Why is it that people think turning off blood makes things "kid friendly"? Are you still running around killing people?
I'm not the sort of person who's a big believe in sheltering children, but if you are that sort of person, does simply censoring blood make the game OK to play? I think if I were the sort of parent that didn't want my kids to play violent games, then censoring a little gore wouldn't really make them acceptable.
Let me ask you this: In the Disney movie "Snow White", would it be as accepted as a kid's movie if it showed the hunter tearing the pumping heart out of a pig, or showed the jagged rocks tearing apart the flailing, twitching body of the evil witch? Such things happen during the course of the movie, but are not shown. The violence is implicit, not explicit, and therefore it runs above the line of childhood trauma.
I could go on for hours on this subject, but the best way for you to understand is to raise a 5-10 year old child. You'll recognize the difference, quickly, between what causes nightmares and what does not. Philosophize all you want, but you're talking theory to a world of practice. Kids freak out much more over the sight of a shootout where the walls are being splashed with blood, and one where people just fall over.
Please read Genesis 1:11-12 for God's own approval of grass!
Nice way to pervert a beautiful passage of scripture. It says everything is made for our benefit -- not for our abuse. Tobacco, for instance, is a great medicine, but will kill people who smoke it. Does that mean that it was created for medicine or to be smoked? Simply because the good Lord saw fit to give us squirrels doesn't mean we should roll them up and smoke them.
A multitude of studies have linked cigarettes and lung cancer -- how many valid scientific studies have proven a causal relationship between video games and violence?
The study that says videogame companies are a billion dollar industry and don't contribute enough toward the representative's reelection campaign.
"Write a function to sum all the numbers from 0 to 100"
easy
dim a
a = 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20+21+22+23+24+25;
a = a+26+27+28+29+30+31+32+33+34+35+36+37+38+39+40+41+42+43+44+45+46+47+48+49+50;
a = a+51+52+53+54+55+56+57+58+59+60+61+62+63+64+65+66+67+68+69+70+71+72+73+74+75;
a = a+76+77+78+79+80+81+82+83+84+85+86+87+88+89+90+91+92+93+94+95+96+97+98+99+100;
print a;
Yes, I am concerned by the FISA re-authorization bill as well. The candidate who would have voted against that bill, and his party, were not capable of leading a majority of the American people even far enough to vote for him. Obama, in contrast, was able to rally a country behind him while still representing substantial and needed change.
Simply because he's charismatic doesn't mean we should hire a convicted arsonist to be fire marshal within a few months of his last fire! Obama's job isn't to get voted for. His job is to defend and uphold the constitution. He's proven himself not only incapable of that, but by saying "Yea" he has shown he'll burn the constitution himself if someone makes a good enough argument for it, and the FISA bill set the bar for what is considered "good enough argument": Pathetically unconvincing and transparently manipulative. McCain did the same. They both should have been disqualified on the spot as presidential candidates.
This really sucks but he's still the right man to be President.
No he's not. He voted for bills that violate the constitution when one of the only goals of his office was to uphold the constitution. That immediately disqualifies him from being the right man to be President. Even if the bill "did some good things", as soon as it violated the constitution, he shouldn't vote "Present" he shouldn't vote "yes" and he shouldn't withold his vote. He is duty-bound to vote "NO." as anything less is NOT defending the constitution, but sitting back and watching it get pissed on. If he wanted the benefits from the bill before the gross violation, he should have just drafted his own bill, and sent it through.
Before that, he should draft a bill that states that each modification to a bill made will record who made the modification, that way, if someone tries to tack a $250,000 grant to his wife's company to an otherwise good bill, it will show that -- and keep these corrupt bastards accountable.
As I've said before: The only reason I know they don't use the constitution as toilet paper in congress is that would mean some of them would have probably read it by now.
Yes. I have been waiting for the day that people stop being offended by the very thing they do in their own bedroom (or living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or all of the above).
I'm sure some guy down the street can't wait for the day when he can pull down his pants and poop right in front of you while you're talking to him. Everyone is comfortable on different levels of exhibitionism (I can't think of a better word off the top of my head) but the consensus of most of the world's cultures after about 10,000 years of human history say you don't expose yourself the following ways in public:
Don't pick your nose
Women don't show breasts
Don't poop
Don't show genitals
And then in many countries, there are others, or exceptions:
Women show breasts when breastfeeding
Don't pick your teeth
Don't show the bottom of your shoe
Pee when only your back will be exposed
Although, with "progressive movements" seem to be getting more and more popular nowadays, for better, or (usually) for worse, it probably won't be long before you see a lot of these changing.
or the south's strange pronounciation of Wednesday as Wendsday
Wednesday?..... Oh! You must mean Odin's Day! And this is after all the trouble we had changing it from dies Mercurii you go and try to change it up again! With all this changing, the Romans are going to see the inconsistencies of our day labels as a weakness, and you'll find you're on a slippery slope of letting Italy right back in here!
most admins I've run into presume you are a stupid user and that merely aiming a few steps at your brain, with no explanation about what the steps do or why they are necessary, is sufficient to send you, the miscreant, away so they can get back to playing with the network or sucking on their thumbs or whatever it is admins do to amuse themselves
It'd be more accurate to say that NPR are the wikipedia editors of broadcasting stations. The very premise of their channel (National PUBLIC Radio) is foreshortened by those who have taken upon themselves the reins of content, editorial, and command. Now it's more like National People-who-must-hear-the-sound-of-their-own-voice-reading-the-news Radio"
At least they haven't made up their own goofy language. Reading the discussion[citation needed] tabs[citation needed] on any given[citation needed] wikipedia[citation needed] page is like trying read the comments on a Lolcats! page -- enough to drive any sane observer mad.
When you use words intelligently you'll find that your point is often much more clearly understood. Changing language in the means mentioned primarily distracts and confuses the intention of the speaker.
But when 90% of the population is misinterpreting what you're saying as something else, then you are but an old man, pissing into the wind. Language is a means of communication, not a symbol of the elite. If that's what people think it means, that's what it means. "Begging the question" in its colloquial form would be a helpful phrase to have around, and those who have bothered to learn its obsolete, true meaning will appreciate your deftness when you use it correctly, but you're just a pile of odd dinosaurs that haven't accepted their own extinction. I spent years of my life trying to correct terms and phrases like "I could[n't] care less" or "Always in the last place you [would] look", and I'll continue to do so, but I don't expect the world to change just because I'm obviously right in the face of bland stupidity. Acceptance of the inevitable can bring peace, though one should never give up hope.
The first few chapters of Code will turn you from a know-nothing cubscout into a 2nd-year electrical engineering major within an afternoon. The book scales from understanding morse code to binary to logic gates to flipflops to RAM to assembler to constructing your own bios and operating systems with nothing but a hearty supply of semiconductors, batteries, plywood, wire, and solder, if you wanted to. The jumps between one level and another are made so they appear completely contiguous. It helps a CS student understand how software can truly run on hardware (instead of just looking at the magic boxes and saying "DO AS I SAY, PATHETIC PROCESSOR!")
I've never read a book that taught me so much in so few words so fluidly. I picked it up in a Barnes and Noble for like $20 (Skeptical from the logo on the back) and have never been so pleasantly surprised with a dead tree.
My girlfriend's car was stolen a number of years ago, and when it was recovered, the police weren't even interested in taking fingerprints, despite the fact that there was damage inside the car and property was stolen out of it.
Good for you, Finland.
Not like Finnish police have anything better to do. There are no good donut shops in Finland.
The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.
I agree with you, I think. Perhaps there should be rules about who can vote? Maybe not as far as to say only landowners can vote - but maybe people with drivers licenses and high school diplomas and bank accounts...
Or mandatory IQ tests. maybe that would work. I don't think bias is that big of a deal, it's the lack of education that kills the system. Or perhaps more the lack of rational judgment.
I see 2 immediate problems with this:
#1. The uneducated are affected by whomever becomes president just as much as anyone else. The politicians do need to keep them considered in their policy makings, and seek to educate them, rather than disqualify them.
#2. (and more importantly) Slippery slope. This year's ballot says "You must have a driver's license to vote" and next voting year, the presiding party can revoke everyone's licenses who voted against them in the election before, the night before polls open. Don't think for a second a free country is not at constant war with its own leaders.
I'm not hell bent of destroying children's childhood, but I think that lying to children is just plain wrong
You apparently don't have children, nor interact with them. You also don't interact much with women. Sometimes, things must be "oversimplified" to keep their illusory world up and running. Children are not yet developmentally ready for the psychological burdens of sexuality, disease, death, hatred, and the like. Their world is one where magic still exists, adult matters are unneccessary and boring, and the purpose of life is clear.
You think you are happier with your illusions dispelled, life crapped up, and problems problems problems? Let them enjoy their childhood without the anxieties of an adult society. Let them develop before you lay weight on their minds. Let them have their fantasies of magical, altruistic fat men giving children around the world their heart's desires. AND LET ME TELL MY LITTLE GIRL THAT IF SHE KEEPS KICKING THE BACK OF MY SEAT, SANTA'S NOT GIVING HER A WII FOR CHRISTMAS!
Show me any healthy individual who can't become what they want to be, and I'll show you someone whose laziness exceeds their ambition. In this country, that is all there is to it.
You don't think you're the pinnacle of human creation, do you? You think that you're so much better than everyone else that you can do what you want to do and they can't? You're not. If they want to be, people can be smart, determined, athletic, successful, pleasant to be around, and not give up as easily as you think. Get over yourself and realize that everyone else can be just as talented as you. Mix that talent with ambition, and you have ghetto kids becoming astronauts if they want to be, and if they never listen to anyone, like you, who tells them it's not plausible because of their parents' financial situation or the color of their skin.
You've got it all backwards. I grew up working in industrial printshops, factories, and orchards. I've worked as an assembly line operator, printer, lumper, commercial painter, glorified janitor, and more -- and without exception, at every job, I was known as the tireless machine. I could build a misted greenhouse from nothing but a pencil, sheet of paper, and a few bucks to buy lumber, sheeting, and piping, in a single afternoon, by the time I was 16. I've carried and shoveled more concrete, peat, manure, gravel, sand, and bark than you even know exists...
I've sat in African, Serbian, and Iranian refugee camps, speaking to people who actually DO have class divisions in their countries and/or were hunted by their governments for their political ambitions.
Two years ago, I decided to uproot where I was, donated most of what I had (whatever didn't fit into my car, and all the money I had but $2,000), moved out of state to somewhere where I had no friends or family. I had no support system here at all. I arrived homeless. After I found a suitable apartment, I was penniless (month rent + security = $150 for food and an internet connection) with a breaking-down car.
Now, I'm making three times what I was making 2 years ago, and drive a not-breaking-down Lexus, so the exercise not only interesting, but it was a success -- and it was no thanks to my non-existent "middle-to-upper class white people" advantage. If you want to talk class restrictions in America, why don't you go tell it to someone who will listen to your fairy tales. I've shovelled enough manure in my life to know bullsh*t when I see it.
Maybe next time you can try to convince Jon Krakauer that he doesn't know the first thing about the dangers of hiking.
I disagree with all of this. Estimating completion time comes from industry experience, not training. What does "volatile information on a spec sheet" even mean? Are you talking about figuring out what requirements in a requirements doc are likely to be changed mid-project? That's a valuable skil, for sure, but agian that comes from years of industry experience.
Then how can a university justify charging people to study there for 4 years if they don't gain any useful work skills? Universities weren't built so you could slowly drive through one and get a degree from it -- setting you behind your career market by 4 years. Basically, all a 4-year CS degree does right now is hand you a wrapper to put around your head that says "SUCKER." For some reason I can't comprehend, people think that it's the way it should be! It almost causes me to question my sanity. After all, if I can see the insanity in everyone else in the whole world, that probably means that I'm the crazy one! If 4 years of schooling can not compare to 1 year of work experience, then the schooling needs to change.
And as for writing a (non-trivial) program without downloading additional software: half the programmers I know would walk out if asked to use anything but VI to code, and the other half would walk out if forced to use VI. Programmers develop attachments to tools, and I'm not sure what you'r trying to accomplish by asking people to not use the tools they're comfortable with.
This wasn't about a matter of preference or comfort. It was about a matter of flexibility and ability. Can he program in Open Source as well as he can with Microsoft software? Would he become absolutely paralyzed until he downloads his favorite instant messenger? Not a question of whether he wants to write accounting software in notepad, but whether he can. Formal education shouldn't be about pigeonholing these kids -- that's the one educational advantage it should hold above going to work and getting paid for 4 years verses going to school and paying for 4 years.
There are many legitimate complaints about CompSci programs today, but it seems like *you* just hate mentoring junior programmers. These aren't problems that a school will fix, these are problems that real-world experience fixes. There's a reason why your second real devlepment job (normally) pays a lot more than your first!
If "mentoring a junior programmer", for you, is synonymous with making them forget the last 4 years they just dumped a quarter million dollars into and teaching them what they should have been taught, then you're already dead:(
Someone can learn the basics of a lot of programming languages, but not know the fundamentals well. What a university should provide is a solid foundation.
Quite the opposite. You can learn a solid foundation in highschool or on your own -- or even in a 101 course. Universities already teach foundations -- in fact, that's all they teach, and that's why CS programs are complete and utter failures. You should be expected to study the very low-level basics of electrical engineering. You should be expected to study how to write OS's and rendering programs. You should be able to put graduates in a room with a spec sheet and a computer, expect them to tell you what information is missing or volatile on the spec sheet, tell you how long it will take them, and what language they would be most comfortable using to write the program, and they should be able to write it on the provided computer without downloading any additional programs.
Current CS grads do nothing but complain (none of this code looks like it was written by the book!), stumble into pitfalls of hubris (Sure I can have that ready by noon tomorrow!), download as much slugware onto their workstations as possible (it's an additional backup software that we used in my database relationships course!) and give up if they hit a wall (teacher... I mean, manager, you ask the impossible! the textbook answer wasn't the right answer!) -- all problems that a highschool dropout can walk around with a blindfold on if he's actually been working for 2 years instead of going to school for 4. You tell me we're getting a kid fresh out of school and I kiss goodbye to the next month of productivity.
You really think lawyers and dentists and computer programmers work harder than truck drivers and construction workers and plumbers and career waitresses? It's easy to think so, if you've never worked a shit job.
If they aren't doing a more difficult job than the construction workers/plumbers/waitresses, then why don't those who want to make more money just become dentists, lawyers, and physicians? Because you don't know the first damn thing about work ethic, ambition, economics, job economics, education or hard work. If your job doesn't pay you enough, you are in a country that allows you to choose to apply for a better job.
What you want is theft. "What they earned, I deserve!" is the attitude that keeps people like you poor for the rest of their lives. You never work for what you want. You simply sit back and demand it while you do the least amount of work possible to get through your 9-to-5. You can take a rich man, put him in a trailer park and take everything away from him, and watch him become rich again within a year. Why? How? Because he knows that if he wants money, he has to earn it. He knows that spending money begins with having money, and having money is not a product of sitting on your ass wishing that the world was kinder to you.
So shut the hell up if all you want to do with your voice is ask for handouts. Put your mind to work if you want to make more money. Your attitude and ambition are a thousand times more powerful than an heirloom career choice.
Or enjoy being poor for the rest of your life, no matter how many government handouts you get.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that people think turning off blood makes things "kid friendly"? Are you still running around killing people?
I'm not the sort of person who's a big believe in sheltering children, but if you are that sort of person, does simply censoring blood make the game OK to play? I think if I were the sort of parent that didn't want my kids to play violent games, then censoring a little gore wouldn't really make them acceptable.
Let me ask you this: In the Disney movie "Snow White", would it be as accepted as a kid's movie if it showed the hunter tearing the pumping heart out of a pig, or showed the jagged rocks tearing apart the flailing, twitching body of the evil witch? Such things happen during the course of the movie, but are not shown. The violence is implicit, not explicit, and therefore it runs above the line of childhood trauma.
I could go on for hours on this subject, but the best way for you to understand is to raise a 5-10 year old child. You'll recognize the difference, quickly, between what causes nightmares and what does not. Philosophize all you want, but you're talking theory to a world of practice. Kids freak out much more over the sight of a shootout where the walls are being splashed with blood, and one where people just fall over.
Please read Genesis 1:11-12 for God's own approval of grass!
Nice way to pervert a beautiful passage of scripture. It says everything is made for our benefit -- not for our abuse. Tobacco, for instance, is a great medicine, but will kill people who smoke it. Does that mean that it was created for medicine or to be smoked? Simply because the good Lord saw fit to give us squirrels doesn't mean we should roll them up and smoke them.
A multitude of studies have linked cigarettes and lung cancer -- how many valid scientific studies have proven a causal relationship between video games and violence?
The study that says videogame companies are a billion dollar industry and don't contribute enough toward the representative's reelection campaign.
"Write a function to sum all the numbers from 0 to 100"
easy
dim a a = 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20+21+22+23+24+25;
a = a+26+27+28+29+30+31+32+33+34+35+36+37+38+39+40+41+42+43+44+45+46+47+48+49+50;
a = a+51+52+53+54+55+56+57+58+59+60+61+62+63+64+65+66+67+68+69+70+71+72+73+74+75;
a = a+76+77+78+79+80+81+82+83+84+85+86+87+88+89+90+91+92+93+94+95+96+97+98+99+100; print a;
Yes, I am concerned by the FISA re-authorization bill as well. The candidate who would have voted against that bill, and his party, were not capable of leading a majority of the American people even far enough to vote for him. Obama, in contrast, was able to rally a country behind him while still representing substantial and needed change.
Simply because he's charismatic doesn't mean we should hire a convicted arsonist to be fire marshal within a few months of his last fire! Obama's job isn't to get voted for. His job is to defend and uphold the constitution. He's proven himself not only incapable of that, but by saying "Yea" he has shown he'll burn the constitution himself if someone makes a good enough argument for it, and the FISA bill set the bar for what is considered "good enough argument": Pathetically unconvincing and transparently manipulative. McCain did the same. They both should have been disqualified on the spot as presidential candidates.
This really sucks but he's still the right man to be President.
No he's not. He voted for bills that violate the constitution when one of the only goals of his office was to uphold the constitution. That immediately disqualifies him from being the right man to be President. Even if the bill "did some good things", as soon as it violated the constitution, he shouldn't vote "Present" he shouldn't vote "yes" and he shouldn't withold his vote. He is duty-bound to vote "NO." as anything less is NOT defending the constitution, but sitting back and watching it get pissed on. If he wanted the benefits from the bill before the gross violation, he should have just drafted his own bill, and sent it through.
Before that, he should draft a bill that states that each modification to a bill made will record who made the modification, that way, if someone tries to tack a $250,000 grant to his wife's company to an otherwise good bill, it will show that -- and keep these corrupt bastards accountable.
As I've said before: The only reason I know they don't use the constitution as toilet paper in congress is that would mean some of them would have probably read it by now.
Hopefully you'll fix that nasty intercalary deletion bug first!
As long as it's not a missing G, T, C, or A, he'll be OK.
but...
We have Uma Thurman NOW...
Yes. I have been waiting for the day that people stop being offended by the very thing they do in their own bedroom (or living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or all of the above).
I'm sure some guy down the street can't wait for the day when he can pull down his pants and poop right in front of you while you're talking to him. Everyone is comfortable on different levels of exhibitionism (I can't think of a better word off the top of my head) but the consensus of most of the world's cultures after about 10,000 years of human history say you don't expose yourself the following ways in public:
Don't pick your nose
Women don't show breasts
Don't poop
Don't show genitals
And then in many countries, there are others, or exceptions:
Women show breasts when breastfeeding
Don't pick your teeth
Don't show the bottom of your shoe
Pee when only your back will be exposed
Although, with "progressive movements" seem to be getting more and more popular nowadays, for better, or (usually) for worse, it probably won't be long before you see a lot of these changing.
or the south's strange pronounciation of Wednesday as Wendsday
Wednesday?..... Oh! You must mean Odin's Day! And this is after all the trouble we had changing it from dies Mercurii you go and try to change it up again! With all this changing, the Romans are going to see the inconsistencies of our day labels as a weakness, and you'll find you're on a slippery slope of letting Italy right back in here!
most admins I've run into presume you are a stupid user and that merely aiming a few steps at your brain, with no explanation about what the steps do or why they are necessary, is sufficient to send you, the miscreant, away so they can get back to playing with the network or sucking on their thumbs or whatever it is admins do to amuse themselves
...surf slashdot?
It'd be more accurate to say that NPR are the wikipedia editors of broadcasting stations. The very premise of their channel (National PUBLIC Radio) is foreshortened by those who have taken upon themselves the reins of content, editorial, and command. Now it's more like National People-who-must-hear-the-sound-of-their-own-voice-reading-the-news Radio"
At least they haven't made up their own goofy language. Reading the discussion[citation needed] tabs[citation needed] on any given[citation needed] wikipedia[citation needed] page is like trying read the comments on a Lolcats! page -- enough to drive any sane observer mad.
When you use words intelligently you'll find that your point is often much more clearly understood. Changing language in the means mentioned primarily distracts and confuses the intention of the speaker.
But when 90% of the population is misinterpreting what you're saying as something else, then you are but an old man, pissing into the wind. Language is a means of communication, not a symbol of the elite. If that's what people think it means, that's what it means. "Begging the question" in its colloquial form would be a helpful phrase to have around, and those who have bothered to learn its obsolete, true meaning will appreciate your deftness when you use it correctly, but you're just a pile of odd dinosaurs that haven't accepted their own extinction. I spent years of my life trying to correct terms and phrases like "I could[n't] care less" or "Always in the last place you [would] look", and I'll continue to do so, but I don't expect the world to change just because I'm obviously right in the face of bland stupidity. Acceptance of the inevitable can bring peace, though one should never give up hope.
The first few chapters of Code will turn you from a know-nothing cubscout into a 2nd-year electrical engineering major within an afternoon. The book scales from understanding morse code to binary to logic gates to flipflops to RAM to assembler to constructing your own bios and operating systems with nothing but a hearty supply of semiconductors, batteries, plywood, wire, and solder, if you wanted to. The jumps between one level and another are made so they appear completely contiguous. It helps a CS student understand how software can truly run on hardware (instead of just looking at the magic boxes and saying "DO AS I SAY, PATHETIC PROCESSOR!")
I've never read a book that taught me so much in so few words so fluidly. I picked it up in a Barnes and Noble for like $20 (Skeptical from the logo on the back) and have never been so pleasantly surprised with a dead tree.
My girlfriend's car was stolen a number of years ago, and when it was recovered, the police weren't even interested in taking fingerprints, despite the fact that there was damage inside the car and property was stolen out of it.
Good for you, Finland.
Not like Finnish police have anything better to do. There are no good donut shops in Finland.
The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.
Or Godzilla
I agree with you, I think. Perhaps there should be rules about who can vote? Maybe not as far as to say only landowners can vote - but maybe people with drivers licenses and high school diplomas and bank accounts... Or mandatory IQ tests. maybe that would work. I don't think bias is that big of a deal, it's the lack of education that kills the system. Or perhaps more the lack of rational judgment.
I see 2 immediate problems with this:
#1. The uneducated are affected by whomever becomes president just as much as anyone else. The politicians do need to keep them considered in their policy makings, and seek to educate them, rather than disqualify them.
#2. (and more importantly) Slippery slope. This year's ballot says "You must have a driver's license to vote" and next voting year, the presiding party can revoke everyone's licenses who voted against them in the election before, the night before polls open. Don't think for a second a free country is not at constant war with its own leaders.
We aren't in a cooling trend, otherwise ice shelves that are tens of thousands of years old wouldn't be melting and dropping into the ocean.
Apparently they would be.
I'm not hell bent of destroying children's childhood, but I think that lying to children is just plain wrong
You apparently don't have children, nor interact with them. You also don't interact much with women. Sometimes, things must be "oversimplified" to keep their illusory world up and running. Children are not yet developmentally ready for the psychological burdens of sexuality, disease, death, hatred, and the like. Their world is one where magic still exists, adult matters are unneccessary and boring, and the purpose of life is clear.
You think you are happier with your illusions dispelled, life crapped up, and problems problems problems? Let them enjoy their childhood without the anxieties of an adult society. Let them develop before you lay weight on their minds. Let them have their fantasies of magical, altruistic fat men giving children around the world their heart's desires. AND LET ME TELL MY LITTLE GIRL THAT IF SHE KEEPS KICKING THE BACK OF MY SEAT, SANTA'S NOT GIVING HER A WII FOR CHRISTMAS!
I just don't see why it was so hard for them to prevent something so simple as that. I mean, c'mon, it's not rocket science!
Show me any healthy individual who can't become what they want to be, and I'll show you someone whose laziness exceeds their ambition. In this country, that is all there is to it.
You don't think you're the pinnacle of human creation, do you? You think that you're so much better than everyone else that you can do what you want to do and they can't? You're not. If they want to be, people can be smart, determined, athletic, successful, pleasant to be around, and not give up as easily as you think. Get over yourself and realize that everyone else can be just as talented as you. Mix that talent with ambition, and you have ghetto kids becoming astronauts if they want to be, and if they never listen to anyone, like you, who tells them it's not plausible because of their parents' financial situation or the color of their skin.
You've got it all backwards. I grew up working in industrial printshops, factories, and orchards. I've worked as an assembly line operator, printer, lumper, commercial painter, glorified janitor, and more -- and without exception, at every job, I was known as the tireless machine. I could build a misted greenhouse from nothing but a pencil, sheet of paper, and a few bucks to buy lumber, sheeting, and piping, in a single afternoon, by the time I was 16. I've carried and shoveled more concrete, peat, manure, gravel, sand, and bark than you even know exists...
I've sat in African, Serbian, and Iranian refugee camps, speaking to people who actually DO have class divisions in their countries and/or were hunted by their governments for their political ambitions.
Two years ago, I decided to uproot where I was, donated most of what I had (whatever didn't fit into my car, and all the money I had but $2,000), moved out of state to somewhere where I had no friends or family. I had no support system here at all. I arrived homeless. After I found a suitable apartment, I was penniless (month rent + security = $150 for food and an internet connection) with a breaking-down car.
Now, I'm making three times what I was making 2 years ago, and drive a not-breaking-down Lexus, so the exercise not only interesting, but it was a success -- and it was no thanks to my non-existent "middle-to-upper class white people" advantage. If you want to talk class restrictions in America, why don't you go tell it to someone who will listen to your fairy tales. I've shovelled enough manure in my life to know bullsh*t when I see it.
Maybe next time you can try to convince Jon Krakauer that he doesn't know the first thing about the dangers of hiking.
I disagree with all of this. Estimating completion time comes from industry experience, not training. What does "volatile information on a spec sheet" even mean? Are you talking about figuring out what requirements in a requirements doc are likely to be changed mid-project? That's a valuable skil, for sure, but agian that comes from years of industry experience.
Then how can a university justify charging people to study there for 4 years if they don't gain any useful work skills? Universities weren't built so you could slowly drive through one and get a degree from it -- setting you behind your career market by 4 years. Basically, all a 4-year CS degree does right now is hand you a wrapper to put around your head that says "SUCKER." For some reason I can't comprehend, people think that it's the way it should be! It almost causes me to question my sanity. After all, if I can see the insanity in everyone else in the whole world, that probably means that I'm the crazy one! If 4 years of schooling can not compare to 1 year of work experience, then the schooling needs to change.
And as for writing a (non-trivial) program without downloading additional software: half the programmers I know would walk out if asked to use anything but VI to code, and the other half would walk out if forced to use VI. Programmers develop attachments to tools, and I'm not sure what you'r trying to accomplish by asking people to not use the tools they're comfortable with.
This wasn't about a matter of preference or comfort. It was about a matter of flexibility and ability. Can he program in Open Source as well as he can with Microsoft software? Would he become absolutely paralyzed until he downloads his favorite instant messenger? Not a question of whether he wants to write accounting software in notepad, but whether he can. Formal education shouldn't be about pigeonholing these kids -- that's the one educational advantage it should hold above going to work and getting paid for 4 years verses going to school and paying for 4 years.
There are many legitimate complaints about CompSci programs today, but it seems like *you* just hate mentoring junior programmers. These aren't problems that a school will fix, these are problems that real-world experience fixes. There's a reason why your second real devlepment job (normally) pays a lot more than your first!
If "mentoring a junior programmer", for you, is synonymous with making them forget the last 4 years they just dumped a quarter million dollars into and teaching them what they should have been taught, then you're already dead :(
Someone can learn the basics of a lot of programming languages, but not know the fundamentals well. What a university should provide is a solid foundation.
Quite the opposite. You can learn a solid foundation in highschool or on your own -- or even in a 101 course. Universities already teach foundations -- in fact, that's all they teach, and that's why CS programs are complete and utter failures. You should be expected to study the very low-level basics of electrical engineering. You should be expected to study how to write OS's and rendering programs. You should be able to put graduates in a room with a spec sheet and a computer, expect them to tell you what information is missing or volatile on the spec sheet, tell you how long it will take them, and what language they would be most comfortable using to write the program, and they should be able to write it on the provided computer without downloading any additional programs.
Current CS grads do nothing but complain (none of this code looks like it was written by the book!), stumble into pitfalls of hubris (Sure I can have that ready by noon tomorrow!), download as much slugware onto their workstations as possible (it's an additional backup software that we used in my database relationships course!) and give up if they hit a wall (teacher... I mean, manager, you ask the impossible! the textbook answer wasn't the right answer!) -- all problems that a highschool dropout can walk around with a blindfold on if he's actually been working for 2 years instead of going to school for 4. You tell me we're getting a kid fresh out of school and I kiss goodbye to the next month of productivity.
You really think lawyers and dentists and computer programmers work harder than truck drivers and construction workers and plumbers and career waitresses? It's easy to think so, if you've never worked a shit job.
If they aren't doing a more difficult job than the construction workers/plumbers/waitresses, then why don't those who want to make more money just become dentists, lawyers, and physicians? Because you don't know the first damn thing about work ethic, ambition, economics, job economics, education or hard work. If your job doesn't pay you enough, you are in a country that allows you to choose to apply for a better job.
What you want is theft. "What they earned, I deserve!" is the attitude that keeps people like you poor for the rest of their lives. You never work for what you want. You simply sit back and demand it while you do the least amount of work possible to get through your 9-to-5. You can take a rich man, put him in a trailer park and take everything away from him, and watch him become rich again within a year. Why? How? Because he knows that if he wants money, he has to earn it. He knows that spending money begins with having money, and having money is not a product of sitting on your ass wishing that the world was kinder to you.
So shut the hell up if all you want to do with your voice is ask for handouts. Put your mind to work if you want to make more money. Your attitude and ambition are a thousand times more powerful than an heirloom career choice.
Or enjoy being poor for the rest of your life, no matter how many government handouts you get.