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User: mark_reh

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  1. Re:No, school should not be year-round. on Slashdot Asks: Should Schooling Be Year-Round? · · Score: 1

    My "freedom loving" countrymen who want it that way are the guys who run the big companies. They, of course, get all the time off they want, and their jobs resemble time off anyway (golf and ski outings, dining out with others of their sort and politicians, etc.).

    I used to work for HP in the early 90s. Every year the HR dept would host big meetings in which they announced the annual pay raises. They would come out and do a power point presentation describing how they had got together with the HR people from every big engineering employer in the SW US to define job title, duties, pay and benefits. Then they would announce that all the engineers were getting a 2.5% pay increase for the coming year and everyone would cheer, ignoring the fact that they were just told that HP had been colluding to limit pay and benefits with other major engineering companies.

    I had been there for a number of years and had my annual vacation up to 3 weeks (not that I could ever actually take it). I interviewed for work elsewhere and found the pay offered at the new positions was exactly the same, but that my vacation time would reset to 2 weeks (not that I could ever use it). After many months of looking I finally took a job at a Japanese company that wasn't part of the network of collusion and got a hefty pay increase and even additional vacation (not that I could ever use it).

    When you're an engineer and you want to take your vacation time in the US they came at you with "we're at a critical point in this project- you can't take off now", but you're ALWAYS at a critical point in some project, so you can almost never take off more than a day at a time. When you're young, dumb, and have no family you take this abuse, but as you get older and start pushing back they squeeze you out.

  2. Re:No, school should not be year-round. on Slashdot Asks: Should Schooling Be Year-Round? · · Score: 1

    The US is not a reasonable employment environment. In the US you are "given" typically 2 weeks, but in most professional occupations, you are lucky to actually get 1 week off in a year. When I was an engineer if I tried to take more than a day or two at a time I was given the hairy eyeball by management and branded "not a team player".

    The hours worked per year in the US are probably the highest of any "developed" country. Do you think it's because we want it that way? I don't know anyone who doesn't want to take 6 weeks off per year. One of the main attractions to the teaching profession is the long summer break. It is so attractive that many forego the higher pay in other professions because they want to enjoy their lives a little.

  3. Re:No, school should not be year-round. on Slashdot Asks: Should Schooling Be Year-Round? · · Score: 1

    When you consider the hell their lives will become once they finish school, never getting more than a week or so off in a year, yeah, let them have a little time off ferchrissakes.

    On the other hand, maybe if kids went to school year round they would be able to take off time as adults instead of working 51 weeks per year to try to keep up with smarter people in other countries (who went to school year round as kids).

  4. Re:Athletes? on The ESports Athletes Who Tried To Switch Games · · Score: 1

    Calling golf and bowling sports is stretching the definition of sports.

  5. Re:Non transferable to another game, on The ESports Athletes Who Tried To Switch Games · · Score: 1

    Playing real sports is a social and physical activity. Both can be beneficial.

    Sitting on a couch swilling red bull, munching on funyuns, twitching your thumbs, and tea-bagging your virtual victims hardly compares.

  6. Re:Non transferable to another game, on The ESports Athletes Who Tried To Switch Games · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and someone wins the lottery, too. That doesn't make it a good investment.

    The number of people who make any money at video games vs the number who waste the biggest portion of their lives when they could be learning things is about as miniscule as your chances of winning the lottery. I stand by my assertion that it is a waste of time.

  7. Non transferable to another game, on The ESports Athletes Who Tried To Switch Games · · Score: 0

    and completely useless in real life. Video games are a waste of time and energy like no other.

  8. Why should anyone trust this or any other on Yahoo To Add PGP Encryption For Email · · Score: 1

    encryption? I seem to recall news about 6 months ago that RSA Security took $10M from the NSA for allegedly tweaking a random number generator or some such thing. I know PGP is open source, but who knows enough about both encryption math and programming to actually verify that the code is safe, and why should anyone trust them?

  9. Umm, didn't they mention bad weather on Why Bhutan Might Get Drone Delivery Copters Before Seattle Does · · Score: 1

    as one of the big problems with transportation in Bhutan? How well do quad copters work in bad weather?

    It sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

  10. Will the test include the environment in which on US Intelligence Wants Tools To Tell: Who's the Smartest of Them All? · · Score: 1

    this brain has to function? I mean specifically, does the test account for that brain being surrounded by and overseen by clueless administrators throwing obstacles in that brains path at every turn?

  11. Are you kidding? on Hack an Oscilloscope, Get a DMCA Take-Down Notice From Tektronix · · Score: 1

    No one has any privacy thanks to the government and corporations who both profit from our lack of ability to control who gets to see what data. THAT is the new norm. Tek is going to complain when someone cracks their "security" on hardware and software built into the scope? Why should they be any different from the rest of us?

  12. Re:Funny on Verizon Throttles Data To "Provide Incentive To Limit Usage" · · Score: 1

    A person is a person. A corporation is a legal construct designed to shield the persons who start the corporation from legal responsibility for their corporate actions, deserving of no special protections. This relief of personal liability/responsibility leads to all sorts of abuses, therefore, persons need protection from corporations similar to the way persons need protection from criminal gangs.

  13. Re:Funny on Verizon Throttles Data To "Provide Incentive To Limit Usage" · · Score: 1

    bbbbbbbbut corporations ARE people. The supreme court said so. That's why its legal to buy elections.

  14. Re:Yeah, sure, youbetcha! on The High-Tech Warfare Behind the Israel - Hamas Conflict · · Score: 1

    The locals are being used a human shields ferchrissakes. Are they nuts enough to actually guard the missile launcher that is going to make them a target of Israeli attack?

  15. Re:Yeah, sure, youbetcha! on The High-Tech Warfare Behind the Israel - Hamas Conflict · · Score: 2

    If that thing is what you claim, would anyone in their right mind continue to live anywhere near it?
    I don't care about jobs, businesses, family, etc., if something like that is anywhere near me I get myself and family the f**k away from it as fast as I can. Anyone who doesn't is just plain nuts.

  16. Yeah, sure, youbetcha! on The High-Tech Warfare Behind the Israel - Hamas Conflict · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Anyone who thinks they have dozens of people sitting next to launchers firing rockets each time there is a barrage is mistaken,"

    So let me see if I understand what you're saying: A bunch of guys who are at war set up a rocket launcher with a timer, then go away leaving it unguarded so that anyone can walk up to it and, oh, I don't know, shut it off, blow it up, steal it, etc.?

    Gimme a break.

  17. Re:Wrong premice on Psychology's Replication Battle · · Score: 1

    my psychological disorder compels me to point out the misspelling of "premise"

  18. Re:A bunch of fraudsters... on Psychology's Replication Battle · · Score: 1

    Tom? Is that you?
    Do you know where I can get a copy of Dianetics? I've heard its da bomb!

  19. Re:Tom Clancy thought of it first on US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia · · Score: 1

    Sounds good to me!

  20. The "giga" factory is supposed to be up and on Nevada Construction Project Could Be Tesla/Panasonic Gigafactory · · Score: 1

    running in 2017. If it really is "giga" it damn well better be under construction already.

  21. How "giga" can it be if it's July 2014, on Tesla and Panasonic Have Reached an Agreement On the Gigafactory · · Score: 0

    they haven't started building it yet, and it is supposed to be up and running in 2017? They're still talking about financing. Nope, NOT giga, or not ready in 2017.

  22. Re:I know you're trying to be funny, but... on Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken" · · Score: 1

    I think it had its roots in the civil rights movement, where the key concept- that racial discrimination is bad morphed into ALL discrimination is bad including intellectual and physical ability, hence the handing out of awards to everyone for participating in an activity and the dumbing-down of school grades in a misguided effort to spare the self-esteem of the less "abled".

    In a classic example, right wing Xtian nuts have seized on the recent inability to discriminate against stupid ideas and started pushing ID to be taught along side (and presumably to replace) evolution as if the two concepts were intellectually equivalent.

    In this case, a crap result was called out as such. No names were mentioned, so only those who participated in producing the crap (they know who they are) had their self-esteem taken down a notch.

  23. Re:Their next focus for research should on Newly Discovered Virus Widespread in Human Gut · · Score: 1

    What's a gunt?

  24. uh, on Newly Discovered Virus Widespread in Human Gut · · Score: 1

    it smell like ASS up in here!

  25. Re:They learned this practice from the most on Do Apple and Google Sabotage Older Phones? What the Graphs Don't Show · · Score: 1

    Interesting ideas, but I don't know what any of them have to do with the subject at hand.