I don't know, chess has a reputation of being the board game for the intelligentsia. If that were they case why are well known chess masters also not polymaths, CEOs, and world famous research scientists? Teaching children how to play chess will only improve their skills in one area - playing chess. It's a game you can even program a microchip to succeed at, which should be an indicator of the mental plumbing needed to achieve good results in chess. They might get better real world results by using something like Red Alert 2, where the pieces have vastly more moves.
Don't get me wrong, chess is a fun game, but it is an end unto itself.
This comment makes sense only if chess is the only thing being taught, and it is the only tool in the logical/analytical thinking arsenal. Obviously children are exposed to other material - mathematics, reading comprehension and literature, civics, history, natural sciences, physical education and the like. Chess is a strategically chosen add on for its role in fostering analytical and logical thinking to enrich an existing learning experience.
Yes, chess is an end unto itself... by itself. It is not true when used in combination to an existing learning curriculum.
I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.
In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.
Bro, read. Bank fraud and money laundering are among the charges. Not every act of prosecution is about is about attacking your right to choose. I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA, but c'mon.
I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
Hmmm, so bank fraud and money laundering are victimless crimes? I would have never guessed.
My favorite quote from him is from a talk he was giving on computers and education. He starts by drawing a child and then a garden of delight that represents learning. Then he says "this is the teacher", and draws a brick wall between then. Then he says "Putting computers in the classroom changed all this" and he erases the word "teacher" under the brick wall and writes "computers". So true...
Absolute bullshit. If there is an epitome of rhetorical nonsense, this one is.
You mean to say, that while Americans and the rest of the free world were rebuilding at leisure, creating that enviable culture of postbelic golden years, in the USSR and the rest of it's companions it was mostly work, work and work, bringing so much pain, that even 20 years after their fall it's signs are still obvious.
Well, you are both true. The post-war rise of the USSR is not an example of how a country would like to rise. The free world did it in a way that was right for them, in their context and time..
On the other hand, royalthefourth still has a point (despite the poorly chosen example and poorly chosen verbiage.)
"The real lesson here is that a modern industrial state with some reasonable quality of life doesn't come about by the invisible hand; it takes focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done."
^^ This applies to us. In this post-cold war context, we are becoming less and less of a "modern industrial state". We were a "modern industrial state" in the late 60's and 70's. We slowly started our decline in the 80s when we lost the semi-conductor war to the Japanese. That was a preview of the things to come, and yet we failed to respond in kind.
To build ourselves into a modern industrial state, we need "focused, directed work" towards that goal. We do not have that which we sorely need. We were leaders in a world where 2/3 of it lived in the modern version of a stone age (where we could command great salaries by manufacturing trinkets).
We now need to become leaders in an ever increasingly industrialized world where people more and more have a shot at living decently (or at least no so miserably as before) by making the same trinkets we used to make for far less.
We need that focused direction. We do not have that. If we continue doing the same stupid shit we have been doing since the 80's (being in denial about the changing world around us), we will be the fallen USSR of the future by the end of this century. I hope to God we are smart enough to adapt and not let that happen. And if it does happen, I hope I've died before that (and that my children had a chance to migrate to better pastures.)
It is good to praise what the post-WWII free world achieved, but we cannot let that praise and pride blind us to the great problems we are facing now.
The real lesson here is that a modern industrial state with some reasonable quality of life doesn't come about by the invisible hand; it takes focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done.
This is true. We cannot compete in our current form (hint, we must change.)
with cheap labor, that's not fair.
This not true (or irrelevant.) The only way to compete with cheaper labor is to be unfair by a) denying our market to them or b) bomb them back to the stone age.
I tell you what is unfair: to expect we (and I say, "we" as an American) can go back to the way things were, expecting to have some of the best salaries for doing things others can do sufficiently well (not equal or better, but less and yet good enough) for significantly less. That. Is. Unfair. Unfair to us and to our future generations.
We as a nation are indeed facing a Sputnik moment, but it is not a technological one. It is a financial one. We must adjust our salaries (and obviously the cost of living) if *we* are to remain competitive and have a hope for sufficiently decent salaries and job opportunities for those who seek it (which is the embodiment of the American Dream.)
Either that or we are unfair and bomb the living shit out of rising countries so that we remain the sole producer and seller of manufactured goods (and thus command $40K/year or more plugging pieces A on pieces B with a guaranteed financial cushion upon retirement.)
No method overloading? I can understand no operator overloading, but no method overloading? They got to be kidding. Some things like nullable types are worth pursuing, but in the face of serious contenders like Scala which are already being used in the enterprise, the whole enterprise has a Diaspora'ish feel to it.
Considering that the Kindle is basically a portable shopping cart for nothing but Amazon reading material, it should be under $40 already.
Wishful thinking. Why should they do that? Amazon is free to maximize profits. Perhaps in the future, when the market is sufficiently vast (and with enough indication that the Kindle is the primary shopping experience), then Amazon might be able to do that and recoup the cost of product development. The market is still not there (I think) to justify the subsidizing of a product being sold at such low cost.
It is still possible within 2 years (an eternity in tech), but not right at this moment. Not yet.
Yep, I've noticed a drop in the trend, though they're not completely gone. That said, almost all of them that still do it don't mess with the fastforward button anymore, so you can skip them.
It always puzzled me why they'd put ads that were really only viable for 6 months on a medium that will last decades. I put in an old VHS a few weeks back (can't even remember which film it was now) and it was advertising the "Upcoming Film" "Earth Girls Are Easy" staring Gina Davis and Jeff Goldblum . . . (for those that don't know, that film came out in 1988, and it sucked). What kind of idiocy creates a situation where I'm watching ads for a 23 year old movie?
Rub a pair of neurons (just saying') and think of the probable chance you'll see an advertisement of an old movie that you haven't seen and that might peek your curiosity. Then, voila, you go rent it. Voila again, profit for the media company.
Mildly annoying (to the point of being just an afterthought for any normal person)? Yep. Capable of producing profit for the media company? Yep.
It is not idiocy at all. Whoever came up with this (no matter how much the fanboys would want to demonize him), that person knew how to think ahead in terms of profits. Only a fool (or someone whose job is not about making profits) would fail to appreciate the intelligence behind it.
It's not a matter of how much it costs the user, it's how much revenue it generates for Amazon. I would guess that they're going to make an additional $200 per user per ad-driven Kindle, so giving me a $25 discount is NOT enough!
They don't buy one, and simply pay the extra for the no-advertisements variety. I for one don't give a shit if Amazon makes $1 or $200 per user-ad. I still get my $25 discount, and, considering Amazon's history, I will also get non-obtrusive advertisements on things I'm interested in. My satisfaction is not tied to their profit margin, nor I will wish them not to increase their profit simply because I'm not getting a share of that pie (something I'm not entitled to since I'm neither involved nor invest in their product development.)
Just because advertising is currently unobtrusive doesn't mean that it always will be. When some manager realizes that his bonus is being threatened, it's amazing how obtrusive they are willing to get.
When that happens (and it is a possibility after all), it will most likely be another product with a different discount. But as it is, as a current Kindle user, I'd take the $25 discount on the deal that exists now, and simply ignore the ads on the hibernation mode screen saver. Or more likely, I won't ignore the ads. Demonize marketing as much as you want (and a lot of it is warranted), but if we are objective, we have to admit Amazon has always done very good targeted advertisement. When I sign in my account, I rarely see any out-of-the-tangent advertisement. Most of it is tailored to my interests (based on my purchase history).
If I can get that unobtrusively while getting a $25 discount, why not. OTH, I can always take an acid-trip into hyperbole la-la land and argue that a possibility (advertisements running amok) is actually a certainty, demonizing the deal/product/discount right of the bat.
Of course, you could say that if it changes you would switch, and after a couple of years you might be looking for a new e-book reader anyway.
Which is a very good argument, no?
Still, if Amazon is successful with an ad-supported Kindle you know that other manufacturers will follow suit and there will be few alternatives.
Remember when cable TV had no ads? I do.
So a legitimate business should not pursue a legitimate product/market development venue, and a buyer should not use his discretion in getting something he wants (or needs/thinks he needs) now, because of a possible what-if?
Are you suggesting that they (both Amazon and customer) don't exercise their rights (as product developers and customers)? What exactly do you propose? Is the potential (yes, potential) cable-related scenario that you are suggesting so evil, so nefarious that we should simply fall into paralysis by analysis over something so trivial as a product developer making a product with advertisements to be sold to willing customers (who probably don't give a shit, and which is their right not to)?
What happens during the chunks that don't go to your kid? Can your 2-year old really entertain himself for any meaningful amount of time? Mine can't, unless I put him in front of the TV.
Every child is different, but so far mine simply plays with her toys next to me in my home office. Granted every hour or so she wants to do something which I simply just get up and play with her, 15 minutes tops, or a change of diaper or something. It is just a simple break just as one would have when working in an office. Just the fact that I'm there makes a psychological difference. And sometimes yep, I might put a Barnie video for 20 minutes. It is not ideal, but it is neither as nefarious as people make it to be. Not every hour is going to be a perfect child management moment, but if you manage it correctly, all things (child and work) work out.
Incidentally I'm going to buy a small toddler slider, and put it in our computer/home office room for her to self-entertain more. For us the trick is to keep rotating the toys, the books and lego/wood block puzzles. If I were to leave my child with the same shit to play every day, of course she'll be crawling up the walls and climbing on my legs.
If I were working at home, I might be able to do a bit of work before he wakes up, 2 hours during his mid-day nap and a bit in the evening after he's gone to bed. But by that time I'm pretty tired myself.
I'm always tired no matter what I do (working from home or working at the office.) That is unavoidable. Now, you mentioned that your child is a "he", a boy. That might change the equation. Boys are always more of a handful than girls (mine is a girl.)
Wait, wife? You mean your wife is at home when you work? That means you're not really taking care of the kid, are you?
Sometimes she is at home, sometimes she's not. Me being able to care for the baby for a few hours during a workweek frees her to do more of the stuff that needs to be done at home and with our finances.
Without their wife present to take care of the kid when you want to work? And still get 8 hours of work done in the few hours that the kid is sleeping while you're not?
As long as you have a job that is flexible in the sense that you are bound to a delivery (as opposed to merely being on the clock), it can be done. I'm currently on mandatory O/T and have to put an average of 10hr a day. On the days I work from home I get less sleep than usual.
And if your wife is completely out of the house, working 100% out of the house, then you have to make decisions such as either sleep less or put the kid in a daycare (which is basically what you will do anyways if both of you work at an office, right.) The key difference here is that the amount of hours the child is in daycare is less (as you come with a management plan to work with your child at home, and specially if you are lucky enough to find a good day care close by that you can drop/pick up the baby quickly, as you need it, and depending on your day-to-day work needs). The whole thing tends to balance itself out.
It can be done. It is done. One of my previous software team leads was working from home after giving birth (and with two more kids), and she did it and put the hours... for months, and did it well. One couple that we are friends with, the wife works with USPS and the husband does his business from home... while taking care of two girls (4 and 2 respectively).
Anecdotal I know, won't force you to believe it. The thing is, you sleep less during the night since you have to get up much earlier and go to bed much later to effectively compensate for disruptions caused by your child when you work from home (wife or no wife around.) But that is out weighted by the benefits. Hell, gladly I would take a 10% paycut to telecommute 100%.
what does child care have to do with it? I telecommute, but it doesn't affect how much I have to spend on child care.
Expecting to see everything in terms of $$$ spent is a good way to go buddy.
its not like you can do a job effectively while also caring for children.
Speak for yourself. I work two days a week from home, and I'm able to do my job just fine with a 2-year old hanging around. I'm actually able to put 1-2 more hours of work (yep, actual work) by splitting up my work day in chunks. Some chunks go to work, some chunks go to my kid. I get a total of 3 (at least) extra hours from not having to commute, which I can put either into work or my child (depending on how I play it in a particular day.)
Being able to put just a few hours with my kid during the day helps my wife concentrate on other things that need to be taken care of (finance, bills, her work, etc.) The only downside is that on those days I have to get up really, really early to get my day started, and stay very late to get some work done.
But those are just minor inconveniences that are completely outweighed by the benefits. If I could telecommute 100% I would... and I'd happy take a 10% paycut. The benefits more than compensate that. The extra hours you get from not commuting more than offset any interruptions from your kids.
Barring having a child with a horrible disease (God forbids), if you can't handle work and a kid when telecommuting, that's something with your scheduling skills buddy. It is possible. It has been done. People do it.
And it's been 30 years since they've done anything useful. Those base inventions don't make up for the amount of consumer abuse that they have caused, or will cause if this deal goes through.
Apparently not:) The collective memory of many slashdotrati doesn't go further back than the early google/amazon times, and only superficially so. Talk about Altavista and Lycos and that's just the stuff of legend. As for Bell Labs? For the collective fools, the universe didn't even existed back then!
Getting the milk bottle for $8 instead of $9.50 is little comfort when your job is shipped overseas and you can't get another one.
It's also no comfort to hear that "you just aren't as competitive" when compared to the guy living on $100 a year dodging livestock riding his bicycle down a dirt path on the way to work.
Hearing that you lost your job because your industry just isn't "efficient" enough because it was paying a livable wage...also no comfort.
Economic/theory/ in general does nothing to relieve the real-world impact. Those impacted are the "hidden costs" not considered in the rosy picture of a more efficient world. The hidden cost is that the efficiency comes from crushing out the unwanted in the meantime. Of COURSE those unwanted aren't on board.
If crushing out inefficiency means that YOU have to suffer, then there's pretty much nothing you can say to convince that person that it's good news that their job is gone. When the global economy is reframed into the perspective of the individual, or a particular country, then general "efficiency" is NOT the goal. While the overall system is not a zero-sum game, when seen from a mortal lifespan, or more appropriately, the length of time the average unemployed can live off of their savings, then globalization is full of winners and losers in a zero-sum game. Hearing that other people are made better off while you made much worse off doesn't help. In such situations, I could hardly blame someone for wanting protectionism.
No.
This is not about bringing you comfort or relief your suffering. Not that I don't sympathize with the plight of people that are in pain right, but economics have nothing to do with.
Pretending to use protectionism as a solution is nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Automation, efficiency, and whether we like it or not, possible adjustment (reduction) of our annual income and changes to our spending habits and expectations, those are the long-term (and only viable) solutions against cheap oversea labor. Either that or we go bomb overseas people back to the pre-industrial ages so that we remain numero uno, with complete control of manufacturing of goods and thus command any livestyles we like.
Automation and efficiency, not protectionism, are the solution to the nation. That does not mean, however, the solution for everybody that is hurting now. Lots of people will hurt and possibly will never recover. But that's a reality of changing times, and no matter how bad times seem, at least they are very likely never to see their lives devolve into this:
Welcome to the real world, where most of the IT work people do isn't as hard as they make it out to be. This is evidenced by the fact that people in other countries can do a passable job at it for less money. It's just petty nationalism to assume that the best and brightest minds are in the United States. Our education system isn't magical and neither is our gene pool.
IT these days isn't like being an engineer designing the next rocket ship. This is slashdot so I'll use an appropriate analogy... it's more akin to being an auto mechanic. You bring some experience to the table and occasionally have to read a manual or two when the new fangled whatchamacallit comes out, but otherwise you're doing the same old stuff. The high end IT work demands and receives higher wages, but that's not what most of us are *really* doing.
Word.
Most of the IT work we do is pretty simple, and to be honest, doesn't even require a 4-year B.S. degree to do it. And yet, every single person working in it expects to get high-end 5-figure salaries or more. IT/CS/MIS education is allowing far too many graduates to enter an industry that is already saturated (many poorly equipped to subpar scholastic training). And companies insist in demanding 4-year degrees at a minimum for jobs that do not really require anything more than a good A.S. education.
If there is a software crisis now, it is this: oversaturation of the IT market with (sometimes under-educated) individuals that are overcompensated for jobs that don't truly deserve the salaries being demanded/offered. When the Chinese and Indians (and eventually Easter Europeans and South Americans) get to consistently produce IT/software work of consistent and adequate quality for more reasonable prices, we will be irreversibly screwed....
... not unless companies adjust their expectation on job requirements, schools stop churning far more graduates than what the industry can absorb, and people get paid proportionally to the analytical difficulties of their jobs.
There is no rational business reason for Motorola to go up against Android especially after seeing how Nokia failed. It just doesn't smell right.
I used to work there for 5 years. Decisions done in Moto are never necessarily based on rational business reasons. It is not cliche, and you don't have to take my word for it. But I shit you not. This is the company whose execs didn't get the idea of a phone with an integrated camera on it (and thus boxed their prototypes in dusty closets.) The amount of stupid shit that goes their upper management halls is beyond belief (not to mentioned the entrenched mafias of sub-par engineers and contracting firms that suck the living life out of it... lots of them are gone due to the layoffs, good riddance.) .
Moto execs, the company, they never lead, they only react to competitors (and react badly.) That's why Moto Mobility/Mobile Devices is a sad zombie shell of its former self. Their two-way radio division is doing well and seem to have their heads out of their asses, but the other half, you can count on it that it will pursue something this stupid. A last spasm before Darwin laws take their course.
I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop.
Legit privacy concerns aside, this sentence reads "silence of the f* lambs!!!".
The worst natural disaster in recorded history occurred less than a week ago, and you people are discussing Calxeda's first ARM-based server chip, designed to let companies build low-power servers with up to 480 cores; as the chip is built on a quad-core ARM processor, and low-power servers could have 120 ARM processing nodes in a 2U box; chips will be based on ARM's Cortex-A9 processor architecture???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of nearly 10,000 dead people could give a good god damn about the advent of LAN parties, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life".
I have inlaws and friends in Japan, and thank God they are all fine. But even if something have had happened to them, what would you expect me, a/. reader, or anyone, to do? To cut my veins and pour ash on my head? What about the rest of the readers. You are just an attention whore looking for a cause celebre to be upset about. Nothing more as your little rant does nothing constructive.
You don't know if people reading this donated for the cause. You do not know anything about anyone here, about what they do or feel, and yet you act as if you would.
There is a difference between mourning and empathy, and shameless and useless "leave britney alone" attention whoring. Guess which one describes you buddy.
I had to think about this a bit before responding...
I left college because they told me I had to take calculus or do not come back to my major.
I left, and got a job as a COBOL programmer. I then moved into system programming, went on to be published at conferences, magazines, etc.
My job now is main frame capacity planning and performance measurement as a storage vendor.
Yes, I use math in my job. Calculus? NO.
With all due respect, but your life and work experiences are anecdotal, not representative of CS and programming at large. You were gifted enough to enter into a particular field w/o having the need to go through the calculus grind. Others are not that capable.
For me, it's been the opposite, not having taking Calc III, DEQ and Linear Algebra had almost permanently closed doors on my on many areas of programming. Sadly now I have to go back to school and take those three courses just so that I can catch up and become marketable in the programming fields I want to work on.
And as for the programming I've been doing for a living, indeed, I've never used Calc I or II.
But certain I've extensively used Discrete Mathematics, Logic, Set theory, Automata Theory and Statistics - egad, including in the enterprise - none of which I could have mastered (or at least understand enough to use at work) without having the mathematical foundation and level of maturity that we get when we go through the Calculus grinder.
Newsflash: We CS don't take Calculus just so that we do differentiation and integration at work. We do so so that we get the necessary background and mathematical maturity needed to master the areas of discrete mathematics, computation and number theory required to do CS work.
CS != programming, and not all programming is about web pages or things that can get done with just a couple of computer programming courses.
I don't know how else experiences it, but for me and many of my colleagues in different companies, we have one hell of a hard time finding good job candidates, not just code monkeys but people with the most basal of common sense when it comes to building applications. I wholeheartedly blame that to the watering down of CS education.
While you didn't explicitly state it, many others pointed out how you can use a conference to "make connections" to get a job. The whole "networking" deal really annoys me because generally, you're not going to be having enough time talking to anyone to actually show them how knowledgeable you are - so it pretty much boils down to getting a job because you spent some time ass kissing before you apply for a position. I'm aware it's not how it works in the real world, but I think people should be hired based on their ability to do the job, not to suck up to someone.
So going after a presenter, introduce yourself and genuinely and intelligently comment on his/her presentation (while exchanging credentials) is ass-kissing? Nice socials skills you got there buddy.
There is ass-kissing, and there is professional networking. Smart people know the difference between the two. And then there are the others, neatly divided in two groups: a) those who ass kiss when doing professional networking, and b) those who can't maturely do professional networking and thus assume the act involves (and is equal to) ass kissing (an assumption typically based on inexperience, arrogance and/or social incompetence.)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, chess has a reputation of being the board game for the intelligentsia. If that were they case why are well known chess masters also not polymaths, CEOs, and world famous research scientists? Teaching children how to play chess will only improve their skills in one area - playing chess. It's a game you can even program a microchip to succeed at, which should be an indicator of the mental plumbing needed to achieve good results in chess. They might get better real world results by using something like Red Alert 2, where the pieces have vastly more moves.
Don't get me wrong, chess is a fun game, but it is an end unto itself.
This comment makes sense only if chess is the only thing being taught, and it is the only tool in the logical/analytical thinking arsenal. Obviously children are exposed to other material - mathematics, reading comprehension and literature, civics, history, natural sciences, physical education and the like. Chess is a strategically chosen add on for its role in fostering analytical and logical thinking to enrich an existing learning experience.
Yes, chess is an end unto itself... by itself. It is not true when used in combination to an existing learning curriculum.
I disagree.
I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.
In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.
Bro, read. Bank fraud and money laundering are among the charges. Not every act of prosecution is about is about attacking your right to choose. I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA, but c'mon.
I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
Hmmm, so bank fraud and money laundering are victimless crimes? I would have never guessed.
My favorite quote from him is from a talk he was giving on computers and education. He starts by drawing a child and then a garden of delight that represents learning. Then he says "this is the teacher", and draws a brick wall between then. Then he says "Putting computers in the classroom changed all this" and he erases the word "teacher" under the brick wall and writes "computers". So true...
Absolute bullshit. If there is an epitome of rhetorical nonsense, this one is.
Oh, I though it was yet another sad attempt to appeal to emotion via yet another "think of the children" logical fallacy. Silly me.
Long term, raising up your neighbors only helps you.
Not when it comes at the cost of your own children.
What does this even mean?
You mean to say, that while Americans and the rest of the free world were rebuilding at leisure, creating that enviable culture of postbelic golden years, in the USSR and the rest of it's companions it was mostly work, work and work, bringing so much pain, that even 20 years after their fall it's signs are still obvious.
Well, you are both true. The post-war rise of the USSR is not an example of how a country would like to rise. The free world did it in a way that was right for them, in their context and time..
On the other hand, royalthefourth still has a point (despite the poorly chosen example and poorly chosen verbiage.)
"The real lesson here is that a modern industrial state with some reasonable quality of life doesn't come about by the invisible hand; it takes focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done." ^^ This applies to us. In this post-cold war context, we are becoming less and less of a "modern industrial state". We were a "modern industrial state" in the late 60's and 70's. We slowly started our decline in the 80s when we lost the semi-conductor war to the Japanese. That was a preview of the things to come, and yet we failed to respond in kind.
To build ourselves into a modern industrial state, we need "focused, directed work" towards that goal. We do not have that which we sorely need. We were leaders in a world where 2/3 of it lived in the modern version of a stone age (where we could command great salaries by manufacturing trinkets).
We now need to become leaders in an ever increasingly industrialized world where people more and more have a shot at living decently (or at least no so miserably as before) by making the same trinkets we used to make for far less.
We need that focused direction. We do not have that. If we continue doing the same stupid shit we have been doing since the 80's (being in denial about the changing world around us), we will be the fallen USSR of the future by the end of this century. I hope to God we are smart enough to adapt and not let that happen. And if it does happen, I hope I've died before that (and that my children had a chance to migrate to better pastures.)
It is good to praise what the post-WWII free world achieved, but we cannot let that praise and pride blind us to the great problems we are facing now.
The real lesson here is that a modern industrial state with some reasonable quality of life doesn't come about by the invisible hand; it takes focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done.
Why do you hate America?
Glenn Beck, is that you?
It is not fair, we can't compete
This is true. We cannot compete in our current form (hint, we must change.)
with cheap labor, that's not fair.
This not true (or irrelevant.) The only way to compete with cheaper labor is to be unfair by a) denying our market to them or b) bomb them back to the stone age.
I tell you what is unfair: to expect we (and I say, "we" as an American) can go back to the way things were, expecting to have some of the best salaries for doing things others can do sufficiently well (not equal or better, but less and yet good enough) for significantly less. That. Is. Unfair. Unfair to us and to our future generations.
We as a nation are indeed facing a Sputnik moment, but it is not a technological one. It is a financial one. We must adjust our salaries (and obviously the cost of living) if *we* are to remain competitive and have a hope for sufficiently decent salaries and job opportunities for those who seek it (which is the embodiment of the American Dream.)
Either that or we are unfair and bomb the living shit out of rising countries so that we remain the sole producer and seller of manufactured goods (and thus command $40K/year or more plugging pieces A on pieces B with a guaranteed financial cushion upon retirement.)
No method overloading? I can understand no operator overloading, but no method overloading? They got to be kidding. Some things like nullable types are worth pursuing, but in the face of serious contenders like Scala which are already being used in the enterprise, the whole enterprise has a Diaspora'ish feel to it.
Considering that the Kindle is basically a portable shopping cart for nothing but Amazon reading material, it should be under $40 already.
Wishful thinking. Why should they do that? Amazon is free to maximize profits. Perhaps in the future, when the market is sufficiently vast (and with enough indication that the Kindle is the primary shopping experience), then Amazon might be able to do that and recoup the cost of product development. The market is still not there (I think) to justify the subsidizing of a product being sold at such low cost.
It is still possible within 2 years (an eternity in tech), but not right at this moment. Not yet.
Yep, I've noticed a drop in the trend, though they're not completely gone. That said, almost all of them that still do it don't mess with the fastforward button anymore, so you can skip them.
It always puzzled me why they'd put ads that were really only viable for 6 months on a medium that will last decades. I put in an old VHS a few weeks back (can't even remember which film it was now) and it was advertising the "Upcoming Film" "Earth Girls Are Easy" staring Gina Davis and Jeff Goldblum . . . (for those that don't know, that film came out in 1988, and it sucked). What kind of idiocy creates a situation where I'm watching ads for a 23 year old movie?
Rub a pair of neurons (just saying') and think of the probable chance you'll see an advertisement of an old movie that you haven't seen and that might peek your curiosity. Then, voila, you go rent it. Voila again, profit for the media company.
Mildly annoying (to the point of being just an afterthought for any normal person)? Yep. Capable of producing profit for the media company? Yep.
It is not idiocy at all. Whoever came up with this (no matter how much the fanboys would want to demonize him), that person knew how to think ahead in terms of profits. Only a fool (or someone whose job is not about making profits) would fail to appreciate the intelligence behind it.
What you say is true, but it doesn't matter.
It's not a matter of how much it costs the user, it's how much revenue it generates for Amazon. I would guess that they're going to make an additional $200 per user per ad-driven Kindle, so giving me a $25 discount is NOT enough!
They don't buy one, and simply pay the extra for the no-advertisements variety. I for one don't give a shit if Amazon makes $1 or $200 per user-ad. I still get my $25 discount, and, considering Amazon's history, I will also get non-obtrusive advertisements on things I'm interested in. My satisfaction is not tied to their profit margin, nor I will wish them not to increase their profit simply because I'm not getting a share of that pie (something I'm not entitled to since I'm neither involved nor invest in their product development.)
Just because advertising is currently unobtrusive doesn't mean that it always will be. When some manager realizes that his bonus is being threatened, it's amazing how obtrusive they are willing to get.
When that happens (and it is a possibility after all), it will most likely be another product with a different discount. But as it is, as a current Kindle user, I'd take the $25 discount on the deal that exists now, and simply ignore the ads on the hibernation mode screen saver. Or more likely, I won't ignore the ads. Demonize marketing as much as you want (and a lot of it is warranted), but if we are objective, we have to admit Amazon has always done very good targeted advertisement. When I sign in my account, I rarely see any out-of-the-tangent advertisement. Most of it is tailored to my interests (based on my purchase history). If I can get that unobtrusively while getting a $25 discount, why not. OTH, I can always take an acid-trip into hyperbole la-la land and argue that a possibility (advertisements running amok) is actually a certainty, demonizing the deal/product/discount right of the bat.
Of course, you could say that if it changes you would switch, and after a couple of years you might be looking for a new e-book reader anyway.
Which is a very good argument, no? Still, if Amazon is successful with an ad-supported Kindle you know that other manufacturers will follow suit and there will be few alternatives.
Remember when cable TV had no ads? I do.
So a legitimate business should not pursue a legitimate product/market development venue, and a buyer should not use his discretion in getting something he wants (or needs/thinks he needs) now, because of a possible what-if?
Are you suggesting that they (both Amazon and customer) don't exercise their rights (as product developers and customers)? What exactly do you propose? Is the potential (yes, potential) cable-related scenario that you are suggesting so evil, so nefarious that we should simply fall into paralysis by analysis over something so trivial as a product developer making a product with advertisements to be sold to willing customers (who probably don't give a shit, and which is their right not to)?
What happens during the chunks that don't go to your kid? Can your 2-year old really entertain himself for any meaningful amount of time? Mine can't, unless I put him in front of the TV.
Every child is different, but so far mine simply plays with her toys next to me in my home office. Granted every hour or so she wants to do something which I simply just get up and play with her, 15 minutes tops, or a change of diaper or something. It is just a simple break just as one would have when working in an office. Just the fact that I'm there makes a psychological difference. And sometimes yep, I might put a Barnie video for 20 minutes. It is not ideal, but it is neither as nefarious as people make it to be. Not every hour is going to be a perfect child management moment, but if you manage it correctly, all things (child and work) work out.
Incidentally I'm going to buy a small toddler slider, and put it in our computer/home office room for her to self-entertain more. For us the trick is to keep rotating the toys, the books and lego/wood block puzzles. If I were to leave my child with the same shit to play every day, of course she'll be crawling up the walls and climbing on my legs.
If I were working at home, I might be able to do a bit of work before he wakes up, 2 hours during his mid-day nap and a bit in the evening after he's gone to bed. But by that time I'm pretty tired myself.
I'm always tired no matter what I do (working from home or working at the office.) That is unavoidable. Now, you mentioned that your child is a "he", a boy. That might change the equation. Boys are always more of a handful than girls (mine is a girl.)
Wait, wife? You mean your wife is at home when you work? That means you're not really taking care of the kid, are you?
Sometimes she is at home, sometimes she's not. Me being able to care for the baby for a few hours during a workweek frees her to do more of the stuff that needs to be done at home and with our finances.
Without their wife present to take care of the kid when you want to work? And still get 8 hours of work done in the few hours that the kid is sleeping while you're not?
As long as you have a job that is flexible in the sense that you are bound to a delivery (as opposed to merely being on the clock), it can be done. I'm currently on mandatory O/T and have to put an average of 10hr a day. On the days I work from home I get less sleep than usual.
And if your wife is completely out of the house, working 100% out of the house, then you have to make decisions such as either sleep less or put the kid in a daycare (which is basically what you will do anyways if both of you work at an office, right.) The key difference here is that the amount of hours the child is in daycare is less (as you come with a management plan to work with your child at home, and specially if you are lucky enough to find a good day care close by that you can drop/pick up the baby quickly, as you need it, and depending on your day-to-day work needs). The whole thing tends to balance itself out.
It can be done. It is done. One of my previous software team leads was working from home after giving birth (and with two more kids), and she did it and put the hours... for months, and did it well. One couple that we are friends with, the wife works with USPS and the husband does his business from home... while taking care of two girls (4 and 2 respectively).
Anecdotal I know, won't force you to believe it. The thing is, you sleep less during the night since you have to get up much earlier and go to bed much later to effectively compensate for disruptions caused by your child when you work from home (wife or no wife around.) But that is out weighted by the benefits. Hell, gladly I would take a 10% paycut to telecommute 100%.
what does child care have to do with it? I telecommute, but it doesn't affect how much I have to spend on child care.
Expecting to see everything in terms of $$$ spent is a good way to go buddy.
its not like you can do a job effectively while also caring for children.
Speak for yourself. I work two days a week from home, and I'm able to do my job just fine with a 2-year old hanging around. I'm actually able to put 1-2 more hours of work (yep, actual work) by splitting up my work day in chunks. Some chunks go to work, some chunks go to my kid. I get a total of 3 (at least) extra hours from not having to commute, which I can put either into work or my child (depending on how I play it in a particular day.)
Being able to put just a few hours with my kid during the day helps my wife concentrate on other things that need to be taken care of (finance, bills, her work, etc.) The only downside is that on those days I have to get up really, really early to get my day started, and stay very late to get some work done.
But those are just minor inconveniences that are completely outweighed by the benefits. If I could telecommute 100% I would... and I'd happy take a 10% paycut. The benefits more than compensate that. The extra hours you get from not commuting more than offset any interruptions from your kids.
Barring having a child with a horrible disease (God forbids), if you can't handle work and a kid when telecommuting, that's something with your scheduling skills buddy. It is possible. It has been done. People do it.
And it's been 30 years since they've done anything useful. Those base inventions don't make up for the amount of consumer abuse that they have caused, or will cause if this deal goes through.
Prove this.
Ever heard of "Bell Labs"?
Apparently not :) The collective memory of many slashdotrati doesn't go further back than the early google/amazon times, and only superficially so. Talk about Altavista and Lycos and that's just the stuff of legend. As for Bell Labs? For the collective fools, the universe didn't even existed back then!
Getting the milk bottle for $8 instead of $9.50 is little comfort when your job is shipped overseas and you can't get another one.
It's also no comfort to hear that "you just aren't as competitive" when compared to the guy living on $100 a year dodging livestock riding his bicycle down a dirt path on the way to work.
Hearing that you lost your job because your industry just isn't "efficient" enough because it was paying a livable wage...also no comfort.
Economic /theory/ in general does nothing to relieve the real-world impact. Those impacted are the "hidden costs" not considered in the rosy picture of a more efficient world. The hidden cost is that the efficiency comes from crushing out the unwanted in the meantime. Of COURSE those unwanted aren't on board.
If crushing out inefficiency means that YOU have to suffer, then there's pretty much nothing you can say to convince that person that it's good news that their job is gone. When the global economy is reframed into the perspective of the individual, or a particular country, then general "efficiency" is NOT the goal. While the overall system is not a zero-sum game, when seen from a mortal lifespan, or more appropriately, the length of time the average unemployed can live off of their savings, then globalization is full of winners and losers in a zero-sum game. Hearing that other people are made better off while you made much worse off doesn't help. In such situations, I could hardly blame someone for wanting protectionism.
No.
This is not about bringing you comfort or relief your suffering. Not that I don't sympathize with the plight of people that are in pain right, but economics have nothing to do with.
Pretending to use protectionism as a solution is nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Automation, efficiency, and whether we like it or not, possible adjustment (reduction) of our annual income and changes to our spending habits and expectations, those are the long-term (and only viable) solutions against cheap oversea labor. Either that or we go bomb overseas people back to the pre-industrial ages so that we remain numero uno, with complete control of manufacturing of goods and thus command any livestyles we like.
Automation and efficiency, not protectionism, are the solution to the nation. That does not mean, however, the solution for everybody that is hurting now. Lots of people will hurt and possibly will never recover. But that's a reality of changing times, and no matter how bad times seem, at least they are very likely never to see their lives devolve into this:
http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/153581F9-FC9D-498B-957F-1A26AFE9D348/IH183124.jpg
I can understand if none of this brings you comfort, but your comfort (or mine for that matter) is not the prerogative of this changing world.
Welcome to the real world, where most of the IT work people do isn't as hard as they make it out to be. This is evidenced by the fact that people in other countries can do a passable job at it for less money. It's just petty nationalism to assume that the best and brightest minds are in the United States. Our education system isn't magical and neither is our gene pool. IT these days isn't like being an engineer designing the next rocket ship. This is slashdot so I'll use an appropriate analogy... it's more akin to being an auto mechanic. You bring some experience to the table and occasionally have to read a manual or two when the new fangled whatchamacallit comes out, but otherwise you're doing the same old stuff. The high end IT work demands and receives higher wages, but that's not what most of us are *really* doing.
Word.
Most of the IT work we do is pretty simple, and to be honest, doesn't even require a 4-year B.S. degree to do it. And yet, every single person working in it expects to get high-end 5-figure salaries or more. IT/CS/MIS education is allowing far too many graduates to enter an industry that is already saturated (many poorly equipped to subpar scholastic training). And companies insist in demanding 4-year degrees at a minimum for jobs that do not really require anything more than a good A.S. education.
If there is a software crisis now, it is this: oversaturation of the IT market with (sometimes under-educated) individuals that are overcompensated for jobs that don't truly deserve the salaries being demanded/offered. When the Chinese and Indians (and eventually Easter Europeans and South Americans) get to consistently produce IT/software work of consistent and adequate quality for more reasonable prices, we will be irreversibly screwed....
There has to be more to the story.
There is no rational business reason for Motorola to go up against Android especially after seeing how Nokia failed. It just doesn't smell right.
I used to work there for 5 years. Decisions done in Moto are never necessarily based on rational business reasons. It is not cliche, and you don't have to take my word for it. But I shit you not. This is the company whose execs didn't get the idea of a phone with an integrated camera on it (and thus boxed their prototypes in dusty closets.) The amount of stupid shit that goes their upper management halls is beyond belief (not to mentioned the entrenched mafias of sub-par engineers and contracting firms that suck the living life out of it... lots of them are gone due to the layoffs, good riddance.) .
Moto execs, the company, they never lead, they only react to competitors (and react badly.) That's why Moto Mobility/Mobile Devices is a sad zombie shell of its former self. Their two-way radio division is doing well and seem to have their heads out of their asses, but the other half, you can count on it that it will pursue something this stupid. A last spasm before Darwin laws take their course.
Legit privacy concerns aside, this sentence reads "silence of the f* lambs!!!" .
The worst natural disaster in recorded history occurred less than a week ago, and you people are discussing Calxeda's first ARM-based server chip, designed to let companies build low-power servers with up to 480 cores; as the chip is built on a quad-core ARM processor, and low-power servers could have 120 ARM processing nodes in a 2U box; chips will be based on ARM's Cortex-A9 processor architecture???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of nearly 10,000 dead people could give a good god damn about the advent of LAN parties, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life".
I have inlaws and friends in Japan, and thank God they are all fine. But even if something have had happened to them, what would you expect me, a /. reader, or anyone, to do? To cut my veins and pour ash on my head? What about the rest of the readers. You are just an attention whore looking for a cause celebre to be upset about. Nothing more as your little rant does nothing constructive.
You don't know if people reading this donated for the cause. You do not know anything about anyone here, about what they do or feel, and yet you act as if you would.
There is a difference between mourning and empathy, and shameless and useless "leave britney alone" attention whoring. Guess which one describes you buddy.
I had to think about this a bit before responding... I left college because they told me I had to take calculus or do not come back to my major. I left, and got a job as a COBOL programmer. I then moved into system programming, went on to be published at conferences, magazines, etc. My job now is main frame capacity planning and performance measurement as a storage vendor. Yes, I use math in my job. Calculus? NO.
With all due respect, but your life and work experiences are anecdotal, not representative of CS and programming at large. You were gifted enough to enter into a particular field w/o having the need to go through the calculus grind. Others are not that capable.
For me, it's been the opposite, not having taking Calc III, DEQ and Linear Algebra had almost permanently closed doors on my on many areas of programming. Sadly now I have to go back to school and take those three courses just so that I can catch up and become marketable in the programming fields I want to work on.
And as for the programming I've been doing for a living, indeed, I've never used Calc I or II.
But certain I've extensively used Discrete Mathematics, Logic, Set theory, Automata Theory and Statistics - egad, including in the enterprise - none of which I could have mastered (or at least understand enough to use at work) without having the mathematical foundation and level of maturity that we get when we go through the Calculus grinder.
Newsflash: We CS don't take Calculus just so that we do differentiation and integration at work. We do so so that we get the necessary background and mathematical maturity needed to master the areas of discrete mathematics, computation and number theory required to do CS work.
CS != programming, and not all programming is about web pages or things that can get done with just a couple of computer programming courses.
I don't know how else experiences it, but for me and many of my colleagues in different companies, we have one hell of a hard time finding good job candidates, not just code monkeys but people with the most basal of common sense when it comes to building applications. I wholeheartedly blame that to the watering down of CS education.
While you didn't explicitly state it, many others pointed out how you can use a conference to "make connections" to get a job. The whole "networking" deal really annoys me because generally, you're not going to be having enough time talking to anyone to actually show them how knowledgeable you are - so it pretty much boils down to getting a job because you spent some time ass kissing before you apply for a position. I'm aware it's not how it works in the real world, but I think people should be hired based on their ability to do the job, not to suck up to someone.
So going after a presenter, introduce yourself and genuinely and intelligently comment on his/her presentation (while exchanging credentials) is ass-kissing? Nice socials skills you got there buddy.
There is ass-kissing, and there is professional networking. Smart people know the difference between the two. And then there are the others, neatly divided in two groups: a) those who ass kiss when doing professional networking, and b) those who can't maturely do professional networking and thus assume the act involves (and is equal to) ass kissing (an assumption typically based on inexperience, arrogance and/or social incompetence.)