I understand where you're coming from and don't deny you have a point, but I still don't have a problem with the whole situation.
I guess there's a fine line between discretion and paranoia and I decided long ago that I could not live my life in fear of repercussions from reasonable actions. I know there's a certain level of risk in what I share about myself. First off, as both a Christian and a political conservative, I recognize that a not insignificant number of people will automatically view me as evil. Literally, evil.
The real problem doesn't really hinge on issues of privacy, but on the fact that we live in a society where anonymous people have more and more power over each one of us, especially when you are talking about corporations and the government. To me, the issues of privacy with respect to talking about food or music (or even politics and religion) on Facebook are dwarfed by what the government is doing to me through byzantine regulations and erosion of my liberties, or corporations who are controlling my food and my environment, even my health. In that context, seeing targeted ads holds no fears for me.
And at the same time, for me _not_ to be myself, which means speaking my mind and sharing the ideas I want to share, would be an equal imposition on my sense of liberty as well. Facebook is only the latest incarnation of things I have been doing for many years (/. being another).
I know that that attitude may be asking for trouble, but I'm willing to expect the fallout that may occur (and has occurred) from my unwillingness to just go along to get along and keeping my fool mouth shut.
It amazes me how so many people think that that is automatically bad.
There's nothing in my profile that I wouldn't mind anyone seeing, and I've shared a fair amount of information.
With regard to potential future employers... if they don't want me because of something I put on FB, then they are definitely not the kind of people I would want to work for.
Anything I've posted on FB with respect to my interests, affiliations, friends, etc, is not something you couldn't find elsewhere with a little legwork or at worst hiring a PI for a few hours. I just don't see what the big deal is provided you show a little common sense in what you are making public, and more importantly, make it a point of not doing things you wouldn't want people to know about. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way.
I was out of work for 15 months earlier in the decade, so I'm well aware of what could happen.
I'm also aware that there is real poverty in the U.S., but like you described, the poor in the U.S. generally still have access to things that would be considered luxuries in many parts of the world.
To wit, despite all the discussion about hunger in the U.S., the poor here are more likely to be obese (because of poor eating habits, and the fact that there is too much cheap food that is really bad for you).
But the real solutions are the ones that generally escape the people who talk the most about solving the problem: real education reform, something that has yet to happen in the U.S., and an economy that encourages business growth, not stifles it with government overhead and uncertainty. These are things that government has been unable (in the case of education) to do or unwilling (in the case of the economy) to do.
That's why I tried to explain it without being condescending or obnoxious. Besides, I find a lot of native English-speakers making that mistake so you're likely to have seen it before.
"I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers."
And you are completely wrong. Spell checkers check spelling and not word use.
Yes, spell checkers check spelling. Duh.
In each case, it's very likely that the writer butchered the spelling badly enough that the spell-checker suggested a completely different word, which the person accepted, probably without paying much attention.
Furthermore, it is not the job of schools to educate, not these days. That's the whole problem. It is the job of schools to train the students to pass standardized tests, which means they are not particularly likely to be good at anything else.
If the schools truly educated, graduates would be much more marketable and useful to society in general. If I had the choice between hiring a college graduate from 2010 or a high school graduate from 1910, for just about any job I would go with the 1910 graduate. He would probably be much more literate, better at math, more capable of basic logic, and have a broader knowledge of basic facts, minus what didn't exist a hundred years ago.
I don't have a problem with allowing calculators... once the student has demonstrated that he can function without one. The same goes for spell-checkers. I'm happy that Firefox has it, and it helps me, but I can spell better than most people without one. These are tools, not crutches, or at least that's how their supposed to be used.
In an education environment where keyboarding and using PowerPoint are considered "computer science", we can only expect other similar nonsense.
Our schools (including higher education) in the U.S. have almost completely abandoned the idea of "education" and seem content to merely train workers, and poorly at that.
Since no one reads any more, our language is devolving at an alarming rate. I guess the schools are accommodating that trend. While it's very important to be taught actual grammar, the only way you're going to really learn it deep-down is by being exposed to a lot of good grammar, and the only place to find that is good books, and lots of them.
I am totally discussed by this. They defiantly should not allow spell-checkers. Allot of people use spell-check as a crutch rather than a tool.
I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers. It's just another step on the road towards our schools completely abandoning their jobs and turning out graduates who are even more useless in the workforce. Do I use a spell-checker? Yes. I tend to get confused between "-ant" and "-ent" on some words and other similar problems. It's helpful and saves me from having to use the dictionary as much. But can I communicate just fine without a spell-checker? Definitely, yes. If you can't, then a spell-checker is just going to make you look like more of an idiot, plus you'll never learn the right way to spell things.
Of course, the best solutions to all of these problems is for kids (and everyone else) to read, read, read. And I'm not talking about/. (I once saw a kid bragging about his literacy by citing how much he read Digg. At least I hope it was a kid...) Dig out some real books and read them. Newspapers and most magazines don't count (for learning the language anyway... they might be fine for informational purposes). Better yet, sprinkle your reading with liberal doses of material older than 50 years, preferably older than 100. That will do more than any class to improve your language skills, spelling and grammar.
I've been eating in restaurants with credit cards for over 20 years and have never seen what you describe, and since it would require a wireless card reader of some kind, I doubt this kind of thing, assuming it exists, has been around long.
That wasn't the only one, just the biggest. One small red dot went significantly below the "25 years" line at one point. I need to watch it again because I don't recall what year it was, but I wonder if it was Cambodia in the mid 70s.
Perhaps so, but people living in "poverty" in America (as defined by the government anyway) are still better off, on average, than most of the rest of the world.
None of these problems with help with bad managers or people who want to game or abuse the system.
In fact, everything about our lives, including our government, our jobs and our personal relationships cannot fully mitigate against people who are just plain jerks.
Laws are as overly complex as they are for two reasons. The first is that Congress are idiots, but that's another discussion. The second problem is that you can't rely on people obeying the spirit of the law, so every tiny little loophole, every tiny way that someone can obey the precise language of the law but get away with something that is clearly against the spirit of the law will be exploited.
So the law becomes, instead of broad guidelines that describe, to any person of good will and common sense, how to function in society in a good way (where good means within the bounds of the law) it becomes a massive dike that's constantly springing tiny leaks, any of which could cause the whole thing to fail and must immediately be patched.
My computer metaphor is that the Linux kernel is well-designed, small and lean. That's the law as we would like it to be, and as it could be in a more ideal world (i.e., that society steeped in Judeo-Christian morality that our Forefathers said were necessary for the Republic to endure).
Windows on the other hand, was originally well-designed, and I'm referring to NT, but aside from new functionality, it's had to be made bigger and bigger and more complex to continue to support legacy software from other, awful versions of Windows (i.e., the DOS side: 95/98/ME) where it was easy for developers to play fast and loose with the rules.
While Apple took the philosophy that OSX would be built to be good at the expense of compatibility, Microsoft felt it was in their best interest and the best interest of their customers to maintain as much backwards compatibility as possible. (Unrelated commentary: It's to everyone's benefit that Vista and 7 have leaned towards robustness and security at the expense of compatibility when the two are in conflict.)
Of course, this metaphor isn't perfect, and one of the reasons Windows is such a mess is that security was generally ignored until way too late its evolution. However, Windows security woes are not unlike the way people try to game the legal system, by finding "bugs" that allow them to do what they want to do despite being unwanted against the system. Regardless of what software you are talking about, maintaining secure software is a similar and unending problem to maintaining a set of laws that protects people's rights while trying (however, futilely these days) to keep as much freedom as possible when a significant number people do everything in their power to undermine the system.
First off, I'm guessing your family business is on the small side. Not like Microsoft or GM, etc. That's not a criticism in any way. I would certainly prefer to do business with a company like you describe.
Furthermore, I'm not condoning this kind of behavior. I'm with you. You should be honest in your dealing, fair to people you work with and treat everyone well.
I can believe it's possible to be hugely successful and be a decent person, I just don't believe it happens a lot.
Most places I've worked at recently bank sick leave and vacation together. This eliminates the incentive to "cheat" with sick leave because you can simply use it instead. To me, it's the best way to solve the problem rather than hiring PIs or requiring doctor's notes, etc.
I wish I had more vacation. I get a decent amount, but since I haven't been at any job for more than a few years (being in a volatile industry and having worked at a number of startups), it hasn't gone up a whole lot based on my level of experience (23 years as a professional developer).
However, that said, if the government requires vacation then domestic productivity as a whole will fall and unemployment would probably increase. I'd rather see the market solve the problem, even at the risk that the market won't, because otherwise it's just another government-mandated drain on the system and those always make things worse.
Ditto with mandated work-weeks. We see how well those kinds of things have worked in Europe where people are rioting over the retirement age being moved up a small amount of time.
Although it sounds like a good idea (and I'm not opposed to labor laws that protect workers from being exploited), I think those kinds of things need to be done very judiciously. One of the reasons the U.S.'s productivity has been much higher than almost everywhere else in the world is that there are generally fewer of these kinds of regulations.
Of course, I was always good enough at what I did to find good work with good benefits. I'd rather rely on myself than the government. People with less leverage can join unions.
You don't think most of the people at the top aren't sociopaths?
The sad fact is that to reach those high levels, it's not only not a hindrance, it's practically a requirement. It's not an indictment of successful people, but rather the way "the system" works. Sociopathy is ultimately rewarded, while honesty, thrift, efficiency... all those things we were taught are good are often impediments to rising through the ranks.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand where you're coming from and don't deny you have a point, but I still don't have a problem with the whole situation.
I guess there's a fine line between discretion and paranoia and I decided long ago that I could not live my life in fear of repercussions from reasonable actions. I know there's a certain level of risk in what I share about myself. First off, as both a Christian and a political conservative, I recognize that a not insignificant number of people will automatically view me as evil. Literally, evil.
The real problem doesn't really hinge on issues of privacy, but on the fact that we live in a society where anonymous people have more and more power over each one of us, especially when you are talking about corporations and the government. To me, the issues of privacy with respect to talking about food or music (or even politics and religion) on Facebook are dwarfed by what the government is doing to me through byzantine regulations and erosion of my liberties, or corporations who are controlling my food and my environment, even my health. In that context, seeing targeted ads holds no fears for me.
And at the same time, for me _not_ to be myself, which means speaking my mind and sharing the ideas I want to share, would be an equal imposition on my sense of liberty as well. Facebook is only the latest incarnation of things I have been doing for many years (/. being another).
I know that that attitude may be asking for trouble, but I'm willing to expect the fallout that may occur (and has occurred) from my unwillingness to just go along to get along and keeping my fool mouth shut.
It amazes me how so many people think that that is automatically bad.
There's nothing in my profile that I wouldn't mind anyone seeing, and I've shared a fair amount of information.
With regard to potential future employers... if they don't want me because of something I put on FB, then they are definitely not the kind of people I would want to work for.
Anything I've posted on FB with respect to my interests, affiliations, friends, etc, is not something you couldn't find elsewhere with a little legwork or at worst hiring a PI for a few hours. I just don't see what the big deal is provided you show a little common sense in what you are making public, and more importantly, make it a point of not doing things you wouldn't want people to know about. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way.
I was out of work for 15 months earlier in the decade, so I'm well aware of what could happen.
I'm also aware that there is real poverty in the U.S., but like you described, the poor in the U.S. generally still have access to things that would be considered luxuries in many parts of the world.
To wit, despite all the discussion about hunger in the U.S., the poor here are more likely to be obese (because of poor eating habits, and the fact that there is too much cheap food that is really bad for you).
But the real solutions are the ones that generally escape the people who talk the most about solving the problem: real education reform, something that has yet to happen in the U.S., and an economy that encourages business growth, not stifles it with government overhead and uncertainty. These are things that government has been unable (in the case of education) to do or unwilling (in the case of the economy) to do.
That's why I tried to explain it without being condescending or obnoxious. Besides, I find a lot of native English-speakers making that mistake so you're likely to have seen it before.
"I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers."
And you are completely wrong. Spell checkers check spelling and not word use.
Yes, spell checkers check spelling. Duh.
In each case, it's very likely that the writer butchered the spelling badly enough that the spell-checker suggested a completely different word, which the person accepted, probably without paying much attention.
Furthermore, it is not the job of schools to educate, not these days. That's the whole problem. It is the job of schools to train the students to pass standardized tests, which means they are not particularly likely to be good at anything else.
If the schools truly educated, graduates would be much more marketable and useful to society in general. If I had the choice between hiring a college graduate from 2010 or a high school graduate from 1910, for just about any job I would go with the 1910 graduate. He would probably be much more literate, better at math, more capable of basic logic, and have a broader knowledge of basic facts, minus what didn't exist a hundred years ago.
I don't have a problem with allowing calculators... once the student has demonstrated that he can function without one. The same goes for spell-checkers. I'm happy that Firefox has it, and it helps me, but I can spell better than most people without one. These are tools, not crutches, or at least that's how their supposed to be used.
In an education environment where keyboarding and using PowerPoint are considered "computer science", we can only expect other similar nonsense.
Our schools (including higher education) in the U.S. have almost completely abandoned the idea of "education" and seem content to merely train workers, and poorly at that.
Since no one reads any more, our language is devolving at an alarming rate. I guess the schools are accommodating that trend. While it's very important to be taught actual grammar, the only way you're going to really learn it deep-down is by being exposed to a lot of good grammar, and the only place to find that is good books, and lots of them.
p.s. I think you mean "supposed".
Too bad you don't work for the government then. They don't seem to have any people like you.
I am totally discussed by this. They defiantly should not allow spell-checkers. Allot of people use spell-check as a crutch rather than a tool.
I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers. It's just another step on the road towards our schools completely abandoning their jobs and turning out graduates who are even more useless in the workforce. Do I use a spell-checker? Yes. I tend to get confused between "-ant" and "-ent" on some words and other similar problems. It's helpful and saves me from having to use the dictionary as much. But can I communicate just fine without a spell-checker? Definitely, yes. If you can't, then a spell-checker is just going to make you look like more of an idiot, plus you'll never learn the right way to spell things.
Of course, the best solutions to all of these problems is for kids (and everyone else) to read, read, read. And I'm not talking about /. (I once saw a kid bragging about his literacy by citing how much he read Digg. At least I hope it was a kid...) Dig out some real books and read them. Newspapers and most magazines don't count (for learning the language anyway... they might be fine for informational purposes). Better yet, sprinkle your reading with liberal doses of material older than 50 years, preferably older than 100. That will do more than any class to improve your language skills, spelling and grammar.
I doubt anyone under 40 is using "xyzzy" or "plugh".
I've been eating in restaurants with credit cards for over 20 years and have never seen what you describe, and since it would require a wireless card reader of some kind, I doubt this kind of thing, assuming it exists, has been around long.
But look what $1 will buy you now that you couldn't buy 200, 100, 50 or even 20 years ago.
Pure inflation rates don't tell the whole story. How much would a bottle of penicillin have cost in 1810... when it didn't exist yet?
That wasn't the only one, just the biggest. One small red dot went significantly below the "25 years" line at one point. I need to watch it again because I don't recall what year it was, but I wonder if it was Cambodia in the mid 70s.
Perhaps so, but people living in "poverty" in America (as defined by the government anyway) are still better off, on average, than most of the rest of the world.
Buy a football and you can get thousands of hours out of it.
Yeah, but single-player mode is really lame.
None of these problems with help with bad managers or people who want to game or abuse the system.
In fact, everything about our lives, including our government, our jobs and our personal relationships cannot fully mitigate against people who are just plain jerks.
Laws are as overly complex as they are for two reasons. The first is that Congress are idiots, but that's another discussion. The second problem is that you can't rely on people obeying the spirit of the law, so every tiny little loophole, every tiny way that someone can obey the precise language of the law but get away with something that is clearly against the spirit of the law will be exploited.
So the law becomes, instead of broad guidelines that describe, to any person of good will and common sense, how to function in society in a good way (where good means within the bounds of the law) it becomes a massive dike that's constantly springing tiny leaks, any of which could cause the whole thing to fail and must immediately be patched.
My computer metaphor is that the Linux kernel is well-designed, small and lean. That's the law as we would like it to be, and as it could be in a more ideal world (i.e., that society steeped in Judeo-Christian morality that our Forefathers said were necessary for the Republic to endure).
Windows on the other hand, was originally well-designed, and I'm referring to NT, but aside from new functionality, it's had to be made bigger and bigger and more complex to continue to support legacy software from other, awful versions of Windows (i.e., the DOS side: 95/98/ME) where it was easy for developers to play fast and loose with the rules.
While Apple took the philosophy that OSX would be built to be good at the expense of compatibility, Microsoft felt it was in their best interest and the best interest of their customers to maintain as much backwards compatibility as possible. (Unrelated commentary: It's to everyone's benefit that Vista and 7 have leaned towards robustness and security at the expense of compatibility when the two are in conflict.)
Of course, this metaphor isn't perfect, and one of the reasons Windows is such a mess is that security was generally ignored until way too late its evolution. However, Windows security woes are not unlike the way people try to game the legal system, by finding "bugs" that allow them to do what they want to do despite being unwanted against the system. Regardless of what software you are talking about, maintaining secure software is a similar and unending problem to maintaining a set of laws that protects people's rights while trying (however, futilely these days) to keep as much freedom as possible when a significant number people do everything in their power to undermine the system.
It sounds to me like you are doing it the "right way" and I wish you well in your endeavors.
First off, I'm guessing your family business is on the small side. Not like Microsoft or GM, etc. That's not a criticism in any way. I would certainly prefer to do business with a company like you describe.
Furthermore, I'm not condoning this kind of behavior. I'm with you. You should be honest in your dealing, fair to people you work with and treat everyone well.
I can believe it's possible to be hugely successful and be a decent person, I just don't believe it happens a lot.
Most places I've worked at recently bank sick leave and vacation together. This eliminates the incentive to "cheat" with sick leave because you can simply use it instead. To me, it's the best way to solve the problem rather than hiring PIs or requiring doctor's notes, etc.
Better GDP per capita correlates with a better standard of living!
Or does that conflict with the Democrat myth that economics is a zero-sum game?
I wish I had more vacation. I get a decent amount, but since I haven't been at any job for more than a few years (being in a volatile industry and having worked at a number of startups), it hasn't gone up a whole lot based on my level of experience (23 years as a professional developer).
However, that said, if the government requires vacation then domestic productivity as a whole will fall and unemployment would probably increase. I'd rather see the market solve the problem, even at the risk that the market won't, because otherwise it's just another government-mandated drain on the system and those always make things worse.
Ditto with mandated work-weeks. We see how well those kinds of things have worked in Europe where people are rioting over the retirement age being moved up a small amount of time.
Although it sounds like a good idea (and I'm not opposed to labor laws that protect workers from being exploited), I think those kinds of things need to be done very judiciously. One of the reasons the U.S.'s productivity has been much higher than almost everywhere else in the world is that there are generally fewer of these kinds of regulations.
Of course, I was always good enough at what I did to find good work with good benefits. I'd rather rely on myself than the government. People with less leverage can join unions.
You don't think most of the people at the top aren't sociopaths?
The sad fact is that to reach those high levels, it's not only not a hindrance, it's practically a requirement. It's not an indictment of successful people, but rather the way "the system" works. Sociopathy is ultimately rewarded, while honesty, thrift, efficiency... all those things we were taught are good are often impediments to rising through the ranks.
I've taken over Java progress where everything was OOP'ed into hell (as in a bazillion classes more than was needed for the application)
So something like a typical Java library then?
Forget FOSS. Try Enterprise software. I've never seen more consistently bad and unusable software than anything designed for the "enterprise".
And yet so many companies are perfectly happy to do this.
What's worse is that programmers are seldom as good at testing as good testers (and I include myself in that).