in and stop it. Walking on the grass is bad, eating fudge is bad, giving someone the finger is bad, lying is bad, should government stop all of those too?
As for your trespass analogy, I don't think it applies. Trespass is illegal because the right to property trumps the right to freedom of movement. Your rights stop where mine begin. I don't see any analogous situation regarding speech, though. You have no right not to be offended, or upset, or angry. There's no equivalent in speech to the right to property which results in trespass being an actionable offense.
Why? The government also says that we're not allowed to shoot assholes, does that mean it should be illegal to be an asshole?
It's a free society. A fundamental aspect of a free society is free speech. Why should the government be obliged to stamp out certain speech just because you don't like it?
First and so far only time. I have no problem with sarcasm in general, but when used as an argumentative device it just makes the user look like a tool.
A lot of people I know are entirely unconcerned about this kind of activity in their personal lives, I see no reason why it would suddenly change when acting on behalf of a company.
It's the only real criterion for harm in the civil courts, which are all about economic redress. You cannot go to jail for a tort. You cannot be sent to prison for slander or libel, only forced to pay money to the victim. Criminal courts are completely different and rightly so.
No, crime is the rule. The only thing exceptional about them is that they got caught. Or do you think the news magically reports on things they don't know about? Either there is evidence for it or there is not. If there is no evidence then you're just talking out your ass. If there is evidence but the news organizations are ignoring it or missing it then please present it.
Did you know that those fine upstanding grocery stores you visit also have outlets in poor neighborhoods? And they charge more, because poor people can't afford cars, so there is no competition. What? Stores charge more money in areas that are more dangerous and more expensive to operate in? Say it isn't so!
They also 'accidentally' charge more than the marked price at the register, much more frequently in poor areas. [[citation needed]]
So, do you think the workers who made your car are as well compensated as they were, say, in the US back in the 60s? I couldn't say, but given that the median (not mean) inflation-adjusted wage has gone up around 50% since the 60s and the workers at the company who made my car are heavily unionized, I'd guess that they make more than their counterparts from the 60s did.
You know, when corporations still believed in decency? Right, because the exact same structures which require unbridled evil today somehow promoted decency toward their fellow man in the 1960s? Come on, now. The 60s was as evil an era as any other in the US. If you want to believe that corporations are evil then fine, that's somewhat reasonable even if I disagree with it. But to think that they somehow morphed from wonderful entities to agents of evil over the course of 40-50 years just makes no sense.
Now, almost all the extra value created in society goes to a few rich people, who's real income has skyrocketed while the real income of the middle class and poor has been stagnant for decades. See what I said about the median income since the 60s. Note that the median (again, not mean) income is not affected by large changes in the income of the rich.
It is nonsensical to compare any harm caused by speech to the harm caused by a physical attack. They are not remotely equivalent. The scenario you describe goes far beyond "hurt feelings", and far beyond what any verbal or written attack can cause.
Society should protect its members from physical attack but has no place protecting anybody from verbal or written attacks.
It isn't just a few bad apples, the barrel of corporate culture is almost pure rot, with very little apple at all. And you know this how?
Remember, anything which makes the news is by definition an exceptional event. Things like Enron, skipping required safety inspections, false audits, etc. are the exception, not the rule.
Most corporations I interact with on a regular basis seem to be fine upstanding citizens. The grocery stores I visit do a good job at a fair price. My car is well made and, as far as I am aware, the workers well compensated. My electricity is reliably delivered at a low price in compliance with environmental regulations. My cable company is crashingly incompetent but not, from what I can see, evil.
There are definitely some bad apples, but there are millions of corporations in the US alone and most of them appear to me to be doing a fine job.
Let me get this straight, you think that a society which allows people to sue other people because the other person hurt their feelings would be better?
It feeds back on itself. When people make awesome things that a lot of people use all the time, it can be a really powerful motivator as compared to most programming and engineering environments where you're constantly harried to add useless features to a product that nobody uses and the unfortunate few who use it hate it.
I don't know how else to explain it. I've told this to countless people, but I think the thing that Apple does the best, bar none, is hire the right people. The process is long and arduous (even for the lowest of the low), and they make you feel very special. Interesting that you say that. When I interviewed at Apple I felt that the process was fairly standard, and it mostly showed me that the HR people were totally clueless, the programmers tremendously overworked, and the environment somewhat oppressive. Needless to say I didn't take the job.
Yahoo is paying their engineers so much because they're not Apple.
Apple has a huge pool of potential talent whose dream job is working at Apple. Getting a job offer from Apple is, to these people, one of the best things that actually has a chance of happening to them. Being able to say "I work at Apple" and work on an Apple project is worth tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary to them.
I know what I'm talking about because ten years ago, if Apple had given me an extremely sub-par salary in a job offer, I would have accepted it in no time flat.
Also because it's extremely difficult to get a job in airlines. Southwest is really just paying what ought to be the market rate, considering supply and demand of workers in that area, which other airliners are unwilling or unable to pay due to union agreements and other such constraints that Southwest doesn't suffer from.
Maybe Apple offers a no-nonsense environment where they can work on their stuff until "it's done right" rather than "we must ship, fix it later" mentality. Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I bet you even managed to type that with a straight face. You might even believe it!
I know a lot of people who work at Apple and, to a man, they all describe an extremely hectic and overworked environment in which the ship date is king, and all else is secondary.
They're underpaid and overworked. The only reason they can hire anybody is because of their name, and because so many people have a dream of working there and don't care that they barely get paid enough to rent a microscopic apartment that they'll hardly ever see anyway due to working all the time.
I realize they're not all the same as the MCSE, I just wanted to point out that sometimes they can hurt more than they help. I'm sure you can smell someone who's all cert and no substance a mile away, but how about the other way around? It just seems that a lot of employers these days are relying more on credentials than on ways of determining the actual skill of the candidate, which causes them to loose out on some good people. And conversely, if you're trying to look attractive to those people then you may not end up working in the best of places.
I just don't see what a certificate has to do with "take the initiative to go out and learn". Taking a test is not learning. It may require you to learn, but you can learn just as well without it, and frequently better because you're learning what's interesting and useful instead of what you need to pass the test.
In my limited experience in the IT world (I'm a programmer, not an IT guy) the incompetent guy who spends all of his time playing solitaire is the one who is most likely to have a veritable army of certificates.
All it proves is that you were willing to spend some money and put in enough effort to pass a test. It proves nothing about being able to apply any of it to the real world, or really anything about your ability.
As for not paying money to take the test, there are plenty of reasons. One really obvious one is that money isn't free. There are other things to do with it. If the cert is useless then why would you pay for it? It also takes time, which also is not free. And in the eyes of many people it can actually decrease your apparent value. Try walking into a UNIX shop with and without an MCSE and see what the difference in reactions is.
Of course you'll have to show that your 12 years of experience is actually deep, and not just 1 year of experience repeated 12 times. But I don't see how having certificates would help in that process at all. All it shows is that you like having outside authority approve and certify of your learning activity, which I don't take to be any kind of good.
(And lest you think that I'm talking out my ass, I freely admit that I have what may be one of the most wasteful and spectacular of useless certificates, a Master of Science in Computer science.)
A certification is not an education. It does not teach you anything.
A certification certifies that you have learned something. That is all.
The difference between a person with a certification and one who followed the exact same coursework but did not get the certification is that the first person has a piece of paper that the second person does not.
The only purpose of getting a certification is to prove to someone else that you actually followed this coursework. If you still have to prove such chickenshit things to your employers (or potential employers) then you've probably made some bad career moves over the years, or are working for (or applying to) companies which are utterly clueless. An IT worker with over 12 of experience should not need a silly piece of paper to prove his worth.
The purpose of the IT department is to let the rest of the company get their job done.
Absolute black-and-white security measures will certainly stop security breaches. It will also stop all productivity.
In the end we simply have to accept a certain level of compromises. We don't propose putting every citizen in jail as a way to stamp out all crime, so why propose halting the productive (and profitable) work of a company as a reasonable way to stop all security breaches?
Slashdot Mirror
I generally consider sexual harassment laws to be a necessary evil, much like laws against racial discrimination. We're probably better off with them, but I don't like that we need to have them.
Your bit at the end that private ownership of land isn't an inherent right is meaningless. Whether a right is inherent or not all depends on your perspective, it's just a pointless matter of philosophy. One person could say that the right to life isn't an inherent right, another person could say that the right to chocolate is an inherent right that is merely trampled by less enlightened governments, and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
You're right that my argument about free speech is absolutist, and that's because I believe it's an absolute right which should come before all others. It's true that defamation can cause serious losses, both emotional and financial, but I simply think that this is not something that government should protect against. If somebody says something that hurts your feelings then that's just too bad. If somebody says something that causes you to lose money then that's the business of the people who ceased to be your customers, and not the business of the government.
As for your trespass analogy, I don't think it applies. Trespass is illegal because the right to property trumps the right to freedom of movement. Your rights stop where mine begin. I don't see any analogous situation regarding speech, though. You have no right not to be offended, or upset, or angry. There's no equivalent in speech to the right to property which results in trespass being an actionable offense.
Why? The government also says that we're not allowed to shoot assholes, does that mean it should be illegal to be an asshole?
It's a free society. A fundamental aspect of a free society is free speech. Why should the government be obliged to stamp out certain speech just because you don't like it?
First and so far only time. I have no problem with sarcasm in general, but when used as an argumentative device it just makes the user look like a tool.
Sarcasm does not make you more handsome or bring you favor with the ladies.
A lot of people I know are entirely unconcerned about this kind of activity in their personal lives, I see no reason why it would suddenly change when acting on behalf of a company.
It's the only real criterion for harm in the civil courts, which are all about economic redress. You cannot go to jail for a tort. You cannot be sent to prison for slander or libel, only forced to pay money to the victim. Criminal courts are completely different and rightly so.
Google News easily finds all three of those.
It is nonsensical to compare any harm caused by speech to the harm caused by a physical attack. They are not remotely equivalent. The scenario you describe goes far beyond "hurt feelings", and far beyond what any verbal or written attack can cause.
Society should protect its members from physical attack but has no place protecting anybody from verbal or written attacks.
Remember, anything which makes the news is by definition an exceptional event. Things like Enron, skipping required safety inspections, false audits, etc. are the exception, not the rule.
Most corporations I interact with on a regular basis seem to be fine upstanding citizens. The grocery stores I visit do a good job at a fair price. My car is well made and, as far as I am aware, the workers well compensated. My electricity is reliably delivered at a low price in compliance with environmental regulations. My cable company is crashingly incompetent but not, from what I can see, evil.
There are definitely some bad apples, but there are millions of corporations in the US alone and most of them appear to me to be doing a fine job.
Of course it's free speech, why wouldn't it be? It's a crappy situation, but if you start punishing people for what they say then where does it stop?
Let me get this straight, you think that a society which allows people to sue other people because the other person hurt their feelings would be better?
It feeds back on itself. When people make awesome things that a lot of people use all the time, it can be a really powerful motivator as compared to most programming and engineering environments where you're constantly harried to add useless features to a product that nobody uses and the unfortunate few who use it hate it.
Yahoo is paying their engineers so much because they're not Apple.
Apple has a huge pool of potential talent whose dream job is working at Apple. Getting a job offer from Apple is, to these people, one of the best things that actually has a chance of happening to them. Being able to say "I work at Apple" and work on an Apple project is worth tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary to them.
I know what I'm talking about because ten years ago, if Apple had given me an extremely sub-par salary in a job offer, I would have accepted it in no time flat.
Also because it's extremely difficult to get a job in airlines. Southwest is really just paying what ought to be the market rate, considering supply and demand of workers in that area, which other airliners are unwilling or unable to pay due to union agreements and other such constraints that Southwest doesn't suffer from.
I bet you even managed to type that with a straight face. You might even believe it!
I know a lot of people who work at Apple and, to a man, they all describe an extremely hectic and overworked environment in which the ship date is king, and all else is secondary.
They're underpaid and overworked. The only reason they can hire anybody is because of their name, and because so many people have a dream of working there and don't care that they barely get paid enough to rent a microscopic apartment that they'll hardly ever see anyway due to working all the time.
Maybe it's simply because the vast majority of programmers are men, period. Net being sexist, just an observation of the field.
I realize they're not all the same as the MCSE, I just wanted to point out that sometimes they can hurt more than they help. I'm sure you can smell someone who's all cert and no substance a mile away, but how about the other way around? It just seems that a lot of employers these days are relying more on credentials than on ways of determining the actual skill of the candidate, which causes them to loose out on some good people. And conversely, if you're trying to look attractive to those people then you may not end up working in the best of places.
I just don't see what a certificate has to do with "take the initiative to go out and learn". Taking a test is not learning. It may require you to learn, but you can learn just as well without it, and frequently better because you're learning what's interesting and useful instead of what you need to pass the test.
In my limited experience in the IT world (I'm a programmer, not an IT guy) the incompetent guy who spends all of his time playing solitaire is the one who is most likely to have a veritable army of certificates.
All it proves is that you were willing to spend some money and put in enough effort to pass a test. It proves nothing about being able to apply any of it to the real world, or really anything about your ability.
As for not paying money to take the test, there are plenty of reasons. One really obvious one is that money isn't free. There are other things to do with it. If the cert is useless then why would you pay for it? It also takes time, which also is not free. And in the eyes of many people it can actually decrease your apparent value. Try walking into a UNIX shop with and without an MCSE and see what the difference in reactions is.
Of course you'll have to show that your 12 years of experience is actually deep, and not just 1 year of experience repeated 12 times. But I don't see how having certificates would help in that process at all. All it shows is that you like having outside authority approve and certify of your learning activity, which I don't take to be any kind of good.
(And lest you think that I'm talking out my ass, I freely admit that I have what may be one of the most wasteful and spectacular of useless certificates, a Master of Science in Computer science.)
A certification is not an education. It does not teach you anything.
A certification certifies that you have learned something. That is all.
The difference between a person with a certification and one who followed the exact same coursework but did not get the certification is that the first person has a piece of paper that the second person does not.
The only purpose of getting a certification is to prove to someone else that you actually followed this coursework. If you still have to prove such chickenshit things to your employers (or potential employers) then you've probably made some bad career moves over the years, or are working for (or applying to) companies which are utterly clueless. An IT worker with over 12 of experience should not need a silly piece of paper to prove his worth.
This is idiotic.
The purpose of the IT department is to let the rest of the company get their job done.
Absolute black-and-white security measures will certainly stop security breaches. It will also stop all productivity.
In the end we simply have to accept a certain level of compromises. We don't propose putting every citizen in jail as a way to stamp out all crime, so why propose halting the productive (and profitable) work of a company as a reasonable way to stop all security breaches?
I said "space", not "the International Space Station". The internationally recognized boundary for "space" is at 100km (62 miles) altitude.