I'm probably a minority dwarfed by free-loading readers, but free online NYT access led me to buy a full 7-day a week subscription to the paper.
I used to (and still do) go to Google News for my daily news digest (one of many sources I'd visit). Over time, I noticed that many of the stories I was interested were from either the NY Times or the LA Times. Furthermore, I noticed that for stories I'd read on many sites linked to from Google News, the NY Times (and LA Times) versions were regularly better written and more informative in my opinion.
Due to this (and the fact that I live in the suburbs of NYC) I started to regularly read the full paper online on the NYT website. After a few months of this, I decided that I found this quality reporting valuable, and worth supporting. Furthermore, I relocated a little further away from the city and was now commuting by train instead of by car. So I then decided to by a subscription. Now I have the paper delivered every day, and they have me as a full, loyal subscriber. All because of the free online access they provided.
But for everyone of me, there are probably a lot of free-loaders.
Days of Garage Inventor long gone(if ever existed)
on
Scientific R&D At Home?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It's great that you'd like to tinker around and play with stuff at home. You may learn some things, and it will definitely present with some interesting engineering problems. But true scientific R&D, where you discover something new, forget about it for the most part.
The only domains where a lone tinkerer can still make an impact and "discover" something new is in pure math, or algorithmic research. And even there, it's a rare thing.
The days of the lone researcher are long since past, if they ever really existed in modern history. Sure during the Renaissance and through the 1800s and early 1900s a lone researcher could discover/invent something new. However, even during the latter part of the aforementioned time period, the individuals in questions (Maxwell, Faraday, Watt, Bell, etc) often had years/decades of experience and/or education in the fields they made discoveries in. And the myth of the lone inventor during this latter part wasn't really true, for example Edison had a large lab full of employees for his research.
In the contemporary time period, it's HIGHLY unlikely (I'm just reluctant to say impossible). All the low level hanging fruit in most fields has been mined. There's a reason that PhDs take a long time, there's a lot to learn and catch up on. Also, most discoveries, especially in basic science ( Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy) require lots of expensive capital equipment and labs to do. And often, it's not just one scientist, but an entire team of collaborators working on a problem from many different angles.
Now, there may be some interesting inventions/engineering solutions a lone inventor can PERHAPS come up with, but they wouldn't be new scientific discoveries. Also, as another refinement of my point, there are some things an individual can still do, like say perhaps discover a new species, but not in their backyard (unless you live in Brazil). Even then, you need a commitment of resources and time to explore the still hidden parts of the world, in the rainforest, or deep under the sea.
So, while the concept of the lone scientist is romantic, exciting and inspiring, in the modern era it's unrealistic in my opinion.
Re:Why can't we do better? Are you fucking kidding
on
Volcano Futures
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's not just the airline bean counters who are worried about this. I'm being directly affected. I was in Europe for work, and was supposed to fly back to the US last Sun. I've been stuck here since. I'm quite desperate to get back home and back to my life.
It may seem cool to be stuck in Europe, but in actuality it's not. It feels semi-prison like in that I'm stuck in a place (albeit a very nice, historical and cultural one) and unable to get home. Things are going on at work, with friends, family and I'm all the way over here spending money like crazy because everything costs more when traveling (hotels, meals, phone calls, hotel internet charges, etc). I'm just lucky because I was traveling for work and can expense. I've met others here who aren't so lucky (one forms a sense of camaraderie with other stranded passengers on meets).
And it's a lot of other industries and businesses too. The world is incredibly interconnected.
The main complaint isn't from some bean counters trying to override safety. It's that a blanket ban is just unrealistic and misinformed. There has to be somewhere between NO FLIGHTS and NORMAL. What is it? Are there safe corridors? Are there certain types of planes that can fly? Are there certain elevations? Noone knows, and worse yet, noone is really tracking the ACTUAL ash cloud, it's all just computer models predicting. Let's see where the damned thing actually is.
Those are some of the complaints the airlines, and now us passengers who've been glued to the news for almost a week, are wondering.
The fact that so many flights flew ok yesterday indicates that the whole situation wasn't carefully thought through. Look, I'm all for putting safety first. If there is a good chance I'll die flying, I'll agree to be stuck in Europe for another month until it's safe. But, please can we first make sure it really is that dangerous?
Reading about that kill switch, I'm reminded about the quote from Jurassic Park about how Life always finds a way. I'm not sure that say 20-30 years post development when we may need a kill switch that it'll still work. Because things probably won't go haywire to the point of needing a kill switch right away. And even if they do, if the problems get worked out and these things become more common, I don't know if the kill switch tech will be updated with each iteration to account for possible evolutionary changes and adaptations.
The knowledge that government agencies are using open source tools probably does a lot to legitimize such software. Even if you can't publicize it, you can probably let other government agencies/depts know what you use and how it helps you and how it helps with your budget (crucially important to every government entity) and encourage them to adopt similar practices; hell help them out with doing so and making the transition.
Eventually, the word will get out through suppliers, vendors, potential news articles, etc and will do more to help the movement than small monetary donations. Whaddya mean that program x is unreliable, the fire dept/tax agency/welfare dept, etc uses it?
This story is interesting and timely because I plan on buying a new desktop in the next 2 weeks, just waiting for the right deal to come out, hopefully on Cyber Monday. While not getting a server, I will be getting Windows 7. I had been planning on an i7, but now am hesitant. Is there a problem with these processors for home use/gaming purposes under Windows 7? Or would I better off going with a Quad Core?
I've been looking for a fairly cheap ~$200-300 netbook that runs WinXP and is capable of playing videos. I spend about 3 hours commuting roundtrip on the train each day (NYC Metropolitan area) and would love to have a cheap machine that I could edit documents on and watch vids (DVD or otherwise) on. Either a USB or Ethernet port is a must for media/data transfer. Wifi access not necessary.
Does the/. community have any recommendations? Woot often has some really good ones for about $150, but they run Linux, and I know, it's a hearesy here, but I'm looking for a WinXP one. Thanks.
Genentech Inc. Chairman Arthur Levinson also serves as a director on both boards. The Feds are investigating that as well. What about him? The news story keep mentioning that Schmidt would recuse himself from discussions related to Google, what about Levinson? Did he recuse himself from both Google and Apple meetings when the other was being discussed?
On a related note, my other biggest pet peeve is the slow people who speed up when they see you trying to pass them so that you can't, and then slow down again.
IMO, a lot of problems could be avoided if people respected all the rules of the road, and not just the official ones. For example, I respect anyone's right to drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable with. If that's at, above or below the speed limit I don't care. However, no matter how fast you're going, if there's someone behind you who wishes to go faster, move over to the right. It's not your job to set speed limits, the cops do that, and they exercise discretion too depending on the traffic and time of the day.
What gets me really frustrated is people in the left lane, going at or slightly below the speed limit, with a LONG line behind them. It's situations like these that cause problems, as people who wish to go faster try to get around the slowpokes.
In my opinion, if people simply moved over for a faster car, kept the left lane open for passing/faster traffic, then the vast majority of weaving cars and "jerks" on the highways would disappear.
It's a big peeve of mine. I drive faster than the speed limit, I'll admit it. If I'm in the wrong, the cops will pull me over. However, get out of the left lane if you're going slow and there's 10 cars tailgating behind you!
The original Wing Commander games were great. For some reason the gaming industry has moved away from space fighter simulators. Which is disappointing, that was an early genre that was a lot of fun.
I particularly have fond memories of Wing Commander Armada, which combined in strategy elements. You had to explore planets, mine resources and build factories and ships, and you had to do it carefully. When your fleet met the enemies, it switched to the traditional fighter simulator. Even then though, you had a fleet of ships with goals, and you could switch control between them.
I'd love to see Wing Commander, or some other space fighter, done with today's technology.
I have some services, such as Vonage, that attempt to provide a speech-to-text transcription of your voicemail to your email. However, being someone not originally born in the US, many of my voicemails tend to be in another language.
Staying in touch with my family is very important to me, and if I'm missing their voicemails, then I can't use these services. It will be a long time before a lot of the world's languages have speech-to-text conversion and an automatic service could recognize which language is being spoken and then use the appropriate conversion.
So I don't think voicemail will go away at all, perhaps become less common.
That's because 5-10 years ago, there wasn't a contemporary Dr. Who on TV. Robot designers had no clue with our limited human intelligence on how to get robots up the stairs. Upon the reemergence of the new Dr. Who, that one command "ELEVATE" and the new race of Daleks taught us humans to imagine robots going up stairs.
Well.... Probably it just refocused us.
Well... It just triggered something in our imagination.
Sonic Screwdriver technology? What?! What?! What?! That's still waiting, especially for the dampners and the red setting.
It wasn't supposed to go nova now, but it was part of God's plan so that our ancestors would know the way here after peeking in the Temple. They could've had more time to look around, but their enemies were right behind them.
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
Honestly, I thought it was weak. If you watched "BSG The Last Frakkin Special" that aired last Monday, there was a key comment in there. Ron Moore said that they were at a loss on how to end the series, and then they walked in and decided that it's about the characters.
That told me that they didn't know how to end everything, and decided to fumble through it and fill up time with these character things.
There were so many big stories that needed more elaboration, what was Starbuck, how does the one true god fit in? There was mention that he was a jealous god of the other Lords of Kobol. No mention of them? Starbuck, the one who believed in the polytheistic Lords of Kobol so much that she went back against orders for Athena's Arrow was instead an agent of the monotheistic Cylon God? That's it, head six and baltar, their story just ends so quickly? Things didn't really jive, and that disappointed me. After the whole Tigh and Caprica-6 love each other so much that they had a baby, and Ellen was jealous, that just ended? All of a sudden, we find out Baltar, the womanizer, loved Caprica-6?
It was not thought out, and by the end, they had no idea what to do. I'm really disapointed in BSG. And this ending makes me appreciate Babylon 5 even more. The value of a well thought out, planned and executed story arc where all the pieces fit together because they've been planned that way is AWESOME.
For about 4 and a half years, BSG was the best show I'd ever seen. However, ever since they came back with this last batch of 10 episodes, it's been weak. The big issues, the analysis of humanity in dire straits, the realistic depiction of events, I felt that all fell apart. BSG was still a good show, and the ending sentimental and did provide closure. It wasn't bad, but I had so much more high expectations of the ending, for it all to tie in rather than what we got. I mean that's why us SciFi fans are such continuity freaks, we want it all to fit, that's what makes it more real for us.
One thing you may find is that generic coding jobs may be boring/unexciting for you and also hard to get into. I would advise you leverage your current experience, and see where new software may help in your current field, or what is it about the existing software that you feel is lacking and/or needs improvement.
It will also make it easier for you to get a job that way. "I don't have software experience, but due to x years of experience in this field, I understand the ins and outs and that will be invaluable while I build up software design and implementation experience."
If you were a biologist, look at bioinformatics, if you were in real estate look at companies building better MLS tracking software, if you were a teacher, look at jobs with a company like Blackboard, you get the idea.
I think that the whole premise of the question is false. The question being asked is whether nice guys who share credit and accept responsibility will get axed in favor of mean guys who steal credit and ID scapegoats.
I actually RTFA (I know, a/. blasphemy) and I don't think that is a valid question. According to the article, the reason "Doug" got the job and "Staurt" the nice guy got fired is that Doug went to their boss and made a case for why it would be better for the boss and the company to retain him instead of Stuart. Now his reasoning was flawed, but Stuart never made such a case. He just assumed that he got fired because he was the nice guy.
Being a nice guy (sharing credit, accepting responsibility) and valuable employee (recognizing your manager's needs and supporting them, being politically aware and astute) are not mutually exclusive.
What Stuart should have done is said "that I am well respected by my team, I keep a mature and professional attitude when mistakes are made (not like Doug who yells at his team). In this uncertain time after layoffs are announced, the remaining people will be nervous and perhaps looking to leave on their own terms. Kelly, I'll make sure that the remaining team stays on target, and achieves all goals, so you look good. Doug said that I cannot make the tough decisions, but look, I've come to you with cogent and well reasoned reasons to layoff the required people in my team, as you requested. I can make the tough decisions, but in a way that keeps the remaining team morale up and productive."
Now Stuart may have actually said that, but TFA doesn't say so. Instead we're left to assume that he just figured as a nice guy he lost his job.
Nice or mean doesn't have much to do with it, being politically aware and understanding office dynamics is everything.
and sometimes (but rarely) sufficient for success in life.
I've seen many technically competent individuals who do not know how to interact, collaborate, and navigate the murky waters of office and societal politics. While their individual work may be good, they do not succeed in their career for various reasons. They do not know how to convince people of the value of their ideas and how to integrate those ideas into larger projects. They cannot maintain relationships with coworkers and bosses. Not sucking up, but perceiving what others need, and assisting them, or doing things as the boss wants to make his/her life easier.
In social situations as well, even beyond the romantic, no man is an island; we are social creatures. Just hanging around with friends, or doing fun activities (even geeky ones like playing games, etc.) is enjoyable and makes life worth living.
Rarely do people just succeed based on social skills, often there is something of value there that those skills complement. But it is nearly impossible to achieve success (defined as either career growth, happiness from good friends and significant others, money, etc.) without some degree of social awareness and aptitude.
Whenever I've gotten a speeding ticket, I've thought about arguing with the Judge that the cop was lying on the ticket. He noted both where I was and how fast I was going, and since he can only measure one of those things, he's clearly lying about the other.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm probably a minority dwarfed by free-loading readers, but free online NYT access led me to buy a full 7-day a week subscription to the paper.
I used to (and still do) go to Google News for my daily news digest (one of many sources I'd visit). Over time, I noticed that many of the stories I was interested were from either the NY Times or the LA Times. Furthermore, I noticed that for stories I'd read on many sites linked to from Google News, the NY Times (and LA Times) versions were regularly better written and more informative in my opinion.
Due to this (and the fact that I live in the suburbs of NYC) I started to regularly read the full paper online on the NYT website. After a few months of this, I decided that I found this quality reporting valuable, and worth supporting. Furthermore, I relocated a little further away from the city and was now commuting by train instead of by car. So I then decided to by a subscription. Now I have the paper delivered every day, and they have me as a full, loyal subscriber. All because of the free online access they provided.
But for everyone of me, there are probably a lot of free-loaders.
It's great that you'd like to tinker around and play with stuff at home. You may learn some things, and it will definitely present with some interesting engineering problems. But true scientific R&D, where you discover something new, forget about it for the most part.
The only domains where a lone tinkerer can still make an impact and "discover" something new is in pure math, or algorithmic research. And even there, it's a rare thing.
The days of the lone researcher are long since past, if they ever really existed in modern history. Sure during the Renaissance and through the 1800s and early 1900s a lone researcher could discover/invent something new. However, even during the latter part of the aforementioned time period, the individuals in questions (Maxwell, Faraday, Watt, Bell, etc) often had years/decades of experience and/or education in the fields they made discoveries in. And the myth of the lone inventor during this latter part wasn't really true, for example Edison had a large lab full of employees for his research.
In the contemporary time period, it's HIGHLY unlikely (I'm just reluctant to say impossible). All the low level hanging fruit in most fields has been mined. There's a reason that PhDs take a long time, there's a lot to learn and catch up on. Also, most discoveries, especially in basic science ( Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy) require lots of expensive capital equipment and labs to do. And often, it's not just one scientist, but an entire team of collaborators working on a problem from many different angles.
Now, there may be some interesting inventions/engineering solutions a lone inventor can PERHAPS come up with, but they wouldn't be new scientific discoveries. Also, as another refinement of my point, there are some things an individual can still do, like say perhaps discover a new species, but not in their backyard (unless you live in Brazil). Even then, you need a commitment of resources and time to explore the still hidden parts of the world, in the rainforest, or deep under the sea.
So, while the concept of the lone scientist is romantic, exciting and inspiring, in the modern era it's unrealistic in my opinion.
It's not just the airline bean counters who are worried about this. I'm being directly affected. I was in Europe for work, and was supposed to fly back to the US last Sun. I've been stuck here since. I'm quite desperate to get back home and back to my life.
It may seem cool to be stuck in Europe, but in actuality it's not. It feels semi-prison like in that I'm stuck in a place (albeit a very nice, historical and cultural one) and unable to get home. Things are going on at work, with friends, family and I'm all the way over here spending money like crazy because everything costs more when traveling (hotels, meals, phone calls, hotel internet charges, etc). I'm just lucky because I was traveling for work and can expense. I've met others here who aren't so lucky (one forms a sense of camaraderie with other stranded passengers on meets).
And it's a lot of other industries and businesses too. The world is incredibly interconnected.
The main complaint isn't from some bean counters trying to override safety. It's that a blanket ban is just unrealistic and misinformed. There has to be somewhere between NO FLIGHTS and NORMAL. What is it? Are there safe corridors? Are there certain types of planes that can fly? Are there certain elevations? Noone knows, and worse yet, noone is really tracking the ACTUAL ash cloud, it's all just computer models predicting. Let's see where the damned thing actually is.
Those are some of the complaints the airlines, and now us passengers who've been glued to the news for almost a week, are wondering.
The fact that so many flights flew ok yesterday indicates that the whole situation wasn't carefully thought through. Look, I'm all for putting safety first. If there is a good chance I'll die flying, I'll agree to be stuck in Europe for another month until it's safe. But, please can we first make sure it really is that dangerous?
Reading about that kill switch, I'm reminded about the quote from Jurassic Park about how Life always finds a way. I'm not sure that say 20-30 years post development when we may need a kill switch that it'll still work. Because things probably won't go haywire to the point of needing a kill switch right away. And even if they do, if the problems get worked out and these things become more common, I don't know if the kill switch tech will be updated with each iteration to account for possible evolutionary changes and adaptations.
The knowledge that government agencies are using open source tools probably does a lot to legitimize such software. Even if you can't publicize it, you can probably let other government agencies/depts know what you use and how it helps you and how it helps with your budget (crucially important to every government entity) and encourage them to adopt similar practices; hell help them out with doing so and making the transition.
Eventually, the word will get out through suppliers, vendors, potential news articles, etc and will do more to help the movement than small monetary donations. Whaddya mean that program x is unreliable, the fire dept/tax agency/welfare dept, etc uses it?
This story is interesting and timely because I plan on buying a new desktop in the next 2 weeks, just waiting for the right deal to come out, hopefully on Cyber Monday. While not getting a server, I will be getting Windows 7. I had been planning on an i7, but now am hesitant. Is there a problem with these processors for home use/gaming purposes under Windows 7? Or would I better off going with a Quad Core?
I've been looking for a fairly cheap ~$200-300 netbook that runs WinXP and is capable of playing videos. I spend about 3 hours commuting roundtrip on the train each day (NYC Metropolitan area) and would love to have a cheap machine that I could edit documents on and watch vids (DVD or otherwise) on. Either a USB or Ethernet port is a must for media/data transfer. Wifi access not necessary.
Does the /. community have any recommendations? Woot often has some really good ones for about $150, but they run Linux, and I know, it's a hearesy here, but I'm looking for a WinXP one.
Thanks.
Interestingly, the /. quote at the bottom of the page when I was reading this story was:
It's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon. -- Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
My only comment is:
Poor guy; the one question I don't want to forget the answer to is when an attractive woman asks where I live.
Genentech Inc. Chairman Arthur Levinson also serves as a director on both boards. The Feds are investigating that as well. What about him? The news story keep mentioning that Schmidt would recuse himself from discussions related to Google, what about Levinson? Did he recuse himself from both Google and Apple meetings when the other was being discussed?
Just curious.
On a related note, my other biggest pet peeve is the slow people who speed up when they see you trying to pass them so that you can't, and then slow down again.
IMO, a lot of problems could be avoided if people respected all the rules of the road, and not just the official ones. For example, I respect anyone's right to drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable with. If that's at, above or below the speed limit I don't care. However, no matter how fast you're going, if there's someone behind you who wishes to go faster, move over to the right. It's not your job to set speed limits, the cops do that, and they exercise discretion too depending on the traffic and time of the day.
What gets me really frustrated is people in the left lane, going at or slightly below the speed limit, with a LONG line behind them. It's situations like these that cause problems, as people who wish to go faster try to get around the slowpokes.
In my opinion, if people simply moved over for a faster car, kept the left lane open for passing/faster traffic, then the vast majority of weaving cars and "jerks" on the highways would disappear.
It's a big peeve of mine. I drive faster than the speed limit, I'll admit it. If I'm in the wrong, the cops will pull me over. However, get out of the left lane if you're going slow and there's 10 cars tailgating behind you!
The original Wing Commander games were great. For some reason the gaming industry has moved away from space fighter simulators. Which is disappointing, that was an early genre that was a lot of fun.
I particularly have fond memories of Wing Commander Armada, which combined in strategy elements. You had to explore planets, mine resources and build factories and ships, and you had to do it carefully. When your fleet met the enemies, it switched to the traditional fighter simulator. Even then though, you had a fleet of ships with goals, and you could switch control between them.
I'd love to see Wing Commander, or some other space fighter, done with today's technology.
Recent comic in PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) comics touched on this:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1200
I have some services, such as Vonage, that attempt to provide a speech-to-text transcription of your voicemail to your email. However, being someone not originally born in the US, many of my voicemails tend to be in another language.
Staying in touch with my family is very important to me, and if I'm missing their voicemails, then I can't use these services. It will be a long time before a lot of the world's languages have speech-to-text conversion and an automatic service could recognize which language is being spoken and then use the appropriate conversion.
So I don't think voicemail will go away at all, perhaps become less common.
That's because 5-10 years ago, there wasn't a contemporary Dr. Who on TV. Robot designers had no clue with our limited human intelligence on how to get robots up the stairs. Upon the reemergence of the new Dr. Who, that one command "ELEVATE" and the new race of Daleks taught us humans to imagine robots going up stairs.
Well.... Probably it just refocused us.
Well... It just triggered something in our imagination.
Sonic Screwdriver technology? What?! What?! What?! That's still waiting, especially for the dampners and the red setting.
It wasn't supposed to go nova now, but it was part of God's plan so that our ancestors would know the way here after peeking in the Temple. They could've had more time to look around, but their enemies were right behind them.
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
Honestly,
I thought it was weak. If you watched "BSG The Last Frakkin Special" that aired last Monday, there was a key comment in there. Ron Moore said that they were at a loss on how to end the series, and then they walked in and decided that it's about the characters.
That told me that they didn't know how to end everything, and decided to fumble through it and fill up time with these character things.
There were so many big stories that needed more elaboration, what was Starbuck, how does the one true god fit in? There was mention that he was a jealous god of the other Lords of Kobol. No mention of them? Starbuck, the one who believed in the polytheistic Lords of Kobol so much that she went back against orders for Athena's Arrow was instead an agent of the monotheistic Cylon God? That's it, head six and baltar, their story just ends so quickly? Things didn't really jive, and that disappointed me. After the whole Tigh and Caprica-6 love each other so much that they had a baby, and Ellen was jealous, that just ended? All of a sudden, we find out Baltar, the womanizer, loved Caprica-6?
It was not thought out, and by the end, they had no idea what to do. I'm really disapointed in BSG. And this ending makes me appreciate Babylon 5 even more. The value of a well thought out, planned and executed story arc where all the pieces fit together because they've been planned that way is AWESOME.
For about 4 and a half years, BSG was the best show I'd ever seen. However, ever since they came back with this last batch of 10 episodes, it's been weak. The big issues, the analysis of humanity in dire straits, the realistic depiction of events, I felt that all fell apart. BSG was still a good show, and the ending sentimental and did provide closure. It wasn't bad, but I had so much more high expectations of the ending, for it all to tie in rather than what we got. I mean that's why us SciFi fans are such continuity freaks, we want it all to fit, that's what makes it more real for us.
One thing you may find is that generic coding jobs may be boring/unexciting for you and also hard to get into. I would advise you leverage your current experience, and see where new software may help in your current field, or what is it about the existing software that you feel is lacking and/or needs improvement.
It will also make it easier for you to get a job that way. "I don't have software experience, but due to x years of experience in this field, I understand the ins and outs and that will be invaluable while I build up software design and implementation experience."
If you were a biologist, look at bioinformatics, if you were in real estate look at companies building better MLS tracking software, if you were a teacher, look at jobs with a company like Blackboard, you get the idea.
I think that the whole premise of the question is false. The question being asked is whether nice guys who share credit and accept responsibility will get axed in favor of mean guys who steal credit and ID scapegoats.
I actually RTFA (I know, a /. blasphemy) and I don't think that is a valid question. According to the article, the reason "Doug" got the job and "Staurt" the nice guy got fired is that Doug went to their boss and made a case for why it would be better for the boss and the company to retain him instead of Stuart. Now his reasoning was flawed, but Stuart never made such a case. He just assumed that he got fired because he was the nice guy.
Being a nice guy (sharing credit, accepting responsibility) and valuable employee (recognizing your manager's needs and supporting them, being politically aware and astute) are not mutually exclusive.
What Stuart should have done is said "that I am well respected by my team, I keep a mature and professional attitude when mistakes are made (not like Doug who yells at his team). In this uncertain time after layoffs are announced, the remaining people will be nervous and perhaps looking to leave on their own terms. Kelly, I'll make sure that the remaining team stays on target, and achieves all goals, so you look good. Doug said that I cannot make the tough decisions, but look, I've come to you with cogent and well reasoned reasons to layoff the required people in my team, as you requested. I can make the tough decisions, but in a way that keeps the remaining team morale up and productive."
Now Stuart may have actually said that, but TFA doesn't say so. Instead we're left to assume that he just figured as a nice guy he lost his job.
Nice or mean doesn't have much to do with it, being politically aware and understanding office dynamics is everything.
and sometimes (but rarely) sufficient for success in life.
I've seen many technically competent individuals who do not know how to interact, collaborate, and navigate the murky waters of office and societal politics. While their individual work may be good, they do not succeed in their career for various reasons. They do not know how to convince people of the value of their ideas and how to integrate those ideas into larger projects. They cannot maintain relationships with coworkers and bosses. Not sucking up, but perceiving what others need, and assisting them, or doing things as the boss wants to make his/her life easier.
In social situations as well, even beyond the romantic, no man is an island; we are social creatures. Just hanging around with friends, or doing fun activities (even geeky ones like playing games, etc.) is enjoyable and makes life worth living.
Rarely do people just succeed based on social skills, often there is something of value there that those skills complement. But it is nearly impossible to achieve success (defined as either career growth, happiness from good friends and significant others, money, etc.) without some degree of social awareness and aptitude.
Whenever I've gotten a speeding ticket, I've thought about arguing with the Judge that the cop was lying on the ticket. He noted both where I was and how fast I was going, and since he can only measure one of those things, he's clearly lying about the other.
I searched for clips of him on YouTube.
Here's a really funny ~7minute video with highlights from a couple of his shows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8uzB0eypk&feature=related
The man is a genius.
Go here:
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_nicetry.shtml
And read the second last entry on the bottom.