I'm a different man than I was 6 months ago when I fucked your best friend. I've grown SOOO much since then!
One thing to consider is that corporations can and do change a lot faster than people, because corporations are just amalgamations of people. Swap out important decisionmakers, or let a different person rise to a decisionmaking position, and you may get completely different decisions. For that matter, if you ask the same question of two different parts of a corporation, you'll usually get two (or more) different answers.
In the case of Facebook, it seems like corporate direction is still in the hands of the same man, though. He could be quite sincere about having seen that his company now plays a different role than it did, or maybe not. Tough to say.
Interesting. Thanks. I've seen several studies that say the opposite, so clearly I need to dig deeper into the question to identify the differences in methodology. Unfortunately, the article you link is very light on methodological detail and it's not clear if the author has even published that information.
One guess, though, is that I think the other studies measured non-religious giving in dollars, while the author appears to have measured the probability of giving something. So, religious people who donate thousands to their church and a few dollars to the local homeless shelter vs non-religious people who donate hundreds to the homeless shelter and nothing to the church would fit.
Is because the current incarnation supports them and not any newcomers. Bundling, zero-rating services, higher speeds on networks exclusive to Google/Amazon/Netflix and selective data caps all while maintaining the âoecommon carrierâ status helps them a bunch. Losing Obamaâ(TM)s Net ââ(TM)Neutralityâ would level the playing field again to where they all have to play to the same rules or lose common carrier.
Huh? Can you please expand on that, because it seems like self-contradictory nonsense to me.
Case #2 in point, Google's execs regularly fly their Boeing 767 into and out of government owned Moffett Field rather than "fight the lines" at San Jose International a mere 4 or 5 more miles down the road.
That's not a very good example. NASA got a pretty good deal there, gaining access to regular use of the Google jets, saving them several million dollars per year, and then later $1.2B for a lease of Hangar One, saving them millions more in annual maintenance expenses in addition to the cash.
this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace
This phrasing makes it sound like they were helping Google to block apps. What happened was that they requested that Google block tethering apps on devices on their networks, and Google complied with their request. It can be argued that Google should have refused, since the FCC rules around the 4G spectrum specifically disallowed what the carriers were trying to do. On the other hand, I could see Google deciding that it wasn't their place to enforce the FCC's rules, and that there was no reason to stand on principle and possibly piss the carriers off when the FCC would do it. It's also entirely possible that the people at Google who made the decision to comply with the request were completely unaware of all of these issues and just complied with a carrier's request to control the use of their own network.
It's also worth noting that the rules about the 4G spectrum that the FCC used to reverse this block were net neutrality rules put in place at Google's request: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2. There are more "big donors" (those who give over $1000) among Conservatives than Liberals 4. Religious people (usually more on the Conservative side of things) tend to overwhelmingly give to charities as compared to non-religious
Subtract out church donations, then look at the numbers.
(I should point out that I give large amounts of money to my church. I'd actually like to believe that religious people are more giving overall, but I don't think it's true.)
Myself, I'll have to have scenery to avoid sickness.
It had better be the scenery outside the car, displayed with very low latency, or you'll get sick. One of the biggest factors inducing motion sickness is when the motion reported by the inner ears doesn't match the motion reported by the eyes. This is why many people can't read or watch a movie in a moving vehicle.
OTOH, if the car's screens projected a book or a movie on the displays, but made them appear as though they were on a very large billboard (which somehow kept up with the car), complete with appropriate movement as the car bounces and jolts, then you probably could watch a movie or read just as well as you could look out a window.
Does the eclipse magnify or something? 6 seconds is extremely short. Even 30 seconds is somewhat short. You would think if staring at the sun for such a short time caused such significant damage it would be a far more common and widely known problem.
It does cause significant damage and it is a widely-known problem. But the sun puts out enough light that we reflexively close our eyes or look away. During an eclipse, the total volume of light is greatly reduced, which defeats much of our automatic self-defense. However, the sliver of sun that remains has the same intensity as the whole thing, meaning it does the same damage as staring at the whole sun, just in a smaller region.
Other than a lack of an upfront NDA, there is very little difference between this scenario and a security consultant being hired for red team testing.
Bug bounties aren't typically done under any sort of upfront NDA either. So I think the only real difference between this and business as usual is that Florida Man downloaded a bunch of company data. Normal ethical hackers would find the vulnerability and then report it without using it. At most they might do a small test to verify that it is exploitable the way they think it is, but they wouldn't proceed to access data they should not have.
Yeah, you're old. There's this new thing called "Google" that lets you find information about pretty much anything.:P
(I suppose you could argue that the information should have been included in the summary. I don't really think that was necessary, though. All you really needed to know was that someone has begun building luggage with computers and batteries built in, and the FAA has a problem with it. The details of what the smart luggage does don't really matter.)
WTF is "smart luggage"?
Well, the top result on a web search found one example, described as:
The SC 1 is the World’s smartest suitcase with advanced features including Robotic Biometric Lock, Global Tracker, Digital lift-less weighing system, Smart Battery, Bluetooth Audiophone, Proximity Sensor / Anti-theft Alerts, and full System Diagnostics that you control through your smart phone with the Planet Traveler APP. In addition to the app features the SC 1 also has a Hybrid Power Source, 3 USB Charging Ports featuring a 2.4 A turbo-charge USB port, Tamper Proof Zippers, Mobile Device storage compartment with RFID protection
Why would I want it?
Well, per that description, you'd want it if you'd like to:
Open your luggage with your fingerprint, rather than fiddling with little combination wheels or key locks.
Be able to locate where in the world your luggage is (I avoid this problem by never checking bags, but it's a real one).
Be able to know how heavy your bag is without putting it on a scale.
Have a portable power bank in your bag, for recharging your phone
Have a handsfree speaker for your phone, or a speaker for playing music from your phone (presumably both with higher quality than your tiny phone speaker can do).
Have your phone notify you if your bag is nearby, or if it's being stolen (also note the tracker).
The rest of the stuff looks unrelated to the "smart" features.
Is it even useful anymore if you have to take the battery out of it when traveling?
Well, the FAA doesn't say you have to take it out when traveling, only when checking. And, yeah, that would seem to eliminate much of the value of the global tracker. The rest of the stuff would still be useful, I think.
...the five members of the team are not all of equal value, because the one woman brings something that none of her colleagues have, a woman's perspective.
You're saying there are innate differences due to gender.
I said nothing of the sort. I said a different perspective, which derives primarily from different life experience. Would you seriously try to argue that women and men have the same life experiences? No innate difference at all is required to have a different way of seeing the world.
As it happens, I believe there is ample evidence, both in common experience and in formal studies, that there are innate differences between men and women, in the sense of slightly different statistical distributions of abilities. Individual variation absolutely dwarfs these statistical biases, though, so there's no whatsoever point in applying gender stereotypes to evaluate a given individual.
One gender could do something the other couldn't. Then wouldn't those differences mean women and men are not necessarily equally effective?
Not at all. Your thinking is rather muddy. You're conflating several different things.
And if that's the case, then wouldn't different pay could be justified by different productivity?
Different pay absolutely could and should be justified by different productivity. That said, my experience in the field of software engineering, is that if there's a systematic difference in productivity it's in favor of women. I suspect that's not a result of inherently greater capability in female engineers, but of various selection biases against them, which collectively mean that a woman has to be better than her male peers to be perceived to be as good.
Or to put it simply, if you accept there are innate differences between the genders, then you must necessarily accept different pay, hiring ratio and other such metrics can be a natural outcome due to those differences.
Utter nonsense.
Oh, I suppose if you were choosing your employees by randomly sampling the population as a whole, you might well see the slight differences in the distribution of abilities reflected in your employee performance. But I don't think there's a company in the world that hires a statistically-valid random sample. The mere concept is ludicrous.
No, companies hire by trying to evaluate likely candidates' performance. Particularly at the upper tier of companies, those with the wealth and prestige to try to hire the best, you can assume that anyone they hire is well above the mean, where a fraction of a point difference in means is completely irrelevant. But it's not a random sample even of high-performing individuals. There are also a lot of selection biases of different types at work, individual and systemic.
Basically, there is almost no reason whatsoever to expect that slight differences in distribution of ability (and they really are slight) would cause the large differences in employee population that we see and every reason to expect that the differences we see are a result of bias. Note that bias need not be intentional to be real. In fact it's easy to construct plausible scenarios in when everyone is trying hard to be completely meritocratic and the result is completely unmeritocratic.
But, just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're right, that it is the innate differences, and not a raft of other social issues, that create the recent paucity of women in software engineering (ignoring the obvious question of why it hasn't always been the case). The clear implication is that the rare women with the talent and interest for the job would be significantly more valuable to a company, precisely because of their rarity. If there really were so few women who could both do the job and bring a different way of seeing things, those women should be recruited more aggressively, accorded higher status and paid more than their male peers.
No one deserves the results of biased treatment - neither men with pay bonus nor women without.
I think, though, that an argument can be made for a pay bonus for women, in industries where they're less common.
Based on the idea that diverse teams are more effective, more creative or more productive, due to the value of a diversity of viewpoints, it's clear to me that the members of the team that bring said diverse viewpoints provide additional value above and beyond their competence. That is, if you have a team of four men and one woman, all of equal cognitive ability, experience, talent, focus, etc., etc., etc., the five members of the team are not all of equal value, because the one woman brings something that none of her colleagues have, a woman's perspective.
I think it would be entirely appropriate to ensure equal base pay for equal ability, then to estimate the additional team effectiveness due to diversity and to distribute a bonus equal to a percentage of that increase to the team members who provide it. How to estimate the boost is a challenge, particularly when it comes in the form of small but crucial changes in the product, to better address a wider user population. It may be difficult to identify that those changes were even made, since it's not possible to determine how the product would have evolved with a less-diverse team, but given enough data it seems like some typical value could estimated.
Note that the same would apply to men, even white men, in contexts where they are in the minority, and where their viewpoint is the "diverse" one. There's nothing discriminatory or unfair in this notion. Quite the opposite.
People will talk of being in orbit as being in "zero-g" but they experience gravity like everyone else but the forces from traveling at such incredible speeds cancels out the gravity.
This is a terrible description. Bordering on nonsense. There is no "force from traveling at such incredible speeds", and nothing "cancels out gravity".
What's happening is that the ISS and everything in it are both constantly accelerating towards the earth (falling, hence the name "free fall") and moving at high speed perpendicular to the direction of the fall. Essentially, this perpendicular velocity means that they continually "miss" the Earth as they fall. More precisely, the effect of the gravitational acceleration curves their path from the straight line that would otherwise be dictated by inertia.
Even that, though, doesn't really get to the heart of the reason for the experience of zero gee. The heart of the reason is that the only significant force acting on them is acting on the station and everything inside it equally (well, very nearly equally; which is why it's technically called "microgravity", not "zero gravity"). It's the lack of differential acceleration that matters. This would be no different at all if the perpendicular velocity could somehow be instantly removed. They'd all still be pulled down by gravity with the same acceleration and so there would be no differential acceleration. Of course, without the perpendicular velocity their fall wouldn't miss the Earth, so soon enough they would experience differential acceleration, as the exterior of the station began to impact matter which would impart a contrary acceleration.
It's also worth pointing out that there is absolutely no difference between being in a container in free fall and being in a container that is motionless (assuming that had any meaning) in intergalactic space where there are no significant gravitational forces. In the absence of differential acceleration -- or perhaps I should say relative acceleration -- objects experience zero gravity. This was Einstein's core innovation, the idea that those two situations not only appear the same, but in fact there is no difference at all.
Yep, diversity applies to pretty much everyone....except old white guys....
Actually it doesn't apply to white guys at all, regardless of age. Even suggesting diversity could ever positively involve a white male will get you fired.
FWIW, white guys from community colleges (and many other underrepresented colleges and universities) are considered diversity hires at Google.
I'm a big fan of Community Colleges for one reason, they're inexpensive.
Me too! (And I'm a graduate of Weber State University, since you mention that, and I do campus outreach/recruiting to WSU on behalf of my employer, Google. Weber isn't a CC, but it's one step up, and many WSU students start at SLCC or similar).
I think we can all agree that you don't need a degree to be a good software engineer
I'm less certain of that. Oh, the piece of paper is meaningless, but the education in CS and SWE fundamentals is important. While it's possible to acquire it auto-didactically, relatively few people can do that effectively.
In the end, it's how well you can program, not what school you went to.
I'm not sure I agree with that, either, though in the opposite direction most people interpret it. I think where you went to school is strongly correlated with your background and life experience, which makes it a good proxy for diversity. I mean diversity in the sense of "people who are different from most in the field", rather than "people who are members of specific minority groups". Diversity of viewpoints has actual value to employers, regardless of its origin. You don't get that from yet another white guy from Stanford or MIT, but you might get it from a white guy from WSU.
That scheme seems very unlikely to pass the IRS' smell test. I can see it happening one year, but the IRS would tighten the regulations immediately. They have large discretion with figuring out how to determine income, for exactly that reason.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a different man than I was 6 months ago when I fucked your best friend. I've grown SOOO much since then!
One thing to consider is that corporations can and do change a lot faster than people, because corporations are just amalgamations of people. Swap out important decisionmakers, or let a different person rise to a decisionmaking position, and you may get completely different decisions. For that matter, if you ask the same question of two different parts of a corporation, you'll usually get two (or more) different answers.
In the case of Facebook, it seems like corporate direction is still in the hands of the same man, though. He could be quite sincere about having seen that his company now plays a different role than it did, or maybe not. Tough to say.
Religious people donate both more to religious charities and to secular charities.
https://www.hoover.org/researc...
Interesting. Thanks. I've seen several studies that say the opposite, so clearly I need to dig deeper into the question to identify the differences in methodology. Unfortunately, the article you link is very light on methodological detail and it's not clear if the author has even published that information.
One guess, though, is that I think the other studies measured non-religious giving in dollars, while the author appears to have measured the probability of giving something. So, religious people who donate thousands to their church and a few dollars to the local homeless shelter vs non-religious people who donate hundreds to the homeless shelter and nothing to the church would fit.
Is because the current incarnation supports them and not any newcomers. Bundling, zero-rating services, higher speeds on networks exclusive to Google/Amazon/Netflix and selective data caps all while maintaining the âoecommon carrierâ status helps them a bunch. Losing Obamaâ(TM)s Net ââ(TM)Neutralityâ would level the playing field again to where they all have to play to the same rules or lose common carrier.
Huh? Can you please expand on that, because it seems like self-contradictory nonsense to me.
Case #2 in point, Google's execs regularly fly their Boeing 767 into and out of government owned Moffett Field rather than "fight the lines" at San Jose International a mere 4 or 5 more miles down the road.
That's not a very good example. NASA got a pretty good deal there, gaining access to regular use of the Google jets, saving them several million dollars per year, and then later $1.2B for a lease of Hangar One, saving them millions more in annual maintenance expenses in addition to the cash.
this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace
This phrasing makes it sound like they were helping Google to block apps. What happened was that they requested that Google block tethering apps on devices on their networks, and Google complied with their request. It can be argued that Google should have refused, since the FCC rules around the 4G spectrum specifically disallowed what the carriers were trying to do. On the other hand, I could see Google deciding that it wasn't their place to enforce the FCC's rules, and that there was no reason to stand on principle and possibly piss the carriers off when the FCC would do it. It's also entirely possible that the people at Google who made the decision to comply with the request were completely unaware of all of these issues and just complied with a carrier's request to control the use of their own network.
It's also worth noting that the rules about the 4G spectrum that the FCC used to reverse this block were net neutrality rules put in place at Google's request: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2. There are more "big donors" (those who give over $1000) among Conservatives than Liberals
4. Religious people (usually more on the Conservative side of things) tend to overwhelmingly give to charities as compared to non-religious
Subtract out church donations, then look at the numbers.
(I should point out that I give large amounts of money to my church. I'd actually like to believe that religious people are more giving overall, but I don't think it's true.)
If you are really serious about wanting a fitness tracker, the Apple Watch is so much better than any other choice
What makes it so much better? And are you including dedicated fitness trackers?
Yeah, until the first bored teenager with a laptop at an overpass has his way with the mesh network of cars...
Meh. Rocks are much easier.
... it's switch on your autopilot for a 5% discount.
Tomorrow, it will be manual controls disabled unless you pay the 500% self-drive (i.e.: think "self-serve", you get to drive it your self!) premium.
Yep, and at that point traffic fatalities will drop to a miniscule fraction of what they are now. This will be a good thing.
Myself, I'll have to have scenery to avoid sickness.
It had better be the scenery outside the car, displayed with very low latency, or you'll get sick. One of the biggest factors inducing motion sickness is when the motion reported by the inner ears doesn't match the motion reported by the eyes. This is why many people can't read or watch a movie in a moving vehicle.
OTOH, if the car's screens projected a book or a movie on the displays, but made them appear as though they were on a very large billboard (which somehow kept up with the car), complete with appropriate movement as the car bounces and jolts, then you probably could watch a movie or read just as well as you could look out a window.
Does the eclipse magnify or something? 6 seconds is extremely short. Even 30 seconds is somewhat short. You would think if staring at the sun for such a short time caused such significant damage it would be a far more common and widely known problem.
It does cause significant damage and it is a widely-known problem. But the sun puts out enough light that we reflexively close our eyes or look away. During an eclipse, the total volume of light is greatly reduced, which defeats much of our automatic self-defense. However, the sliver of sun that remains has the same intensity as the whole thing, meaning it does the same damage as staring at the whole sun, just in a smaller region.
So you're saying that when a business refuses to attach their brands and name to your published message, that is the definition of "soft censorship"?
I'm saying that's what some people call it.
Is it wrong for a business to pick and choose who they with to associate with and who they wish to support?
I don't think it's wrong at all.
By leaving the videos up and just demonetized no one can say "Google's trying to silence me man!".
They can, and do. They just call it "soft censorship", saying that Google is silencing them by refusing to pay them.
Other than a lack of an upfront NDA, there is very little difference between this scenario and a security consultant being hired for red team testing.
Bug bounties aren't typically done under any sort of upfront NDA either. So I think the only real difference between this and business as usual is that Florida Man downloaded a bunch of company data. Normal ethical hackers would find the vulnerability and then report it without using it. At most they might do a small test to verify that it is exploitable the way they think it is, but they wouldn't proceed to access data they should not have.
If that perspective leads to making different decisions (better decisions, as you claim)
Sigh. Your inability to read means there's no point in discussing this with you.
Sounds like a waste of money gimic. Will they make the case robustness enough to survive the way airlines and airports treat out baggage?
Well, it's carbon fiber, similar to a bag that I have. Mine has proven to be very durable.
Copyright's are easy to explain and understand.
Correct use of apostrophes, now, that's tough.
Ah yes, the grammar Nazi fails with commas.
I was more a joke than grammar Nazi-ism. In any case, there was nothing amiss in my use of commas.
Yeah, you're old. There's this new thing called "Google" that lets you find information about pretty much anything. :P
(I suppose you could argue that the information should have been included in the summary. I don't really think that was necessary, though. All you really needed to know was that someone has begun building luggage with computers and batteries built in, and the FAA has a problem with it. The details of what the smart luggage does don't really matter.)
WTF is "smart luggage"?
Well, the top result on a web search found one example, described as:
Why would I want it?
Well, per that description, you'd want it if you'd like to:
Open your luggage with your fingerprint, rather than fiddling with little combination wheels or key locks.
Be able to locate where in the world your luggage is (I avoid this problem by never checking bags, but it's a real one).
Be able to know how heavy your bag is without putting it on a scale.
Have a portable power bank in your bag, for recharging your phone
Have a handsfree speaker for your phone, or a speaker for playing music from your phone (presumably both with higher quality than your tiny phone speaker can do).
Have your phone notify you if your bag is nearby, or if it's being stolen (also note the tracker).
The rest of the stuff looks unrelated to the "smart" features.
Is it even useful anymore if you have to take the battery out of it when traveling?
Well, the FAA doesn't say you have to take it out when traveling, only when checking. And, yeah, that would seem to eliminate much of the value of the global tracker. The rest of the stuff would still be useful, I think.
...the five members of the team are not all of equal value, because the one woman brings something that none of her colleagues have, a woman's perspective.
You're saying there are innate differences due to gender.
I said nothing of the sort. I said a different perspective, which derives primarily from different life experience. Would you seriously try to argue that women and men have the same life experiences? No innate difference at all is required to have a different way of seeing the world.
As it happens, I believe there is ample evidence, both in common experience and in formal studies, that there are innate differences between men and women, in the sense of slightly different statistical distributions of abilities. Individual variation absolutely dwarfs these statistical biases, though, so there's no whatsoever point in applying gender stereotypes to evaluate a given individual.
One gender could do something the other couldn't. Then wouldn't those differences mean women and men are not necessarily equally effective?
Not at all. Your thinking is rather muddy. You're conflating several different things.
And if that's the case, then wouldn't different pay could be justified by different productivity?
Different pay absolutely could and should be justified by different productivity. That said, my experience in the field of software engineering, is that if there's a systematic difference in productivity it's in favor of women. I suspect that's not a result of inherently greater capability in female engineers, but of various selection biases against them, which collectively mean that a woman has to be better than her male peers to be perceived to be as good.
Or to put it simply, if you accept there are innate differences between the genders, then you must necessarily accept different pay, hiring ratio and other such metrics can be a natural outcome due to those differences.
Utter nonsense.
Oh, I suppose if you were choosing your employees by randomly sampling the population as a whole, you might well see the slight differences in the distribution of abilities reflected in your employee performance. But I don't think there's a company in the world that hires a statistically-valid random sample. The mere concept is ludicrous.
No, companies hire by trying to evaluate likely candidates' performance. Particularly at the upper tier of companies, those with the wealth and prestige to try to hire the best, you can assume that anyone they hire is well above the mean, where a fraction of a point difference in means is completely irrelevant. But it's not a random sample even of high-performing individuals. There are also a lot of selection biases of different types at work, individual and systemic.
Basically, there is almost no reason whatsoever to expect that slight differences in distribution of ability (and they really are slight) would cause the large differences in employee population that we see and every reason to expect that the differences we see are a result of bias. Note that bias need not be intentional to be real. In fact it's easy to construct plausible scenarios in when everyone is trying hard to be completely meritocratic and the result is completely unmeritocratic.
But, just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're right, that it is the innate differences, and not a raft of other social issues, that create the recent paucity of women in software engineering (ignoring the obvious question of why it hasn't always been the case). The clear implication is that the rare women with the talent and interest for the job would be significantly more valuable to a company, precisely because of their rarity. If there really were so few women who could both do the job and bring a different way of seeing things, those women should be recruited more aggressively, accorded higher status and paid more than their male peers.
No one deserves the results of biased treatment - neither men with pay bonus nor women without.
I think, though, that an argument can be made for a pay bonus for women, in industries where they're less common.
Based on the idea that diverse teams are more effective, more creative or more productive, due to the value of a diversity of viewpoints, it's clear to me that the members of the team that bring said diverse viewpoints provide additional value above and beyond their competence. That is, if you have a team of four men and one woman, all of equal cognitive ability, experience, talent, focus, etc., etc., etc., the five members of the team are not all of equal value, because the one woman brings something that none of her colleagues have, a woman's perspective.
I think it would be entirely appropriate to ensure equal base pay for equal ability, then to estimate the additional team effectiveness due to diversity and to distribute a bonus equal to a percentage of that increase to the team members who provide it. How to estimate the boost is a challenge, particularly when it comes in the form of small but crucial changes in the product, to better address a wider user population. It may be difficult to identify that those changes were even made, since it's not possible to determine how the product would have evolved with a less-diverse team, but given enough data it seems like some typical value could estimated.
Note that the same would apply to men, even white men, in contexts where they are in the minority, and where their viewpoint is the "diverse" one. There's nothing discriminatory or unfair in this notion. Quite the opposite.
Copyright's are easy to explain and understand.
Correct use of apostrophes, now, that's tough.
People will talk of being in orbit as being in "zero-g" but they experience gravity like everyone else but the forces from traveling at such incredible speeds cancels out the gravity.
This is a terrible description. Bordering on nonsense. There is no "force from traveling at such incredible speeds", and nothing "cancels out gravity".
What's happening is that the ISS and everything in it are both constantly accelerating towards the earth (falling, hence the name "free fall") and moving at high speed perpendicular to the direction of the fall. Essentially, this perpendicular velocity means that they continually "miss" the Earth as they fall. More precisely, the effect of the gravitational acceleration curves their path from the straight line that would otherwise be dictated by inertia.
Even that, though, doesn't really get to the heart of the reason for the experience of zero gee. The heart of the reason is that the only significant force acting on them is acting on the station and everything inside it equally (well, very nearly equally; which is why it's technically called "microgravity", not "zero gravity"). It's the lack of differential acceleration that matters. This would be no different at all if the perpendicular velocity could somehow be instantly removed. They'd all still be pulled down by gravity with the same acceleration and so there would be no differential acceleration. Of course, without the perpendicular velocity their fall wouldn't miss the Earth, so soon enough they would experience differential acceleration, as the exterior of the station began to impact matter which would impart a contrary acceleration.
It's also worth pointing out that there is absolutely no difference between being in a container in free fall and being in a container that is motionless (assuming that had any meaning) in intergalactic space where there are no significant gravitational forces. In the absence of differential acceleration -- or perhaps I should say relative acceleration -- objects experience zero gravity. This was Einstein's core innovation, the idea that those two situations not only appear the same, but in fact there is no difference at all.
Yep, diversity applies to pretty much everyone....except old white guys....
Actually it doesn't apply to white guys at all, regardless of age. Even suggesting diversity could ever positively involve a white male will get you fired.
FWIW, white guys from community colleges (and many other underrepresented colleges and universities) are considered diversity hires at Google.
I'm a big fan of Community Colleges for one reason, they're inexpensive.
Me too! (And I'm a graduate of Weber State University, since you mention that, and I do campus outreach/recruiting to WSU on behalf of my employer, Google. Weber isn't a CC, but it's one step up, and many WSU students start at SLCC or similar).
I think we can all agree that you don't need a degree to be a good software engineer
I'm less certain of that. Oh, the piece of paper is meaningless, but the education in CS and SWE fundamentals is important. While it's possible to acquire it auto-didactically, relatively few people can do that effectively.
In the end, it's how well you can program, not what school you went to.
I'm not sure I agree with that, either, though in the opposite direction most people interpret it. I think where you went to school is strongly correlated with your background and life experience, which makes it a good proxy for diversity. I mean diversity in the sense of "people who are different from most in the field", rather than "people who are members of specific minority groups". Diversity of viewpoints has actual value to employers, regardless of its origin. You don't get that from yet another white guy from Stanford or MIT, but you might get it from a white guy from WSU.
That scheme seems very unlikely to pass the IRS' smell test. I can see it happening one year, but the IRS would tighten the regulations immediately. They have large discretion with figuring out how to determine income, for exactly that reason.