In the area of UCSF $60k with a family is not a fine living. You don't know what you are talking about.
So don't live near UCSF. Frankly someone with that sort of salary was probably commuting pretty far anyway. If you lose your job you move if you have to. There is no requirement that you continue to live in a place you can no longer afford. That's just idiotic. I've lost jobs before and the first thing you do is cut expenses any way you can. If that means changing locations then so be it. It's the reality of the situation.
Obviously you don't think of anyone else and lack empathy, but I guess that is considered normal here.
So saying that someone should not let themselves be cheaply bought and that they shouldn't dig their own grave is "lacking empathy"? I don't think you know what the word means. The fact that I have a spine and don't let others walk all over me does not in any way prohibit me from caring about my fellow human beings.
If you were a young person making $60k with a family you might not be so quick to walk away from money while you search for another job. Not everyone is in the same circumstances where they can pick and choose.
$60K is a fine living. It's pretty close to the average gross salary in the US. If you can't figure out how to make that work for a few months then shame on you. Pack your crap and go somewhere where the cost of living isn't obscene. If you can be bought cheaply you get what you deserve. Personally my integrity costs substantially more than that.
It's the read-headed stepchild of the professions, and self-styled engineering nerds say they do it for the "love" of inanimate objects. Business-types know this, and will exploit it ruthlessly.
There is truth in this. To quote a favorite villian, "if you are good at something never do it for free". If you WANT to give something away for altruism that is fine (see open source software) but don't let others take advantage of your love for a subject. Always be aware that others may try to take advantage of your good nature.
Fuck engineering, study something else, kids!
No, study engineering. It's a great way to make a living. But spend some time looking at the situation you are in before stepping into it with both feet. There are bad employers even for good professions. Learn to know the difference.
The affected employees will leave their jobs in February, after they train their contractor replacements.
Basically asking someone to dig their own grave. For me to do that the severance package would have to have to approach seven figures. Basically they'd have to pay for my retirement.
Yes but if anything he was the anti-Trump. Trump is all about scaring people and promoting himself. As much as I disagreed with Reagan on many things he was not a narcissist like Trump and he actually seemed to listen to his advisors much of the time. You could have an honest disagreement about policy with him. Trump clearly cares about no opinion except his own which is usually ill informed, damaging, and self indulgent. He is a pathological liar who spouts nonsensical drivel that is easily refuted and yet some idiots think he is a "straight shooter". Trump also is a vindictive, thin skinned, jerk who takes time out of his day to be an asshole to people who have the nerve to disagree with him.
His achievements (and failures) were largely a result of the people he surrounded himself with, not because of his own personal competence (Trump will be the same way if he wins).
That's true of any leader. The guy at the top gets too much credit and too much blame but really the most important thing they do is to pick the people who report to them, listen to them carefully, and to give them marching orders. I have NO confidence that Trump would do a competent job of picking good people and listening to them or that his marching orders would be remotely sane.
But he was able to project happiness and joy (or whatever) to the general public, and not just Republicans.
Trump does not project happiness or joy in any way.
Do you really want another person like Reagan or Cheney in office?
Hell no. I'm not at all a fan of Hillary but if the other option is Trump it's not even a remotely tough decision. Trump is just about the last person who should be in the Oval Office. Sadly there weren't any other better candidates running who had a realistic shot at the nominations. I would have preferred Bernie or Kasich or a few others but they never really had a chance.
(Incidentally, Trump reminds me of Reagan more than anyone).
I'm not seeing the similarities. I have a pretty poor opinion of Reagan and I remember his presidency well but I'd take Reagan over Trump any day. Aside from having a sort of peculiar charisma that appeals to some on the right I don't really see them as being very similar at all.
Why do the rest of us care? What does this have to do with the 3.5mm jack? Seriously if you like Android that's cool. It's a good system. I don't really care what you use and neither does anyone else.
The Iphone was too closed, and the amount of easily available cost effective software meant lockin. The phone apps were limited and not of the functionality found with Android.
You're just making things up. If you like Android better that is fine but there is no meaningful advantage in functionality in Android and the number of iOS apps is certainly not "limited" under any accepted definition of the term. Lots of people find iOS suits their needs fine. Others find Android a better fit. Pick the one that works for you and spare us your nonsensical advocacy.
Now we are happy, we have Android based phones; The operating system has updates and is maintained.
Now we know you are lying because few Android based phones get reliable updates. It's actually one of the serious problems with the platform.
What the hell is this crap and why is it on slashdot? When did slashdot turn into the Rush Limbaugh show? "Concerns" about Hillary's health are made up FUD by the right. Nothing more. Oooh, she got a concussion... (not) scary. Her health is certainly nothing worse than Dick Cheney's was. Ronald Reagan reputedly showed signs of dementia while still in office.
This "survey" is funded by a conservative group which has nothing to do with the real practice of medicine and certainly no interest in actual scientific facts. I'm disappointed the slashdot editors posted this drivel.
Mind you, with the near-demise of manual shift in cars, wired headphones are tolerable...
DaFuq? Why would you use headphones while driving a car? I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do that and it's a bad idea regardless. Cars have speakers and it's generally trivial to connect to them. I plugged a bluetooth adapter into the 3.5mm port already built into my car. (yes I've used a wire too but bluetooth is less bother in this instance) You can also get adapters turn your phone into a mini radio station and just tune the dial.
I have a waterproof watch because it's nice not to have to take the thing off when I shower or go for a swim, but a waterproof phone?
Same reason. It would be nice to not have to worry about dropping it in a sink or getting caught in a downpour. It would be nice to be able to use the camera at the beach or in the water. How many people have had their phone fail or warranty voided by spilling a drink on their device? If it is waterproof that means it's largely dust proof as well which is pretty nice. You want a waterproof phone for the same reasons you want a waterproof watch.
How long will it be until there are compatible headsets available? And how much will they cost? And will they even work or have acceptable battery life?
There will undoubtedly be a dongle available from day one so any headset that works with the iPhone 6 will probably work just fine with the iPhone 7. I suspect in short order you'll see cases with built in 3.5mm ports as well. Probably within weeks of release.
It's brilliant and simple. Apple customers will buy anything.
Tell me, which Apple customer peed in your cereal this morning? If you want to critique Apple there are plenty of ways to do it that don't sound idiotic. Apple customers buy Apple products because *gasp* they like Apple products. Nobody buys Apple solely because it is made by Apple. No company can sell hundreds of millions of phones and computers if the product sucks. Much like Harley Davidson, Apple has cultivated a loyal fan base because they find value in what they sell. If it doesn't suit your needs and sensibilities then go ahead and buy something else. Trust me, nobody will care if you prefer Android or Blackberry or Windows.
Apple will make hundreds of millions on just these dumb, superfluous gadgets.
If people buy them that means they find value in them. I don't see the problem here.
Seriously if you don't like what Apple is doing buy something else that suits you. Apple products aren't supposed to be all things to all people. Personally the 3.5mm port of of little value to me (I'm not a big music listener) but I get why folks appreciate having it built in. What I think will happen is that you'll see a bunch of cases with an integrated 3.5mm jack. Since almost everyone puts a case on their phone anyway it makes reasonable sense. Then you don't have to carry a dongle with you if you use that jack routinely. Perhaps not quite as elegant as having it built in but a better solution than a dongle for many.
While that's true, there are only a few prototypes made for each product. What of all the machinists who used to crank out production parts? Those jobs are gone forever...
News of the death of machinists is greatly exaggerated. Even in high wage areas. According to BLS statistics there are approximately 400,000 machinists in the US. While that is a far cry on a percentage basis from days of yore, there still is steady demand and it isn't going to go away any time soon. Manufacturing has become a little like farming. The percent of the workforce directly involved has decreased as productivity has increased but the same jobs still exist and there still is substantial employment opportunity.
Manufacturing is almost all CNC now, and consumer products are either non-repairable or last longer than they used to.
It is untrue that manufacturing is all CNC. It's not even close to all CNC. I am in metal fabrication plants on a routine basis and there are plenty of plants with numerous machines without any computer controls at all. People who think everything in manufacturing is computerized are almost invariably people who don't work in manufacturing. CNC is widespread and important but it has not and will not eliminate all non-CNC manufacturing any time soon. I've worked a plant with 50 turret lathes that date from around WWII - still going strong today. No CNC machine is going to drive them out any time soon for economic reasons if nothing else because CNC is expensive.
Anecdotally, my father in law has an entire plant filled with machines that require skilled operators. Most of the machines he owns are older than most of the people reading this, myself included. He has CNC machines too but they aren't universal like you are implying. In my plant roughly half our presses are computer controlled and the other half aren't. We aren't going to replace the non-computerized presses either - they are built like tanks, are fully depreciated, easy to repair, and work great for numerous applications. It would be economically stupid to replace them.
Even in places where there are CNC machines you still need a skilled machinist in most cases. CNC machines are not plug and play and you need people who understand fabrication to get the most out of them, set them up, diagnose problems, etc.
There are few 'production' machinists these days. I remember rooms full of lathes being operated by ex-cons producing the same part over and over. Not that's all CNC.
No it is most definitely not all CNC. I deal with machine shops and production metal fabrication all the time. While CNC is heavily utilized there still are plenty of old machines that don't have a computer of any sort still in use. Many of these are skilled labor jobs too. My father-in-law owns a company that has about 40 presses and machines of various sorts and only a handful of them are computer controlled in any way. I routinely go into plants that have machines that predate WWII which are still spitting out plenty of parts. No CNC machine is going to replace them in the foreseeable future either.
But you still need prototype machinists. If you want 1 relatively simple thing made right away, there is unlikely to be a faster way than a machinist on manual machines.
Depends on what you are making but as a general proposition there is truth in what you say. However the implication that there is no need for production machinists in a country like the US with high wages is simply untrue and demonstrably so.
They're still great trades today. If you think otherwise you don't understand them. A good welder or CNC mill operator can make a very decent living in the US. I'd be happy to introduce you to more of them than you care to know. A good skilled tradesman who works hard and hustles a bit can make a six figure income. I have some plumber and electrician friends who make very comfortable livings, albeit with substantial hard work.
The 21st century trades are IT, networking, programmers, etc.
If your point is that some of those things have become important jobs then you are correct although only to a point. If your point is that we no longer have a need for welders and machinists and plumbers then you couldn't be more wrong.
What part of "ITT Technical Institute" makes you think that you're not going into a program that's functionally at the trade school level?
Perhaps because they don't advertise themselves as being a trade school? Or because they aren't one. ITT Tech advertises having 6 schools. Please point out which one is the trade school:
School of Electronics Technology
School of Drafting and Design
School of Information Technology
School of Business
School of Criminal Justice
Breckinridge School of Nursing and Health Sciences Not one of those except maybe nursing is fairly described as a trade school. No cooking, welding, plumbing, carpentry, machining, or anything else that you would normally find in a trade school.
People are ragging on "for-profit colleges" as some hideous evil, but whatever your experiences with Brightpoint, Ashford, or some other trendy places, ITT and Coleman have been around forever and shouldn't be lumped together with these.
I've actually lectured at an ITT Tech school. Yes they absolutely should be lumped together with the rest of the the scumbags. They take a lot of money and provide little in return to a lot of people who often don't know any better.
Part of the problem is that there's a push to put as many high school students into college (even 2-year college) as possible, even those who would be better served going to vocational schools.
I could not agree more. I have a staff full of people who are definitely not college material but would be (and are) served well by a vocational education. There is always a need for skilled trades, welders, machinists, etc. Trying to turn everyone into a computer programmers regardless of aptitude is just idiotic and counterproductive. Not to mention costly.
Protip: You can't outsource blue collar work.
Care to wager on that? Ask the folks who work the assembly lines in Detroit if blue collar work cannot be outsourced. There are plenty of blue collar jobs that are very vulnerable to outsourcing when you live in a place with high labor costs like the US.
But a degree in Liberal Arts won't get me me a high paying job
Basically nobody has a degree in Liberal Arts. Liberal arts is a group of subjects which includes many of the the STEM fields. If you have a degree in Physics you have a liberal arts degree. Same with Mathematics, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Biology, plus of course Languages, Literature, Psychology, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Arts, and more.
Some liberal arts degrees are more valuable to employers than others but saying that liberal arts as a whole = no jobs is to misunderstand the term.
So when are the FEDs going to shut down the big Universities? $180,000 of student loans and NO JOB prospects... They aren't being honest either.
You do realize that you don't have to go to an expensive private university, right? Anyway if I go get a Harvard degree it will cost me a lot of money but I will in all likelihood have gotten an actual education along the way. You can argue that it isn't a good deal financially but you do get something at the end of the day. If you can't turn a Harvard degree into some sort of job you're doing it wrong. Comparing Harvard to or even a state university to ITT Tech is ridiculous.
Companies like ITT (I don't really think of them as schools) basically provide a near worthless degree which nobody respects and doesn't open doors. They do so knowing that a large percentage of their customers (students) will fail out. They exist to load credulous low income people with debt while failing to provide them a real education. They prey on people who probably really aren't the sort of people who are college material in the first place. College is great but it isn't the right path for everyone. Trade schools would serve many of them much better and there is a clear need for skilled trades.
You might be surprised to learn that people managed to get on airplanes before computers existed, and that they used to run entire airlines without a computer or an internet.
Nobody has gotten on a commercial passenger airplane without computers being involved in decades. Yes they did used to run substantially smaller airlines without computers but given the scale of modern air travel that would be hugely inefficient and costly, not to mention even more error prone than it already is.
If they did it all with typewriters and ink pens, they wouldn't have a single point failure (power interruption) that inconvenienced a lot of people.
Power interruption is still a thing with pens and typewriters unless you don't care about being able to see what you are doing or operate the airport terminal. But never mind that, the loss of the ability to communicate data would be crippling. Good luck communicating flight schedules, passenger and cargo manifests, purchase orders, ticketing and boarding passes, accounting, and much more without hiring an army of support staff. Air travel would immediately become uneconomical for all but the wealthiest of people.
So is this going to be another "computer glitch" where the "computer glitch" was actually an electrical fire caused by power equipment? Everyone is quick to blame computers.
Kind of a pet peeve of mine. For all practical purposes there is no such thing as a "computer error". Computers are machines that do exactly what they were designed and instructed to do. Nearly everything we casually refer to as a "computer glitch" is really a human error once you dig through the abstraction layers. It might be a bad bit of code or a poorly designed piece of hardware or inadequately spec'ed equipment or failure to account for (possibly severe) environmental factors or inadequate data redundancy but at the end of the day these are ALL human errors in reality. We built the machines and told them what to do so if the machines don't function as expected that is at some level the fault of a human.
The computer just provides a convenient way to hide the person actually responsible for the mistake. But it is a human mistake somewhere along the line in all but a hand full of cases.
We have tons of self-pollinating crops, and last I checked, bees didn't live underwater in places like the ocean, where food literally swims around.
We do have self pollinating crops including some critically important ones. However there are a ton of crops which ARE pollinated by bees. This includes many very important crops including most fruits, lots of vegetables and lots of feed for livestocks. 35% of food crop production and 60% of food crop species are animal pollinated with bees being a critical part of that.
Bees are hugely important to our food supply and economy. Could our species survive without them? Yes but it is no understatement to say the consequences of losing bees would be enormous. Between 60%-80% of flowering plant species are animal pollinated. The loss of bees would result in hundreds of billions each year in economic damage and a drastically altered food chain and ecosystem. You almost cannot overstate the seriousness of the problem.
So frankly, yes if we have the choice of sacrificing a few children for the greater good of securing a diverse and healthy food supply and ecosystem then it's an easy choice. It would be hugely immoral to allow bees to go extinct because of a few birth defects.
As a side note, the oceans do not have sufficient wild food to support current human population levels. Fish stocks around the globe are already under stress from over fishing. That argument is both glib and irrelevant. Claiming loss of pollinators is not a problem because we can fish is like saying we don't need grocery stores because we can hunt. The argument is ridiculous.
Much of this fallout is because they sprayed during the day. If they had sprayed at night, a) they would have hit more mosquitoes since they're active then, and b) they would have affected fewer bees since they don't forage at night. Does anyone know why it was done during the daytime?
Or they could just not spray since zika is in reality a fairly minor problem that gets WAY too much press because it affects fetuses. Many who are infected aren't even aware of it. Scary but compared to something like malaria it's a very minor problem with a mosquito vector. So they've turned a comparatively minor public health issue into a major food chain issue with a stupid overreaction.
"Clunky" is subjective, personally I find stock Android to be very intuitive compared to iOS.
Maybe but very few devices have stock Android on them. As for me the Android devices I own are definitely more of a pain to use that the iOS devices I own. Possibly I have the wrong ones but my experience with Android is that it requires (and allows) considerably more fiddling than iOS. Whether you like that or not is a matter of personal preference.
Android's security has historically been just as good/bad as iOS's as well. The difference is that carriers and OEMs prevent upstream security updates from being installed for Android. Blame them for that.
If the security isn't available on the device then it may as well not exist. It is not important if Google or the handset maker or the telecom is to blame. The whole system has to work or it is worthless.
I don't know of any datamining that Google does that also isn't done by Apple.
Apple isn't in the advertising business to anywhere near the degree Google is. As a result Google does CONSIDERABLY more data mining than Apple does because Apple doesn't need to do nearly as much. Whether you have a problem with this or not is a matter of personal perspective. Apple screws you in different ways than Google. Pick your poison.
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In the area of UCSF $60k with a family is not a fine living. You don't know what you are talking about.
So don't live near UCSF. Frankly someone with that sort of salary was probably commuting pretty far anyway. If you lose your job you move if you have to. There is no requirement that you continue to live in a place you can no longer afford. That's just idiotic. I've lost jobs before and the first thing you do is cut expenses any way you can. If that means changing locations then so be it. It's the reality of the situation.
Obviously you don't think of anyone else and lack empathy, but I guess that is considered normal here.
So saying that someone should not let themselves be cheaply bought and that they shouldn't dig their own grave is "lacking empathy"? I don't think you know what the word means. The fact that I have a spine and don't let others walk all over me does not in any way prohibit me from caring about my fellow human beings.
If you were a young person making $60k with a family you might not be so quick to walk away from money while you search for another job. Not everyone is in the same circumstances where they can pick and choose.
$60K is a fine living. It's pretty close to the average gross salary in the US. If you can't figure out how to make that work for a few months then shame on you. Pack your crap and go somewhere where the cost of living isn't obscene. If you can be bought cheaply you get what you deserve. Personally my integrity costs substantially more than that.
It's the read-headed stepchild of the professions, and self-styled engineering nerds say they do it for the "love" of inanimate objects. Business-types know this, and will exploit it ruthlessly.
There is truth in this. To quote a favorite villian, "if you are good at something never do it for free". If you WANT to give something away for altruism that is fine (see open source software) but don't let others take advantage of your love for a subject. Always be aware that others may try to take advantage of your good nature.
Fuck engineering, study something else, kids!
No, study engineering. It's a great way to make a living. But spend some time looking at the situation you are in before stepping into it with both feet. There are bad employers even for good professions. Learn to know the difference.
The affected employees will leave their jobs in February, after they train their contractor replacements.
Basically asking someone to dig their own grave. For me to do that the severance package would have to have to approach seven figures. Basically they'd have to pay for my retirement.
That's basically who Reagan was, right?
Yes but if anything he was the anti-Trump. Trump is all about scaring people and promoting himself. As much as I disagreed with Reagan on many things he was not a narcissist like Trump and he actually seemed to listen to his advisors much of the time. You could have an honest disagreement about policy with him. Trump clearly cares about no opinion except his own which is usually ill informed, damaging, and self indulgent. He is a pathological liar who spouts nonsensical drivel that is easily refuted and yet some idiots think he is a "straight shooter". Trump also is a vindictive, thin skinned, jerk who takes time out of his day to be an asshole to people who have the nerve to disagree with him.
His achievements (and failures) were largely a result of the people he surrounded himself with, not because of his own personal competence (Trump will be the same way if he wins).
That's true of any leader. The guy at the top gets too much credit and too much blame but really the most important thing they do is to pick the people who report to them, listen to them carefully, and to give them marching orders. I have NO confidence that Trump would do a competent job of picking good people and listening to them or that his marching orders would be remotely sane.
But he was able to project happiness and joy (or whatever) to the general public, and not just Republicans.
Trump does not project happiness or joy in any way.
Do you really want another person like Reagan or Cheney in office?
Hell no. I'm not at all a fan of Hillary but if the other option is Trump it's not even a remotely tough decision. Trump is just about the last person who should be in the Oval Office. Sadly there weren't any other better candidates running who had a realistic shot at the nominations. I would have preferred Bernie or Kasich or a few others but they never really had a chance.
(Incidentally, Trump reminds me of Reagan more than anyone).
I'm not seeing the similarities. I have a pretty poor opinion of Reagan and I remember his presidency well but I'd take Reagan over Trump any day. Aside from having a sort of peculiar charisma that appeals to some on the right I don't really see them as being very similar at all.
My son and I gave up on Apple.
Why do the rest of us care? What does this have to do with the 3.5mm jack? Seriously if you like Android that's cool. It's a good system. I don't really care what you use and neither does anyone else.
The Iphone was too closed, and the amount of easily available cost effective software meant lockin. The phone apps were limited and not of the functionality found with Android.
You're just making things up. If you like Android better that is fine but there is no meaningful advantage in functionality in Android and the number of iOS apps is certainly not "limited" under any accepted definition of the term. Lots of people find iOS suits their needs fine. Others find Android a better fit. Pick the one that works for you and spare us your nonsensical advocacy.
Now we are happy, we have Android based phones; The operating system has updates and is maintained.
Now we know you are lying because few Android based phones get reliable updates. It's actually one of the serious problems with the platform.
What the hell is this crap and why is it on slashdot? When did slashdot turn into the Rush Limbaugh show? "Concerns" about Hillary's health are made up FUD by the right. Nothing more. Oooh, she got a concussion... (not) scary. Her health is certainly nothing worse than Dick Cheney's was. Ronald Reagan reputedly showed signs of dementia while still in office.
This "survey" is funded by a conservative group which has nothing to do with the real practice of medicine and certainly no interest in actual scientific facts. I'm disappointed the slashdot editors posted this drivel.
Mind you, with the near-demise of manual shift in cars, wired headphones are tolerable...
DaFuq? Why would you use headphones while driving a car? I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do that and it's a bad idea regardless. Cars have speakers and it's generally trivial to connect to them. I plugged a bluetooth adapter into the 3.5mm port already built into my car. (yes I've used a wire too but bluetooth is less bother in this instance) You can also get adapters turn your phone into a mini radio station and just tune the dial.
I have a waterproof watch because it's nice not to have to take the thing off when I shower or go for a swim, but a waterproof phone?
Same reason. It would be nice to not have to worry about dropping it in a sink or getting caught in a downpour. It would be nice to be able to use the camera at the beach or in the water. How many people have had their phone fail or warranty voided by spilling a drink on their device? If it is waterproof that means it's largely dust proof as well which is pretty nice. You want a waterproof phone for the same reasons you want a waterproof watch.
How long will it be until there are compatible headsets available? And how much will they cost? And will they even work or have acceptable battery life?
There will undoubtedly be a dongle available from day one so any headset that works with the iPhone 6 will probably work just fine with the iPhone 7. I suspect in short order you'll see cases with built in 3.5mm ports as well. Probably within weeks of release.
It's brilliant and simple. Apple customers will buy anything.
Tell me, which Apple customer peed in your cereal this morning? If you want to critique Apple there are plenty of ways to do it that don't sound idiotic. Apple customers buy Apple products because *gasp* they like Apple products. Nobody buys Apple solely because it is made by Apple. No company can sell hundreds of millions of phones and computers if the product sucks. Much like Harley Davidson, Apple has cultivated a loyal fan base because they find value in what they sell. If it doesn't suit your needs and sensibilities then go ahead and buy something else. Trust me, nobody will care if you prefer Android or Blackberry or Windows.
Apple will make hundreds of millions on just these dumb, superfluous gadgets.
If people buy them that means they find value in them. I don't see the problem here.
Do. Not. Want.
Then Do. Not. Buy.
Seriously if you don't like what Apple is doing buy something else that suits you. Apple products aren't supposed to be all things to all people. Personally the 3.5mm port of of little value to me (I'm not a big music listener) but I get why folks appreciate having it built in. What I think will happen is that you'll see a bunch of cases with an integrated 3.5mm jack. Since almost everyone puts a case on their phone anyway it makes reasonable sense. Then you don't have to carry a dongle with you if you use that jack routinely. Perhaps not quite as elegant as having it built in but a better solution than a dongle for many.
While that's true, there are only a few prototypes made for each product. What of all the machinists who used to crank out production parts? Those jobs are gone forever...
News of the death of machinists is greatly exaggerated. Even in high wage areas. According to BLS statistics there are approximately 400,000 machinists in the US. While that is a far cry on a percentage basis from days of yore, there still is steady demand and it isn't going to go away any time soon. Manufacturing has become a little like farming. The percent of the workforce directly involved has decreased as productivity has increased but the same jobs still exist and there still is substantial employment opportunity.
Manufacturing is almost all CNC now, and consumer products are either non-repairable or last longer than they used to.
It is untrue that manufacturing is all CNC. It's not even close to all CNC. I am in metal fabrication plants on a routine basis and there are plenty of plants with numerous machines without any computer controls at all. People who think everything in manufacturing is computerized are almost invariably people who don't work in manufacturing. CNC is widespread and important but it has not and will not eliminate all non-CNC manufacturing any time soon. I've worked a plant with 50 turret lathes that date from around WWII - still going strong today. No CNC machine is going to drive them out any time soon for economic reasons if nothing else because CNC is expensive.
Anecdotally, my father in law has an entire plant filled with machines that require skilled operators. Most of the machines he owns are older than most of the people reading this, myself included. He has CNC machines too but they aren't universal like you are implying. In my plant roughly half our presses are computer controlled and the other half aren't. We aren't going to replace the non-computerized presses either - they are built like tanks, are fully depreciated, easy to repair, and work great for numerous applications. It would be economically stupid to replace them.
Even in places where there are CNC machines you still need a skilled machinist in most cases. CNC machines are not plug and play and you need people who understand fabrication to get the most out of them, set them up, diagnose problems, etc.
There are few 'production' machinists these days. I remember rooms full of lathes being operated by ex-cons producing the same part over and over. Not that's all CNC.
No it is most definitely not all CNC. I deal with machine shops and production metal fabrication all the time. While CNC is heavily utilized there still are plenty of old machines that don't have a computer of any sort still in use. Many of these are skilled labor jobs too. My father-in-law owns a company that has about 40 presses and machines of various sorts and only a handful of them are computer controlled in any way. I routinely go into plants that have machines that predate WWII which are still spitting out plenty of parts. No CNC machine is going to replace them in the foreseeable future either.
But you still need prototype machinists. If you want 1 relatively simple thing made right away, there is unlikely to be a faster way than a machinist on manual machines.
Depends on what you are making but as a general proposition there is truth in what you say. However the implication that there is no need for production machinists in a country like the US with high wages is simply untrue and demonstrably so.
And those were great 19th & 20th century trades
They're still great trades today. If you think otherwise you don't understand them. A good welder or CNC mill operator can make a very decent living in the US. I'd be happy to introduce you to more of them than you care to know. A good skilled tradesman who works hard and hustles a bit can make a six figure income. I have some plumber and electrician friends who make very comfortable livings, albeit with substantial hard work.
The 21st century trades are IT, networking, programmers, etc.
If your point is that some of those things have become important jobs then you are correct although only to a point. If your point is that we no longer have a need for welders and machinists and plumbers then you couldn't be more wrong.
What part of "ITT Technical Institute" makes you think that you're not going into a program that's functionally at the trade school level?
Perhaps because they don't advertise themselves as being a trade school? Or because they aren't one. ITT Tech advertises having 6 schools. Please point out which one is the trade school:
School of Electronics Technology
School of Drafting and Design
School of Information Technology
School of Business
School of Criminal Justice
Breckinridge School of Nursing and Health Sciences
Not one of those except maybe nursing is fairly described as a trade school. No cooking, welding, plumbing, carpentry, machining, or anything else that you would normally find in a trade school.
People are ragging on "for-profit colleges" as some hideous evil, but whatever your experiences with Brightpoint, Ashford, or some other trendy places, ITT and Coleman have been around forever and shouldn't be lumped together with these.
I've actually lectured at an ITT Tech school. Yes they absolutely should be lumped together with the rest of the the scumbags. They take a lot of money and provide little in return to a lot of people who often don't know any better.
Part of the problem is that there's a push to put as many high school students into college (even 2-year college) as possible, even those who would be better served going to vocational schools.
I could not agree more. I have a staff full of people who are definitely not college material but would be (and are) served well by a vocational education. There is always a need for skilled trades, welders, machinists, etc. Trying to turn everyone into a computer programmers regardless of aptitude is just idiotic and counterproductive. Not to mention costly.
Protip: You can't outsource blue collar work.
Care to wager on that? Ask the folks who work the assembly lines in Detroit if blue collar work cannot be outsourced. There are plenty of blue collar jobs that are very vulnerable to outsourcing when you live in a place with high labor costs like the US.
But a degree in Liberal Arts won't get me me a high paying job
Basically nobody has a degree in Liberal Arts. Liberal arts is a group of subjects which includes many of the the STEM fields. If you have a degree in Physics you have a liberal arts degree. Same with Mathematics, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Biology, plus of course Languages, Literature, Psychology, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Arts, and more.
Some liberal arts degrees are more valuable to employers than others but saying that liberal arts as a whole = no jobs is to misunderstand the term.
So when are the FEDs going to shut down the big Universities? $180,000 of student loans and NO JOB prospects ... They aren't being honest either.
You do realize that you don't have to go to an expensive private university, right? Anyway if I go get a Harvard degree it will cost me a lot of money but I will in all likelihood have gotten an actual education along the way. You can argue that it isn't a good deal financially but you do get something at the end of the day. If you can't turn a Harvard degree into some sort of job you're doing it wrong. Comparing Harvard to or even a state university to ITT Tech is ridiculous.
Companies like ITT (I don't really think of them as schools) basically provide a near worthless degree which nobody respects and doesn't open doors. They do so knowing that a large percentage of their customers (students) will fail out. They exist to load credulous low income people with debt while failing to provide them a real education. They prey on people who probably really aren't the sort of people who are college material in the first place. College is great but it isn't the right path for everyone. Trade schools would serve many of them much better and there is a clear need for skilled trades.
You might be surprised to learn that people managed to get on airplanes before computers existed, and that they used to run entire airlines without a computer or an internet.
Nobody has gotten on a commercial passenger airplane without computers being involved in decades. Yes they did used to run substantially smaller airlines without computers but given the scale of modern air travel that would be hugely inefficient and costly, not to mention even more error prone than it already is.
If they did it all with typewriters and ink pens, they wouldn't have a single point failure (power interruption) that inconvenienced a lot of people.
Power interruption is still a thing with pens and typewriters unless you don't care about being able to see what you are doing or operate the airport terminal. But never mind that, the loss of the ability to communicate data would be crippling. Good luck communicating flight schedules, passenger and cargo manifests, purchase orders, ticketing and boarding passes, accounting, and much more without hiring an army of support staff. Air travel would immediately become uneconomical for all but the wealthiest of people.
So is this going to be another "computer glitch" where the "computer glitch" was actually an electrical fire caused by power equipment? Everyone is quick to blame computers.
Kind of a pet peeve of mine. For all practical purposes there is no such thing as a "computer error". Computers are machines that do exactly what they were designed and instructed to do. Nearly everything we casually refer to as a "computer glitch" is really a human error once you dig through the abstraction layers. It might be a bad bit of code or a poorly designed piece of hardware or inadequately spec'ed equipment or failure to account for (possibly severe) environmental factors or inadequate data redundancy but at the end of the day these are ALL human errors in reality. We built the machines and told them what to do so if the machines don't function as expected that is at some level the fault of a human.
The computer just provides a convenient way to hide the person actually responsible for the mistake. But it is a human mistake somewhere along the line in all but a hand full of cases.
We have tons of self-pollinating crops, and last I checked, bees didn't live underwater in places like the ocean, where food literally swims around.
We do have self pollinating crops including some critically important ones. However there are a ton of crops which ARE pollinated by bees. This includes many very important crops including most fruits, lots of vegetables and lots of feed for livestocks. 35% of food crop production and 60% of food crop species are animal pollinated with bees being a critical part of that.
Bees are hugely important to our food supply and economy. Could our species survive without them? Yes but it is no understatement to say the consequences of losing bees would be enormous. Between 60%-80% of flowering plant species are animal pollinated. The loss of bees would result in hundreds of billions each year in economic damage and a drastically altered food chain and ecosystem. You almost cannot overstate the seriousness of the problem.
So frankly, yes if we have the choice of sacrificing a few children for the greater good of securing a diverse and healthy food supply and ecosystem then it's an easy choice. It would be hugely immoral to allow bees to go extinct because of a few birth defects.
As a side note, the oceans do not have sufficient wild food to support current human population levels. Fish stocks around the globe are already under stress from over fishing. That argument is both glib and irrelevant. Claiming loss of pollinators is not a problem because we can fish is like saying we don't need grocery stores because we can hunt. The argument is ridiculous.
Much of this fallout is because they sprayed during the day. If they had sprayed at night, a) they would have hit more mosquitoes since they're active then, and b) they would have affected fewer bees since they don't forage at night. Does anyone know why it was done during the daytime?
Or they could just not spray since zika is in reality a fairly minor problem that gets WAY too much press because it affects fetuses. Many who are infected aren't even aware of it. Scary but compared to something like malaria it's a very minor problem with a mosquito vector. So they've turned a comparatively minor public health issue into a major food chain issue with a stupid overreaction.
"Clunky" is subjective, personally I find stock Android to be very intuitive compared to iOS.
Maybe but very few devices have stock Android on them. As for me the Android devices I own are definitely more of a pain to use that the iOS devices I own. Possibly I have the wrong ones but my experience with Android is that it requires (and allows) considerably more fiddling than iOS. Whether you like that or not is a matter of personal preference.
Android's security has historically been just as good/bad as iOS's as well. The difference is that carriers and OEMs prevent upstream security updates from being installed for Android. Blame them for that.
If the security isn't available on the device then it may as well not exist. It is not important if Google or the handset maker or the telecom is to blame. The whole system has to work or it is worthless.
I don't know of any datamining that Google does that also isn't done by Apple.
Apple isn't in the advertising business to anywhere near the degree Google is. As a result Google does CONSIDERABLY more data mining than Apple does because Apple doesn't need to do nearly as much. Whether you have a problem with this or not is a matter of personal perspective. Apple screws you in different ways than Google. Pick your poison.