That is how you can tell a good IT person from a great IT person. The one who is truly brilliant will sit down and learn his way around everything, he might hate it but he will learn every last wire or line of code before making any improvements of his own.
Unless you've already got the experience and can spot a bad legacy system a mile off. If you want someone who just keeps the same junk plodding on, wasting people's time and doing things badly, then you want a junior. Get some balls, say "this is wrong", provide a better alternative AND AN ROI THAT JUSTIFIES IT and fix it. And if the company won't let me, then I won't put up with their junk. Byebye.
There, fixed it for ya. If you don't understand that part in bolded caps, you are not in a position to tell people how to fix things and how to do their work.
What are you going to do with that processing power? Run it off a Cable Modem / DSL Line? Might be adequate to a small number of people, but generally?
Generally you have an office and a LAN. A small company, by definition, doesn't have worldwide presence, and if they do, they still don't usually need huge amounts of bandwidth to serve thousands of users.
And if you mean a startup that sells a web service or something, they can do what we've been doing for almost 20 years: buy hosting or housing space. It doesn't need to be all "cloud". Small companies DO NOT need a world-class datacenter.
If a subsidiary sold the rights that's up to the court. Some courts hold that a company must abide by contracts by subsidiaries. If I make a contract with a subsidiary to buy 1000 units, the parent company must honor it even if I bought the units at below cost. From Apple's viewpoint, they believed that they bought a legitimate trademark.
So long as said contracts are done with the company's approval. In most cases, subsidiaries do not have free reign and must operate on a contractual basis with the parent company.
I think saying it would be practically indentured service is putting it too mildly. When they speak of how when Apple made a change shortly before product launch and the factory supervisors went around waking up the workers in the on site housing in the middle of the night giving them some tea and sending them to the factory floor to begin retooling in the wee hours of the am, that isn't the sort of treatment an indentured servant is subject to, that is the way you treat slave labor.
Ok you wouldn't give slaves tea first, but other than that there is little difference that I can see.
Your definitions of indenture and slavery are pretty funny. That is how you'd treat an indenture servant, you wake up anytime to work anywhere you want/need them. You feed them and pay a nominal fee, but they do as you command. Take the tea and the nominal salary and then you have slavery. It is no little difference even if argumentative eyes cannot see it.
It's my opinion that if you work in academia and don't publish at least one paper a year you should probably be doing something else(either to another field which leads to results, not just food for thought or to another job).
Yeah, I hear that guy Andrew Wiles spent 7 years not publishing any papers. Oxford stupidly put up with that instead of canning has ass at year 2, and they've gotten nothing but disrepute ever since. I mean has anyone ever heard of Wiles? Has he published anything of note at all? Oxford definitely would have been better off without him.
Yeah, we heard of him. He proved Fermat's Last Theorem.
Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.
^^^ This. I'll dare to say that negative results are massively discounted not just in CS, but in other fields as well. It is a lot easier to publish a rosy (and completely irrelevant) scenario than a realistic, but modest negative one. That on itself is what makes academic publishing so hard. It's not the research process that makes it hard/impossible for many academics to publish so frequently, it is the publishing process itself that is anything short of corrupt IMO.
After decoding the 25 million years old rhesus macaque, an ancestor to both chimpanzees and humans researchers found that the macaque Y contained just 20 genes, just one more that the human Y has lost, and although the human Y chromosome has lengthened and grown significantly longer than the macaque chromosome, the genes were mostly the same.
no, wearing a school uniform is not a common feature in countries with a more successful education system. just take a look at the scandinavian countries (which arguably have one of the best school systems in the world).
Or take a look at the South Korean and Japanese systems for a counter example. Uniforms are the norm and kids are well behaved. I grew up in a developed country where uniforms were also the norm, and though the education system was not on par to a developed country one, we certainly knew how to behave (and they certainly knew how to add fractions and read after finishing HS, guarantees that we cannot make in the US.)
Uniforms are one of the many tools to instill discipline, an integral part of education. It is also a good way to identify kids that are skipping school (and more importantly, if they are found/seen performing acts of vandalism, which always occurs. Teens will be teens no matter the country.) Suit yourself if you really and truly believe that is a sign of totalitarianism, treating education as it was meant to be a democratic, free-for-all, do-whatever-you-want institution (it never has been.)
uniforms are a sign of totalitarianism - like rules concerning carrying hot chips or red bull or having a "school police".
Calling them a sign of totalitarianism does not make it so. Having a school police is not a sign of totalitarianism either. In particular in the US where we have a plague of mindless vandalism and violence, you need a police force to ensure kids of school age are in school during school ours. In Japan, they do not have a school police because the social norms in place makes that unnecessary. In Japan, it would be a sign of totalitarianism. In the US, is a sign of necessity (and a sad indictment of our social norms.)
Does asking kids to clean their class room (as done in Japan) is a sign of totalitarianism? Does asking not to wear excessive jewelery or chewing gum like a mindless cow during a lecture is a sign of totalitarianism? You are out of your freaking mind if you really believe so.
Yes, the Scandinavian countries do not have uniforms nor school police either. Neither they have strict rules as in Japan or Korea. But that does not mean that we in the US can do the same. Our conduct and perceptions on education are nothing compared to the ones in the Scandinavia countries, or in Japan or Korea or Brazil. We do not have a pre-university education system. We have instead a 12-year long babysitting system were people can go through and learn nothing.
But don't let that get in the way to your argument. Let's leave education in the US running as usual, and let's keep doing what we are doing and give kids all the freedom they want. It seems to be working wonders for us, right, right?
So you're fine with private organizations imposing fines on a whim?
It is troubling that we have to get to this to impose discipline, and it sure raises a few eyebrows. But on a whim? They aren't. These are infractions. Yes, not having your shirt buttoned or chewing gum, those are behavioral infractions. Fining over them can be argued to be questionable, but flagging these kind of things as infractions is perfectly reasonable. You need to get off your cornbread boundaries and visit other countries with more successful education systems than ours - wearing a proper school uniform is typically one of their common features. There are many reasons why this is so, and it is not rocket science why it works and why it is necessary.
And that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
It's called discipline, something that apparently you were never exposed to during your primary and secondary education.
There is a place where they could go where there is a whole huge pool of workers who have had their rights trampled, their savings destroyed, and their ability to think dismantled in a systematic way for decades. It is called The United States and there are people there who will jump at the chance to get a job, no matter how terrible the conditions, how grueling the work, or how poorly compensated they are.
Of course, we're not talking Chinese slave wages, but close.
At Foxconn salaries? You are on drugs if you think so.
Mind you that I would love to see these jobs back in the US, but you are engaging in wishful, triumphalist thinking. These jobs, and all of those jobs WILL NOT COME BACK. Furthermore, it is unreasonable, however much we love this country, to presume replacing $1/hour Chinese workers (if they are lucky) with no benefits such as sick leave with $15/hour (at least) US workers with all the minimal benefits one would typically according to the law.
If it is not China, there is India, or the Philippines or Indonesia or Thailand or Ghana or Brazil or Argentina or Central America or Romania... shall I go on? The time where the majority of the world lived in violent stone age conditions is gone (most likely forever.) New markets and manufacturing grounds are available all over the world.
From a purely capitalistic point of view, it makes no sense to do mind-numbing manufacturing in the US. Even if you were to improve working conditions in China, it will still be immensely cheap. Even in countries with a strong stakeholder's capitalist mentality like Japan are finding out harder and harder to keep tricket-manufacturing jobs within their own borders.
The only way for the US to get these jobs back is with heavy government involvement, greater subsidies (meaning higher taxes), all the stuff that our bovine collective calls "socialism" in a brain-dead, knee-jerking fashion.
Those jobs ain't coming back Sonny boy. We are simply not capable of competing for them anymore. We demand greater salaries and we have higher costs of living than our foreign competitors (not to mention that our competitors actually produce HS graduates that know how to read, write and add fractions, which we don't.)
In other words, unless we do something else entirely, we are in deep shit.
We shouldn't allow such complex laws that we need lawyers.
Agreed. And since complex laws are an inevitability in any complex society, let's all disband to the four winds and randomly join into small hunter-gatherer bands where we re-learn how to make stone tools, and at night we gather to hear our elders tell the stories of a long-gone era where lawyers roamed the earth alongside the chupacabra and the bunyip.
Who wants to come up with the next great innovation, when you know damn well that the second you do, some big player with more resources is just going to swoop in and steal it?
People who care? People who get into the software/CS/engineering business because they kinda like, you know, like to build shit and innovate? People who know the different between a job and a career? Crazy idea, I know!!!!
Seriously, who the hell would want to work in a company like Zynga is beyond me. Even in this time and age of job shortages, there are a lot jobs still. Granted that most won't be the R&D type most of us geeks would dream about. But hardly few are actually as twisted as Zynga is. The average software job, though mundane, it stills provides room for innovation and professional growth, however limited, so long as one can intelligently explains the ROI of it.
Re:Sometimes it's the little things
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Tales of IT Idiocy
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· Score: 3, Funny
So, in your mind, absolutely anyone who makes a six figure salary is by definition a "dominant, exploitative jackass". Is it just maybe a little bit possible that you're bitter about your own salary?
Apparently so. The existence of engineers who make that much and more by technical wits alone seems to be a myth in the poster's mind.
"I can tell you that you simply cannot live at a hamburger flipping salary. How? You cannot even pay rent with that."
Sure one could. Last year, a university (University of Missisippi?, cannot find link) released a study comparing a single parent that held minimum wage jobs vs a single parent that had a degree and a professional job. 15K vs 68K respectively.
Since the "burger flipper" is considered "poor", they qualified for many government programs. Rent subsistence, food stamps, health care, utility assistance, Earned Income Credit, etc. The result was that this class of worker had 38,000 USD of disposable income each year.
Since the professional at 68K does not qualify for any of these programs, their disposable income each year is 34K.
If someone knows the study, please correct my mistakes as I am going from memory.
Ok, let me rephrase that (and I call bs on how you applied this study.) Here is my rephrasing: A single person with a hamburger flipping salary without expecting or asking for welfare support (which is pretty much passing the costs down to the rest of us.) I honestly don't mind paying higher taxes and help those in need. But constant, never-ending welfare the way it is implemented in this country is not a solution.
What you want in a healthy economy is that the majority of low-paying salaries are enough to subsist without requiring welfare and food stamps, leaving those only for the extreme cases of poverty or struggle (single moms and families devastated by disease come to mind.)
If I'm a single person working at a minimum wage, I cannot expect the same type of welfare a single mom is entitled to when working at that same minimum wage, not unless I start cheating. A solution for a single mom is not a solution for the general case, and for that reason, the study you mentioned does not refute my original postulate.
For the general case, depending on welfare is not a solution. And having the majority of low income bracket people having to make trade-offs between basic necessities and health coverage is not an acceptable situation for what it is supposed to be the richest country in the world.
he greatest insult of all is that in this great country so many people cannot afford the most basic of medical care. Jesus Christ, my country of origin is the second poorest in the western hemisphere, and the average city dweller has basic medical access more readily available and affordable than his/her American counterpart. How can we explain that????
I explain it as you lived in a socialist nation.
Fail. Fail of the worst kind. Ever been/lived in Japan? I have. You can get health care more readily, cheaper (and better) than what we get in the US. My second to the last trip I got a severe case of food poisoning - the doctor pretty much said that my stomach linen and blood were not just infected, but inflamed (how the fuck do you get inflamed blood!!!???.) From the time I got to the hospital to the time I got IV antibiotics pumped on me up to the wazoo in intensive care: 2 hours. Cost: $200 (US dollars) including follow-up prescription medicine and additional anti-biotics for 4 more days.
And this is a capitalist country that almost, almost knock the shit out of the US 2-3 decades ago. How much do you think the same hassle would have cost me here in the US? How much do you think it would have cost me in South Korea or Germany (another pair of capitalist countries)?
So there you go, a nice counter-example pin to blow your argumentative bubble (unless you find a way to explain me how socialism has anything to do with better, more affordable health care in these other 1st world capitalist countries.)
Myself i will give up health care in exchange for freedom.
I respect your freedom to have that sentiment, but it is still full of shit. Anyone can be an armchair Che-Guevara or Paul Revere (depending on one's ideologictardic predilections.) When shit happens, then talk to me, specially if you have children. Are you gonna trade health care for your family in exchange for freedom as well?
Are you that gullible to think this is the only capitalist country in the world, and that if something happens somewhere else it is explainable by socialism alone?
Also, you are incorrect since anyone can get care in this nation if they need to. Just drive down to the hospital and they WILL treat you, regardless of your ability to pay.
Oh yes, absolutely, and then you get an un-explainable expensive bill that is completely out of proportion, and then you either pay (because you can), or you don't (because you can't)... and in the later case you get either hounded by a collections agency until the hospital writes you off as a loss (and you get a nice red x your credit history). on your or you fill for bankruptcy.
60% of US bankruptcies are due to medical bills. How the fuck do you explain that? This was never like this and this country has always been a capitalist country. This situation is pretty fucking unique among developed capitalist countries.
Also I find your post disingenuous. It is a fact that a large number of Americans do not have health coverage. Yes you can get emergency medical coverage regardless of whether you can pay for it or not (with the caveats mentioned above.) But that's not health coverage. A far greater number do not have dental coverage (do you have an idea how that affects people and the economy, specially since we know that dental health is linked to cardiac conditions)?
If you really think this is acceptable, I'd suggest you go travel a little to other developed capitalist countries, or better yet, learn something about recent US history. What we are living now is an immoral anomaly. Armchair patriotic antics about freedom and shit like that aren't acceptable explanations for the unjustifiable lack of health care in this country.
This is a first world country, the most powerful country in the planet, capable of moving far more shitloads and shitloads of money than any country in the world. You would expect then t
And are you saying that there isn't a single job available in the US, not even in industries that aren't directly what you want to do or that require lots of manual hard work? People just don't want to do them if it doesn't interest them, isn't available where they happen to live or there's prejudices and "I'm too good for that job" against the work (ie., working as a burger flipper or a stripper).
... that's one hell of a strawman. How the hell did you get there from the post you were replying to.
For starters, are you suggesting that being a stripper is a viable job alternative? What kind of mind could possibly suggest that as an example?
Also, from your posts it is obvious that you have never worked a burger flipping job and have to depend on it completely. I worked minimum wage jobs when I came to America, and I've climbed, by studying and hard work, to where I am now (pretty at the upper middle class bracket.) I can tell you that you simply cannot live at a hamburger flipping salary. How? You cannot even pay rent with that. People who have those jobs (and I know because I've been there) have to lump themselves together with relatives or friends and edge a meager existence.
The greatest insult of all is that in this great country so many people cannot afford the most basic of medical care. Jesus Christ, my country of origin is the second poorest in the western hemisphere, and the average city dweller has basic medical access more readily available and affordable than his/her American counterpart. How can we explain that????
That is the greatest flaw and immorality of all the ones we have to deal with nowadays. I couldn't afford medical care when I worked at McDonald's and Home Depot (not if I wanted to pay the rent or have more than a pair of underwear, or, you know, eat... even when I was at McDonald's ), and that was a while ago when cost of life was less.
TODAY, there are simply no jobs out there, even if you are looking for a flipping burger job. I mean, c'mon, even places like McDonald's and Starbucks you see franchises cutting people off and/or telling them "sorry guys, we can't keep you full time anymore, all we can do is give you 30-35 hours." That's how bad it is right now.
To suggest to tell people "go get a burger flipping" job indicates you are completely detached to the current realities, or you simply do not give a fuck and prefer to make shit up just to create an argument to fight for on the interweebz.
"If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them. "
No they aren't. It's called collusion. Unions do not form an effective monopoly but corporate competitors colluding DO form such a monopoly
Oh really? Have you ever tried getting a job at the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale docks, specially a well paid job in one of them tugboats? You don't get a job there unless you have a close relative working those jobs already with the union's blessing. It might not fit the kosher definition of a mercantile monopoly, but it sure gets very close in spirit.
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it.
Ok, right after I finish bitching about the stupidity of the connector design. What idiot thought it'd be a good idea to have a connector that can only go in one way, but that is symmetrical?
I just hope the guys who invented the electrical and software parts of the spec aren't the same as the moron who invented the mechanical part.
Well, if you feel that way, then show us how it should be done and make it a commercial success.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really know, but I always understood that a "slot" at a university in the US is reserved for the person that pays. If the citizens can't pay it, than the universities will just fill these slots by foreigners who can, no?
There are other criteria for admissions than just cash. That, and it makes no sense in denying citizens education for lack of available slots.
Which Americans are denied education for lack of available slots? In particular in STEM fields (much more in particular at the graduate level), it's a matter of cash - either student loans or scholarships for us US citizens, or cash paid up front by most foreign students (not mentioning that most of us US citizens pay state-level tuition whereas foreign students paid out-of-state fees mostly out of pocket). So what are you gripping about?
In light of what I said above, you might want to consider Ferengi acquisition rule N 177: "Know your enemies... but do business with them always."
This particular variety incurs a cost that is greater than their added value - thus generating a loss. I'm sure that generating a net loss is a concept frowned upon in about any form of capitalism.
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it. Unless you are a person who were denied a slot for an education in a STEM field at the graduate level, you have no ground to complain about. And I see your sig regarding globalization, and I agree with it. But if you are conflating your sentiments on globalization with allowing foreigners with STEM degrees to come and settle here (in light that most US citizens are not willing to pursue a STEM education), then you are just another illiterate moron who thinks the solutions to our problems is sporting a patriotic bumper sticker.
I don't believe sethstorm stated anything about his complexion or anyone else's.
So who is the enemy then? Or more precisely, who's sethstorm's enemy? And it is not necessary to explicitly mention about complexion. He's talking about Asians (people from Asia, the ones who, according to him are coming here to take our jobs), and implicitly labeling them as enemies. Complexion, nationality, origin, potatoes, tomatoes, take a pick, each is a by-product of such talk no matter how you cut the mustard.
They shouldn't be here in the first place if they're taking slots that belong to our own citizens.
1. Those slots aren't being filled by native-born US Citizens.
2. Those foreigners who come to fill those slots overwhelmingly become US Ciitizens.
So, what's your gripe?
Save the trip and help our own citizens.
How, by telling them to study what they don't want to study (but that everyone else in the planet wants to study)? You can't help people who do not want to help themselves and who are more than content with a) either a HS degree (and without the ability to add fractions) or 2) pursue a degree in business, law or psychology.
No sense in not training our own versus helping the enemy.
1. You can't train people who does not want to be trained (after all 39% of US citizens do not believe in evolution, so how the hell do you think they'll wake up one day and say "gee, I want to study in a STEM field.")?
2. People who come here (with either a STEM degree or to get one) and get a unfilled STEM slot (and who more often than not become US Citizens), they aren't the enemy. Our own people, those who know who Snooki is but Carl Sagan, they are the enemy, their own enemy.
I remember one time I was having lunch with a fellow computer scientist at a mall, an Indian immigrant with multiple degrees who came to the US, got another one, 4.0 GPA, became a citizen and did a hell of a work. At the food court, one of the cooks was complaining rather directly towards my friend about "foreigners coming here to take our jobs". As if people like them were in direct competition with foreign-born professionals like the one I'm describing.
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Unless you've already got the experience and can spot a bad legacy system a mile off. If you want someone who just keeps the same junk plodding on, wasting people's time and doing things badly, then you want a junior. Get some balls, say "this is wrong", provide a better alternative AND AN ROI THAT JUSTIFIES IT and fix it. And if the company won't let me, then I won't put up with their junk. Byebye.
There, fixed it for ya. If you don't understand that part in bolded caps, you are not in a position to tell people how to fix things and how to do their work.
What are you going to do with that processing power? Run it off a Cable Modem / DSL Line? Might be adequate to a small number of people, but generally?
Generally you have an office and a LAN. A small company, by definition, doesn't have worldwide presence, and if they do, they still don't usually need huge amounts of bandwidth to serve thousands of users.
And if you mean a startup that sells a web service or something, they can do what we've been doing for almost 20 years: buy hosting or housing space. It doesn't need to be all "cloud". Small companies DO NOT need a world-class datacenter.
Like in Heroku, or on RackSpace or Amazon EC2?
If a subsidiary sold the rights that's up to the court. Some courts hold that a company must abide by contracts by subsidiaries. If I make a contract with a subsidiary to buy 1000 units, the parent company must honor it even if I bought the units at below cost. From Apple's viewpoint, they believed that they bought a legitimate trademark.
So long as said contracts are done with the company's approval. In most cases, subsidiaries do not have free reign and must operate on a contractual basis with the parent company.
I think saying it would be practically indentured service is putting it too mildly. When they speak of how when Apple made a change shortly before product launch and the factory supervisors went around waking up the workers in the on site housing in the middle of the night giving them some tea and sending them to the factory floor to begin retooling in the wee hours of the am, that isn't the sort of treatment an indentured servant is subject to, that is the way you treat slave labor.
Ok you wouldn't give slaves tea first, but other than that there is little difference that I can see.
Your definitions of indenture and slavery are pretty funny. That is how you'd treat an indenture servant, you wake up anytime to work anywhere you want/need them. You feed them and pay a nominal fee, but they do as you command. Take the tea and the nominal salary and then you have slavery. It is no little difference even if argumentative eyes cannot see it.
It's my opinion that if you work in academia and don't publish at least one paper a year you should probably be doing something else(either to another field which leads to results, not just food for thought or to another job).
Yeah, I hear that guy Andrew Wiles spent 7 years not publishing any papers. Oxford stupidly put up with that instead of canning has ass at year 2, and they've gotten nothing but disrepute ever since. I mean has anyone ever heard of Wiles? Has he published anything of note at all? Oxford definitely would have been better off without him.
Yeah, we heard of him. He proved Fermat's Last Theorem.
Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.
^^^ This. I'll dare to say that negative results are massively discounted not just in CS, but in other fields as well. It is a lot easier to publish a rosy (and completely irrelevant) scenario than a realistic, but modest negative one. That on itself is what makes academic publishing so hard. It's not the research process that makes it hard/impossible for many academics to publish so frequently, it is the publishing process itself that is anything short of corrupt IMO.
After decoding the 25 million years old rhesus macaque, an ancestor to both chimpanzees and humans researchers found that the macaque Y contained just 20 genes, just one more that the human Y has lost, and although the human Y chromosome has lengthened and grown significantly longer than the macaque chromosome, the genes were mostly the same.
Seriously, WTF?
no, wearing a school uniform is not a common feature in countries with a more successful education system. just take a look at the scandinavian countries (which arguably have one of the best school systems in the world).
Or take a look at the South Korean and Japanese systems for a counter example. Uniforms are the norm and kids are well behaved. I grew up in a developed country where uniforms were also the norm, and though the education system was not on par to a developed country one, we certainly knew how to behave (and they certainly knew how to add fractions and read after finishing HS, guarantees that we cannot make in the US.)
Uniforms are one of the many tools to instill discipline, an integral part of education. It is also a good way to identify kids that are skipping school (and more importantly, if they are found/seen performing acts of vandalism, which always occurs. Teens will be teens no matter the country.) Suit yourself if you really and truly believe that is a sign of totalitarianism, treating education as it was meant to be a democratic, free-for-all, do-whatever-you-want institution (it never has been.)
uniforms are a sign of totalitarianism - like rules concerning carrying hot chips or red bull or having a "school police".
Calling them a sign of totalitarianism does not make it so. Having a school police is not a sign of totalitarianism either. In particular in the US where we have a plague of mindless vandalism and violence, you need a police force to ensure kids of school age are in school during school ours. In Japan, they do not have a school police because the social norms in place makes that unnecessary. In Japan, it would be a sign of totalitarianism. In the US, is a sign of necessity (and a sad indictment of our social norms.)
Does asking kids to clean their class room (as done in Japan) is a sign of totalitarianism? Does asking not to wear excessive jewelery or chewing gum like a mindless cow during a lecture is a sign of totalitarianism? You are out of your freaking mind if you really believe so.
Yes, the Scandinavian countries do not have uniforms nor school police either. Neither they have strict rules as in Japan or Korea. But that does not mean that we in the US can do the same. Our conduct and perceptions on education are nothing compared to the ones in the Scandinavia countries, or in Japan or Korea or Brazil. We do not have a pre-university education system. We have instead a 12-year long babysitting system were people can go through and learn nothing.
But don't let that get in the way to your argument. Let's leave education in the US running as usual, and let's keep doing what we are doing and give kids all the freedom they want. It seems to be working wonders for us, right, right?
So you're fine with private organizations imposing fines on a whim?
It is troubling that we have to get to this to impose discipline, and it sure raises a few eyebrows. But on a whim? They aren't. These are infractions. Yes, not having your shirt buttoned or chewing gum, those are behavioral infractions. Fining over them can be argued to be questionable, but flagging these kind of things as infractions is perfectly reasonable. You need to get off your cornbread boundaries and visit other countries with more successful education systems than ours - wearing a proper school uniform is typically one of their common features. There are many reasons why this is so, and it is not rocket science why it works and why it is necessary.
And that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
It's called discipline, something that apparently you were never exposed to during your primary and secondary education.
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive.
Say what???????????? C++, easy to learn???????
Please explain how the wording and research of a the content of a quote is the writers fault?
It isn't, but it makes one hell of a fallacious attack :)
There is a place where they could go where there is a whole huge pool of workers who have had their rights trampled, their savings destroyed, and their ability to think dismantled in a systematic way for decades. It is called The United States and there are people there who will jump at the chance to get a job, no matter how terrible the conditions, how grueling the work, or how poorly compensated they are.
Of course, we're not talking Chinese slave wages, but close.
At Foxconn salaries? You are on drugs if you think so.
Mind you that I would love to see these jobs back in the US, but you are engaging in wishful, triumphalist thinking. These jobs, and all of those jobs WILL NOT COME BACK. Furthermore, it is unreasonable, however much we love this country, to presume replacing $1/hour Chinese workers (if they are lucky) with no benefits such as sick leave with $15/hour (at least) US workers with all the minimal benefits one would typically according to the law.
If it is not China, there is India, or the Philippines or Indonesia or Thailand or Ghana or Brazil or Argentina or Central America or Romania... shall I go on? The time where the majority of the world lived in violent stone age conditions is gone (most likely forever.) New markets and manufacturing grounds are available all over the world.
From a purely capitalistic point of view, it makes no sense to do mind-numbing manufacturing in the US. Even if you were to improve working conditions in China, it will still be immensely cheap. Even in countries with a strong stakeholder's capitalist mentality like Japan are finding out harder and harder to keep tricket-manufacturing jobs within their own borders.
The only way for the US to get these jobs back is with heavy government involvement, greater subsidies (meaning higher taxes), all the stuff that our bovine collective calls "socialism" in a brain-dead, knee-jerking fashion.
Those jobs ain't coming back Sonny boy. We are simply not capable of competing for them anymore. We demand greater salaries and we have higher costs of living than our foreign competitors (not to mention that our competitors actually produce HS graduates that know how to read, write and add fractions, which we don't.)
In other words, unless we do something else entirely, we are in deep shit.
Titanium is inert in the body.
For now. But I'm sure the medical malpractice attorneys who advertise in between infomercials will find a way to claim otherwise in short time.
Surely you jest with such an ignorant post. I refuse to believe this post was made for teh realz.
We shouldn't allow such complex laws that we need lawyers.
Agreed. And since complex laws are an inevitability in any complex society, let's all disband to the four winds and randomly join into small hunter-gatherer bands where we re-learn how to make stone tools, and at night we gather to hear our elders tell the stories of a long-gone era where lawyers roamed the earth alongside the chupacabra and the bunyip.
Who wants to come up with the next great innovation, when you know damn well that the second you do, some big player with more resources is just going to swoop in and steal it?
People who care? People who get into the software/CS/engineering business because they kinda like, you know, like to build shit and innovate? People who know the different between a job and a career? Crazy idea, I know!!!!
Seriously, who the hell would want to work in a company like Zynga is beyond me. Even in this time and age of job shortages, there are a lot jobs still. Granted that most won't be the R&D type most of us geeks would dream about. But hardly few are actually as twisted as Zynga is. The average software job, though mundane, it stills provides room for innovation and professional growth, however limited, so long as one can intelligently explains the ROI of it.
So, in your mind, absolutely anyone who makes a six figure salary is by definition a "dominant, exploitative jackass". Is it just maybe a little bit possible that you're bitter about your own salary?
Apparently so. The existence of engineers who make that much and more by technical wits alone seems to be a myth in the poster's mind.
"I can tell you that you simply cannot live at a hamburger flipping salary. How? You cannot even pay rent with that."
Sure one could. Last year, a university (University of Missisippi?, cannot find link) released a study comparing a single parent that held minimum wage jobs vs a single parent that had a degree and a professional job. 15K vs 68K respectively.
Since the "burger flipper" is considered "poor", they qualified for many government programs. Rent subsistence, food stamps, health care, utility assistance, Earned Income Credit, etc. The result was that this class of worker had 38,000 USD of disposable income each year.
Since the professional at 68K does not qualify for any of these programs, their disposable income each year is 34K.
If someone knows the study, please correct my mistakes as I am going from memory.
Ok, let me rephrase that (and I call bs on how you applied this study.) Here is my rephrasing: A single person with a hamburger flipping salary without expecting or asking for welfare support (which is pretty much passing the costs down to the rest of us.) I honestly don't mind paying higher taxes and help those in need. But constant, never-ending welfare the way it is implemented in this country is not a solution.
What you want in a healthy economy is that the majority of low-paying salaries are enough to subsist without requiring welfare and food stamps, leaving those only for the extreme cases of poverty or struggle (single moms and families devastated by disease come to mind.)
If I'm a single person working at a minimum wage, I cannot expect the same type of welfare a single mom is entitled to when working at that same minimum wage, not unless I start cheating. A solution for a single mom is not a solution for the general case, and for that reason, the study you mentioned does not refute my original postulate.
For the general case, depending on welfare is not a solution. And having the majority of low income bracket people having to make trade-offs between basic necessities and health coverage is not an acceptable situation for what it is supposed to be the richest country in the world.
he greatest insult of all is that in this great country so many people cannot afford the most basic of medical care. Jesus Christ, my country of origin is the second poorest in the western hemisphere, and the average city dweller has basic medical access more readily available and affordable than his/her American counterpart. How can we explain that????
I explain it as you lived in a socialist nation.
Fail. Fail of the worst kind. Ever been/lived in Japan? I have. You can get health care more readily, cheaper (and better) than what we get in the US. My second to the last trip I got a severe case of food poisoning - the doctor pretty much said that my stomach linen and blood were not just infected, but inflamed (how the fuck do you get inflamed blood!!!???.) From the time I got to the hospital to the time I got IV antibiotics pumped on me up to the wazoo in intensive care: 2 hours. Cost: $200 (US dollars) including follow-up prescription medicine and additional anti-biotics for 4 more days.
And this is a capitalist country that almost, almost knock the shit out of the US 2-3 decades ago. How much do you think the same hassle would have cost me here in the US? How much do you think it would have cost me in South Korea or Germany (another pair of capitalist countries)?
So there you go, a nice counter-example pin to blow your argumentative bubble (unless you find a way to explain me how socialism has anything to do with better, more affordable health care in these other 1st world capitalist countries.)
Myself i will give up health care in exchange for freedom.
I respect your freedom to have that sentiment, but it is still full of shit. Anyone can be an armchair Che-Guevara or Paul Revere (depending on one's ideologictardic predilections.) When shit happens, then talk to me, specially if you have children. Are you gonna trade health care for your family in exchange for freedom as well?
Are you that gullible to think this is the only capitalist country in the world, and that if something happens somewhere else it is explainable by socialism alone?
Also, you are incorrect since anyone can get care in this nation if they need to. Just drive down to the hospital and they WILL treat you, regardless of your ability to pay.
Oh yes, absolutely, and then you get an un-explainable expensive bill that is completely out of proportion, and then you either pay (because you can), or you don't (because you can't)... and in the later case you get either hounded by a collections agency until the hospital writes you off as a loss (and you get a nice red x your credit history). on your or you fill for bankruptcy.
60% of US bankruptcies are due to medical bills. How the fuck do you explain that? This was never like this and this country has always been a capitalist country. This situation is pretty fucking unique among developed capitalist countries.
Also I find your post disingenuous. It is a fact that a large number of Americans do not have health coverage. Yes you can get emergency medical coverage regardless of whether you can pay for it or not (with the caveats mentioned above.) But that's not health coverage. A far greater number do not have dental coverage (do you have an idea how that affects people and the economy, specially since we know that dental health is linked to cardiac conditions)? If you really think this is acceptable, I'd suggest you go travel a little to other developed capitalist countries, or better yet, learn something about recent US history. What we are living now is an immoral anomaly. Armchair patriotic antics about freedom and shit like that aren't acceptable explanations for the unjustifiable lack of health care in this country.
This is a first world country, the most powerful country in the planet, capable of moving far more shitloads and shitloads of money than any country in the world. You would expect then t
Living costs are also much lower in China.
This is true. Now, the following...
And are you saying that there isn't a single job available in the US, not even in industries that aren't directly what you want to do or that require lots of manual hard work? People just don't want to do them if it doesn't interest them, isn't available where they happen to live or there's prejudices and "I'm too good for that job" against the work (ie., working as a burger flipper or a stripper).
... that's one hell of a strawman. How the hell did you get there from the post you were replying to.
For starters, are you suggesting that being a stripper is a viable job alternative? What kind of mind could possibly suggest that as an example?
Also, from your posts it is obvious that you have never worked a burger flipping job and have to depend on it completely. I worked minimum wage jobs when I came to America, and I've climbed, by studying and hard work, to where I am now (pretty at the upper middle class bracket.) I can tell you that you simply cannot live at a hamburger flipping salary. How? You cannot even pay rent with that. People who have those jobs (and I know because I've been there) have to lump themselves together with relatives or friends and edge a meager existence.
The greatest insult of all is that in this great country so many people cannot afford the most basic of medical care. Jesus Christ, my country of origin is the second poorest in the western hemisphere, and the average city dweller has basic medical access more readily available and affordable than his/her American counterpart. How can we explain that????
That is the greatest flaw and immorality of all the ones we have to deal with nowadays. I couldn't afford medical care when I worked at McDonald's and Home Depot (not if I wanted to pay the rent or have more than a pair of underwear, or, you know, eat... even when I was at McDonald's ), and that was a while ago when cost of life was less.
TODAY, there are simply no jobs out there, even if you are looking for a flipping burger job. I mean, c'mon, even places like McDonald's and Starbucks you see franchises cutting people off and/or telling them "sorry guys, we can't keep you full time anymore, all we can do is give you 30-35 hours." That's how bad it is right now.
To suggest to tell people "go get a burger flipping" job indicates you are completely detached to the current realities, or you simply do not give a fuck and prefer to make shit up just to create an argument to fight for on the interweebz.
"If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them. "
No they aren't. It's called collusion. Unions do not form an effective monopoly but corporate competitors colluding DO form such a monopoly
Oh really? Have you ever tried getting a job at the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale docks, specially a well paid job in one of them tugboats? You don't get a job there unless you have a close relative working those jobs already with the union's blessing. It might not fit the kosher definition of a mercantile monopoly, but it sure gets very close in spirit.
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it.
Ok, right after I finish bitching about the stupidity of the connector design. What idiot thought it'd be a good idea to have a connector that can only go in one way, but that is symmetrical?
I just hope the guys who invented the electrical and software parts of the spec aren't the same as the moron who invented the mechanical part.
Well, if you feel that way, then show us how it should be done and make it a commercial success.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really know, but I always understood that a "slot" at a university in the US is reserved for the person that pays. If the citizens can't pay it, than the universities will just fill these slots by foreigners who can, no?
There are other criteria for admissions than just cash. That, and it makes no sense in denying citizens education for lack of available slots.
Which Americans are denied education for lack of available slots? In particular in STEM fields (much more in particular at the graduate level), it's a matter of cash - either student loans or scholarships for us US citizens, or cash paid up front by most foreign students (not mentioning that most of us US citizens pay state-level tuition whereas foreign students paid out-of-state fees mostly out of pocket). So what are you gripping about?
In light of what I said above, you might want to consider Ferengi acquisition rule N 177: "Know your enemies ... but do business with them always."
This particular variety incurs a cost that is greater than their added value - thus generating a loss. I'm sure that generating a net loss is a concept frowned upon in about any form of capitalism.
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it. Unless you are a person who were denied a slot for an education in a STEM field at the graduate level, you have no ground to complain about. And I see your sig regarding globalization, and I agree with it. But if you are conflating your sentiments on globalization with allowing foreigners with STEM degrees to come and settle here (in light that most US citizens are not willing to pursue a STEM education), then you are just another illiterate moron who thinks the solutions to our problems is sporting a patriotic bumper sticker.
You should be granted citizenship here for graduating here. That's how you keep the talent trained here.
Assuming there is talent here that wants to be trained (in STEM in particular). They are not.
I don't believe sethstorm stated anything about his complexion or anyone else's.
So who is the enemy then? Or more precisely, who's sethstorm's enemy? And it is not necessary to explicitly mention about complexion. He's talking about Asians (people from Asia, the ones who, according to him are coming here to take our jobs), and implicitly labeling them as enemies. Complexion, nationality, origin, potatoes, tomatoes, take a pick, each is a by-product of such talk no matter how you cut the mustard.
They shouldn't be here in the first place if they're taking slots that belong to our own citizens.
1. Those slots aren't being filled by native-born US Citizens.
2. Those foreigners who come to fill those slots overwhelmingly become US Ciitizens.
So, what's your gripe?
Save the trip and help our own citizens.
How, by telling them to study what they don't want to study (but that everyone else in the planet wants to study)? You can't help people who do not want to help themselves and who are more than content with a) either a HS degree (and without the ability to add fractions) or 2) pursue a degree in business, law or psychology.
No sense in not training our own versus helping the enemy.
1. You can't train people who does not want to be trained (after all 39% of US citizens do not believe in evolution, so how the hell do you think they'll wake up one day and say "gee, I want to study in a STEM field.")?
2. People who come here (with either a STEM degree or to get one) and get a unfilled STEM slot (and who more often than not become US Citizens), they aren't the enemy. Our own people, those who know who Snooki is but Carl Sagan, they are the enemy, their own enemy.
I remember one time I was having lunch with a fellow computer scientist at a mall, an Indian immigrant with multiple degrees who came to the US, got another one, 4.0 GPA, became a citizen and did a hell of a work. At the food court, one of the cooks was complaining rather directly towards my friend about "foreigners coming here to take our jobs". As if people like them were in direct competition with foreign-born professionals like the one I'm describing.
Seriously, the stupidity is strong in this one.