They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
So between the two of them at least somebody is doing some investigation regardless of who is president. Ideally news outfits would be less biased and more willing to hang any president, but the way this works now is pretty much how the press has worked for most of our history. It's a lot better than having no one investigating.
BTW, when did Obama become a "left leaning president" as you put it? He's a Democrat, which means CNN loves him and Fox hates him, but on most issues he doesn't lean left at all. You must be imagining some opposition party that no longer exists.
Fox News only cares because it's happening to them.
At least they care about it for some reason. They may be hypocrites and only care about their own, but things like this make the press more sensitive to such issues and people in general more aware.
Not shocking this is flagged informative by the left leaning slashdot. Gotta circle the troops around the commander and chief. God forbid he is worse than GWB
Uh, you did read the summary at least, right? This is extremely critical of Obama and Holder.
We have shown that we cannot, by ourselves, take care of the human population explosion.
Nature could possibly take care of this highly political problem all by itself.
What you're saying is that we can avoid killing off ourselves if nature does it first. It doesn't sound like much of an improvement to me.
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology.
I love the idea of advancing tech, and it costs lots of money. Many worse uses for that money. What I'm skeptical of is that Google X is much more than a way to generate hype (which Google and Silicon Valley in general thrives on) and/or Sergei being a dilettante. The endless announcements of seriously not-ready-for-prime-time stuff seem more like a way of generating hype, as serious projects are more kept under wraps. And many of the things they work on seem "cool" more than part of any coherent business strategy or research approach. Nor are they deep research of the sort that Bell Labs used to do. Maybe Sergei thinks he's running the commercial version of DARPA, but he doesn't single-handedly control the company. I suspect that when the hype and gee golly value of these projects dies out, so will the funding.
Seriously, repeating proverbs and nodding wisely doesn't make what you said true.
Without video you have no idea whether I'm nodding (at least the Internet keeps some things secret). As far as "doesn't make what you said true" is concerned, it also doesn't make it false. A cliche means I'm guilty of poor writing but has no bearing either way on my argument.
Everyone's bound to make mistakes, but there are also people who manage to avoid most of them.
What we're talking about are often trivial mistakes, like posting a picture of yourself using a bong, or a college student flashing her boobs. The mistake in those cases is more posting it than doing it. We're not talking about people who made the "mistake" of committing a class A felony.
which you'd probably reject as "well, you're not doing anything, then!"
On an individual basis, no (maybe you were just good at not getting caught). However if you're screening for people who've never made a mistake, then you likely are rejecting people over unimportant things for the sake of CYA or a squeaky clean appearance. In the aggregate you'll be rejecting many good people in favor of spotless mediocrities. It's a good thing Edison lived before the Internet, or that fire in the baggage car incident would have meant he'd never get work.
I'm sure companies such as Boeing, Oracle and Citibank wholeheartedly agree with this point of view.
I'm not. I also work for a big multinational, and there is absolutely no problem using GPL'ed tools. There was recently a question from the legal dept. about whether we had any FOSS licensed code in our project (surprisingly we didn't), but it didn't seem as though there was a ban on things like BSD licensed stuff or whatever (GPL obviously). I don't know whether checking this made sense (some schmucks might be putting GPL'ed code in) or just the legal dept. trying to justify their existence. The company also uses embedded Linux in a number of projects that are otherwise not FOSS. All above board w.r.t. the GPL. Probably needs an ok from legal or something, but definitely not banned.
"Pontificating" is an exaggeration for the sake of an attempt at humor, as was the Geritol. Nevertheless I don't think the insights of someone 40+ are of all that much value to our "youth". I too am older and wiser (and I don't mean that as a joke - there really are some advantages to getting older, albeit not many) but was once a young and foolish whippersnapper.
Hiring someone with perfect credit is a lot less risky than hiring someone who is swimming in debt.
Evidence?
I suspect you're basing that on the "just follows" approach, which frequently leads people astray. Maybe I could even accept the CYA of the "just follows" approach for a position that had a high theft potential, but it's still certainly ridiculous for anything else. BTW, what was Bernie Madoff's credit rating?
I don't quite have a dog in this fight since I have a good credit rating, and am old enough not to have put dumb stuff on Facebook in my youth. But this "perfect little soldier" approach to hiring is just a bureaucrat's wet dream. They look for any idiotic and unproven reason to reject job applicants, and overlook hiring people who are actually good at the work.
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant
Google X is Sergei's play thing. Maybe he has an inferiority complex from taking second place in a science fair, or it's just that billionaire's can afford cool hobbies. I know I'm being a wet blanket, but this seems very tenuously related to anything Google is involved in. I think it's fascinating tech, but I'm skeptical that Google X is a real industrial research lab as opposed to a cool hobby and a good way to get more of what Google thrives on: hype.
If he doesn't like government looking up everybody's ass, it doesn't show in Google policy. Or maybe it's ok if it's done by a non-government organization.
P.S. I don't give a rat's ass about many of the things that the needlessly rich and powerful have to say, like the Slashdot story about the endearing things that Bill Gates had to say about his old "friend" Steve "Apple Saint in Chief" Jobs (though I did get modded down for saying that). This is different because it's pertinent to policy and what may occur in everyday life.
Because he was CEO and is still executive chairman of Google. Soulless suit or not, that gives him a lot of influence and what he says gets a lot of publicity, even outside of Slashdot.
If you're 40 you didn't have social media when you were young. Even Internet access of any kind was unusual. We old farts have to consider that when we take our Geritol and pontificate.
there's a reason that the CIA... tend to disproportionately recruit from socially conservative groups... The primary reason for this is they don't want anything in their employees past that the agency or the employees family doesn't already know about being potentially used as leverage and.or blackmail material which could then be used to compromise the agency.
The CIA only wants people who are squeaky clean? It reminds me of the line in "Alice's Restaurant" where they want to know if he's moral enough to kill women and children.
Now someone who smoked illegal drugs is unlikely to face many problems getting hired or even getting elected President of the United States.
The rules are different if you're running for president. There's so much crap thrown around that no candidate is squeaky clean. Besides, as a presidential candidate you're automatically a member of the anointed class that can get away with all sorts of crap. Our last two or three presidents have admitted they were guilty of drug offenses that still get people thrown in jail, but it hasn't had much effect on drug laws for the non-anointed class. By contrast no one will get hired as a teacher if there's evidence that they once smoked a joint, even though the person rejecting them used to deal a pound per week.
secure their place on the board of the new start-up 'Acme Screening Services Corp.'
It's already happening. Consider the use of credit scores in screening job applicants. Nobody has ever found a correlation between credit scores and how well a person does at their job, but of course that doesn't stop the anti-scientific group-think CYA and/or push a useless service crowd.
Kids who do *not* make online mistakes are smarter and more mature than their peers.
Spoken with the soul of a true bureaucrat (oxymoron intentional). In a bureaucracy the worst thing you can do is make a mistake, and the only way to not make mistakes is to not do anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing is more amusing to me that watching leftists trying to pretend this is all okay
Please cite some specific examples "leftists" trying to pretend this is ok.
They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
So between the two of them at least somebody is doing some investigation regardless of who is president. Ideally news outfits would be less biased and more willing to hang any president, but the way this works now is pretty much how the press has worked for most of our history. It's a lot better than having no one investigating.
BTW, when did Obama become a "left leaning president" as you put it? He's a Democrat, which means CNN loves him and Fox hates him, but on most issues he doesn't lean left at all. You must be imagining some opposition party that no longer exists.
Fox News only cares because it's happening to them.
At least they care about it for some reason. They may be hypocrites and only care about their own, but things like this make the press more sensitive to such issues and people in general more aware.
Not shocking this is flagged informative by the left leaning slashdot. Gotta circle the troops around the commander and chief. God forbid he is worse than GWB
Uh, you did read the summary at least, right? This is extremely critical of Obama and Holder.
We have shown that we cannot, by ourselves, take care of the human population explosion. Nature could possibly take care of this highly political problem all by itself.
What you're saying is that we can avoid killing off ourselves if nature does it first. It doesn't sound like much of an improvement to me.
What about those of us who make love on the lawn like crazed weasels? Are we at higher levels of risk of infection?
You're at higher risk from varmint hunters.
the guy can code
Is Slashdot going to start posting stories about the pronouncements of everybody who can code? That's what the comments section is for.
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology.
I love the idea of advancing tech, and it costs lots of money. Many worse uses for that money. What I'm skeptical of is that Google X is much more than a way to generate hype (which Google and Silicon Valley in general thrives on) and/or Sergei being a dilettante. The endless announcements of seriously not-ready-for-prime-time stuff seem more like a way of generating hype, as serious projects are more kept under wraps. And many of the things they work on seem "cool" more than part of any coherent business strategy or research approach. Nor are they deep research of the sort that Bell Labs used to do. Maybe Sergei thinks he's running the commercial version of DARPA, but he doesn't single-handedly control the company. I suspect that when the hype and gee golly value of these projects dies out, so will the funding.
Seriously, repeating proverbs and nodding wisely doesn't make what you said true.
Without video you have no idea whether I'm nodding (at least the Internet keeps some things secret). As far as "doesn't make what you said true" is concerned, it also doesn't make it false. A cliche means I'm guilty of poor writing but has no bearing either way on my argument.
Everyone's bound to make mistakes, but there are also people who manage to avoid most of them.
What we're talking about are often trivial mistakes, like posting a picture of yourself using a bong, or a college student flashing her boobs. The mistake in those cases is more posting it than doing it. We're not talking about people who made the "mistake" of committing a class A felony.
which you'd probably reject as "well, you're not doing anything, then!"
On an individual basis, no (maybe you were just good at not getting caught). However if you're screening for people who've never made a mistake, then you likely are rejecting people over unimportant things for the sake of CYA or a squeaky clean appearance. In the aggregate you'll be rejecting many good people in favor of spotless mediocrities. It's a good thing Edison lived before the Internet, or that fire in the baggage car incident would have meant he'd never get work.
I'm sure companies such as Boeing, Oracle and Citibank wholeheartedly agree with this point of view.
I'm not. I also work for a big multinational, and there is absolutely no problem using GPL'ed tools. There was recently a question from the legal dept. about whether we had any FOSS licensed code in our project (surprisingly we didn't), but it didn't seem as though there was a ban on things like BSD licensed stuff or whatever (GPL obviously). I don't know whether checking this made sense (some schmucks might be putting GPL'ed code in) or just the legal dept. trying to justify their existence. The company also uses embedded Linux in a number of projects that are otherwise not FOSS. All above board w.r.t. the GPL. Probably needs an ok from legal or something, but definitely not banned.
IIRC the Internet crosses our northern border.
I don't consider that I am pontificating
"Pontificating" is an exaggeration for the sake of an attempt at humor, as was the Geritol. Nevertheless I don't think the insights of someone 40+ are of all that much value to our "youth". I too am older and wiser (and I don't mean that as a joke - there really are some advantages to getting older, albeit not many) but was once a young and foolish whippersnapper.
Hiring someone with perfect credit is a lot less risky than hiring someone who is swimming in debt.
Evidence?
I suspect you're basing that on the "just follows" approach, which frequently leads people astray. Maybe I could even accept the CYA of the "just follows" approach for a position that had a high theft potential, but it's still certainly ridiculous for anything else. BTW, what was Bernie Madoff's credit rating?
I don't quite have a dog in this fight since I have a good credit rating, and am old enough not to have put dumb stuff on Facebook in my youth. But this "perfect little soldier" approach to hiring is just a bureaucrat's wet dream. They look for any idiotic and unproven reason to reject job applicants, and overlook hiring people who are actually good at the work.
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant
Google X is Sergei's play thing. Maybe he has an inferiority complex from taking second place in a science fair, or it's just that billionaire's can afford cool hobbies. I know I'm being a wet blanket, but this seems very tenuously related to anything Google is involved in. I think it's fascinating tech, but I'm skeptical that Google X is a real industrial research lab as opposed to a cool hobby and a good way to get more of what Google thrives on: hype.
If he doesn't like government looking up everybody's ass, it doesn't show in Google policy. Or maybe it's ok if it's done by a non-government organization.
P.S. I don't give a rat's ass about many of the things that the needlessly rich and powerful have to say, like the Slashdot story about the endearing things that Bill Gates had to say about his old "friend" Steve "Apple Saint in Chief" Jobs (though I did get modded down for saying that). This is different because it's pertinent to policy and what may occur in everyday life.
Why does ayone care what Eric Schmidt thinks?
Because he was CEO and is still executive chairman of Google. Soulless suit or not, that gives him a lot of influence and what he says gets a lot of publicity, even outside of Slashdot.
If you're 40 you didn't have social media when you were young. Even Internet access of any kind was unusual. We old farts have to consider that when we take our Geritol and pontificate.
I'm sure even Schmidt or Zuckerberg don't want videos of their last night of sex online for the world to see
That's ok, I'm sure the world doesn't want to see it either.
"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching." --Thomas Jefferson
Is that what Tom was thinking when he was doing Sally Hemings?
there's a reason that the CIA ... tend to disproportionately recruit from socially conservative groups ... The primary reason for this is they don't want anything in their employees past that the agency or the employees family doesn't already know about being potentially used as leverage and.or blackmail material which could then be used to compromise the agency.
The CIA only wants people who are squeaky clean? It reminds me of the line in "Alice's Restaurant" where they want to know if he's moral enough to kill women and children.
Now someone who smoked illegal drugs is unlikely to face many problems getting hired or even getting elected President of the United States.
The rules are different if you're running for president. There's so much crap thrown around that no candidate is squeaky clean. Besides, as a presidential candidate you're automatically a member of the anointed class that can get away with all sorts of crap. Our last two or three presidents have admitted they were guilty of drug offenses that still get people thrown in jail, but it hasn't had much effect on drug laws for the non-anointed class. By contrast no one will get hired as a teacher if there's evidence that they once smoked a joint, even though the person rejecting them used to deal a pound per week.
secure their place on the board of the new start-up 'Acme Screening Services Corp.'
It's already happening. Consider the use of credit scores in screening job applicants. Nobody has ever found a correlation between credit scores and how well a person does at their job, but of course that doesn't stop the anti-scientific group-think CYA and/or push a useless service crowd.
Kids who do *not* make online mistakes are smarter and more mature than their peers.
Spoken with the soul of a true bureaucrat (oxymoron intentional). In a bureaucracy the worst thing you can do is make a mistake, and the only way to not make mistakes is to not do anything.
also a serial killer
That's so 90's. These days if you're not a terrorist you're nobody.