Tech startups don't create the kinds of jobs that the 99% actually need. Oh, sure, many of them will eventually hire one secretary, and will pay into their building's contract for one part-time janitor.
I have to admit that saying they're jobs we don't need sounds a bit misguided. Who says? Why wouldn't they be? Are you suggesting we shouldn't have a technical work force? That's what it sounds like... but if I were to guess how you'd respond if asked that, you'd say that's not what you're trying to say at all.
That being said, technology already permeates every industry. Even service, manufacturing, construction, and it continues to increase more and more every year. There's a growing need (and gap) in tuning our workforce to be more technical. Hence the growing calls for pushing math, science, and technology in schools. While there will always be a need for blue collar jobs like manufacturing/construction/service for the foreseeable future, those won't last in the same state as they do today either. So it's kind of inevitable. And in reference to exporting those jobs exported oversees, you probably already know the same jobs would only be a 100th in size over here because of the automation we'd employ.
As for taxes in my opinion, we already have a sliding scale that almost works OK. If we could eliminate some "loopholes" - first being special treatment on specific types of income like dividends and capital gains and instead treat them as ordinary income - second eliminate all interest deductions including mortgage interest. I believe those changes alone (allowing for no exceptions) we'd fix 80% of our tax problems and also simplify taxes for everyone across the board.
Regardless of whether or not mankind is fully, partially, or trivially responsible for climate change. Calling it a weapon of mass destruction is fully moronic. It's a distortion of reality for the sole sake of sensationalizing the issue. It's not worth tainting the argument for the sake of getting the point across.
Now it's just a matter of time before we start arresting people for starting bonfires or driving to work. Gas guzzler, hybrid, or all electric you'll all be terrorists wielding WMDs!/tongueincheek
Any builder will also sign a contract stating to such an effect, or at least verbally state as much and take them on trust. It's certainly not some magical worldwide automatic assumption. That's what "binds" them to rebuilds/repairs. No contract, no binding agreement. Depending on project type and size, a builder may or may not add that stipulation to their contract. However a smart builder that wants to stay in business tomorrow, will price accordingly with that stipulation in mind.
Also, people get their panties in a twist over contracts. "But you signed the contract, you have to do it!!!!" Yes they do, but a contract is only good if it's followed. If someone chooses not to follow it, the only recourse is taking them to court.
Now slightly off topic but that's why imho trust >> contracts. Trust is "free" but hard to obtain, little nebulous but it's also far more reliable. Drafting a contract is easy and unambiguous (assuming the work is specified in there) but enforcing it can often be prohibitively expensive from both time and money. Dealing with bonded contractors can remove some of the burden because you have a small "guarantee" that someone else will do it if they don't.
Short answer: it doesn't apply to you unless you agreed to it upfront. So, the analogy is working off of fictitious assumptions.
Probably not a good idea. I suspect it will probably attract the students that shouldn't be going into engineering in the first place. I don't know what would be worse, having more subpar engineers or having fewer superb engineers.
Instead, all the focus should be made during childhood education. By either family or schools, preferably families. Along with touting maths and sciences, we should also drill children on how to use and how not to use money while we're at it. But those pesky 20-year-solution-plans are so distasteful, quick useless bandaids sound so much better tasting...
It's also not unreasonable to assume a majority of his house will likely be made of wood, a renewable resource. An argument can also be made that concrete, brick, and asphalt is also renewable since that can be crushed and repurposed. If you want to pick on other materials he would use like plastics, metals, and shingles you could still renew those materials if you really wanted to.
Anywho, let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. None of us here are innocent of using resources. I'm just glad you have no real power, you'd be in everyone's business sooner than you need to be.
Sorry, but, please, can we stop this? Schizophrenia is not a "Hi I'm me. 'And I am me too!'" kind of deal. At all. Period. It's not Multiple Personality Disorder, in fact it usually doesn't involve anything like what any media portrayal has ever been. It's more of an intrusive pattern. You know who you are, but there are people whispering, singing, yelling, in your ears - outside your window - in the bathroom - anywhere around you. Telling you to do things? Maybe. Probably not. More like being annoying. But one turns into two turns into many turns into noise and chatter and intense periods of thoughts you can't escape, you can't focus on, and you can't stop. It's incredibly debilitating, but more often than not you have no problem understanding it's not "you" that's in those voices and thoughts - the real problem is understanding that those voices and thoughts are indeed coming FROM you.
The idea that schizophrenia is akin to what you see in Sybil or the media in general is usually wrong. I've yet to see any good reporting on the topic, but people throw it around plenty. "Oh, the market was up, the market was down: it's being schizophrenic." No, if the market was "schizophrenic" it would have trouble concentrating and possibly hallucinate while being extremely paranoid. At times. For the most part it would keep to itself and try to read or at least talk to someone else because it's going through something terribly difficult that no one takes the time to understand.
I've always thought of schizophrenia as those of us who have an imagination like the rest of us, but can't always recognize the difference.
If you think about it, anyone can "hear" voices or "see" things in your head, as if they were truly real. We can recreate any experience in our minds because that's where experiences exist. But most people can tell the difference.
Yep, that's why we should have a single payer system of health care coverage. The hell with the insurance company middle men.
I have no problem with a single payer system for health care but everyone treats it as some magic silver bullet that will fix everything.
It won't fix anything and if implemented like today's Medicare it will guarantee healthcare will be more expensive because of all of the illegitimate activity that current bilks 10-15% (latest estimates) through improper payments. That's far more than the profit margins of nearly every single insurance company. What most people don't realize is that insurance business is more tightly regulated than nearly any other industry, their premium and losses are scrutinized to be disallowed from making too much money (even though insurance companies try their damned best to get around it).
The US health care system needs to be addressed, point by point, from the bottom up - not the top down. Everyone loves to blame insurance companies because they're the ones holding the bag, but imho while certainly *not* innocent they're a small villain in the very long complicated list of bad guys.
If it's so good for consumers, then why don't they want it?
There's logic behind why they have to lobby for it... to force something down consumer's throats which would by rejected unanimously, if it were actually out in the wild.
Don't be so sure that those are really your grandparents. Illegitimacy rates in Western culture run around 1 in 30, and you have two parents.
The problem with some statistics is that some people enjoy regurgitating them in an obscene way that not only ignores their original intent but also abuse them to present a more dramatic falsely supported argument. This twisted behavior is especially enjoyed by politicians.
#1 Having illegitimate parents is not some random 1/30 curse that befalls you because you're now part of a western culture, stop making it sound like you'll never know if your grandparents are your grandparents b/c your parents cheated on each other. Based on demographics, wealth, culture, education... the numbers change dramatically.
#2 The term "illegitimate" doesn't only cover parents practicing infidelity in hidden closets, it covers children who belong to parents that aren't married. So yes, that includes divorce, "whoops", adoption, and modern family who never planned on getting married.
#3 Knowing who your real parents/grandparents are and having them tested instead of your "foster" parents, doesn't stop you from being illegitimate child but lets you continue the test for your sake.
But yeah, see how that makes your exclamation so much less fun and dramatic? Seeking out the truth isn't as fun, is it? Please don't spread crap around like that, it doesn't do anyone any good. Not even yourself.
After all of these years of rocketry experience, one would think that much new technology would be added to decrease the probability of failure, yes?
In all these years of rocketry experience, controlled entry and landing of the spent first stage has never been accomplished. I don't believe it's even been tried.
As a general rule...
New technology, new problems. Greater complexity, greater complex problems. All of that better technology also requires better talent which is also harder to find. Sure, they undoubtedly probably solved many of the old problems, but they've all been replaced them all with new ones because "problems" never go away. Just look at our modern world, do we have fewer problems than we did a century ago? hah...
The funny thing is, the article you linked cautions against the kind of sensationalism that you're suggesting. Unless you meant to lace you post with sarcasm that I failed to detect...
I see this article resurface every year just like killer (Africanized) bees. Except these types of mosquito have already been native to most parts of N America for a very long time.
Splendid, yes, yes! In fact, let's lock more people up for non violent crimes! Plenty of room in our prisons, they're not full or anything absurd like that. Oh yeah, and that felony record stain on your person is no biggie, nothing that more crime couldn't wash away. That's not a ongoing problem for people trying to get rehabilitated for committing real crimes or anything like that...
Way to exacerbate all of our current justice's systems problems with something as stupid as this. Civil penalties is all the justice you need for a "crime" like this, it doesn't even rank the same as white collar crimes. So senseless. So you're going to "felonize" middle and lower class people for streaming video but not "felonize" upper class people for recklessly destroying people's wealth and jobs? Really? REALLY?
Being a software engineer myself I understand the sense of excitement accomplishment after completing internal testing. But as with many projects, as soon as this leaves the controlled "lab testing" environment it's a whole different ball game. Until then it's still a white paper product and I'd suggest remaining cautiously optimistic...
Like I said, it may have improved over brief periods of time but it was never a pretty good newspaper. Just varying degrees of less bad or ridiculous. Congratulations on reading one day's worth of Pravda, but if you think that somehow substantiates an opinion regarding the newspaper would be very misguided. I'm sure Fox News has a good day once in awhile too. But seriously, you reading the Pravda from the other side of the ocean is like looking through a telescope since you don't have any of the local context. You're going to need to give it a little more thought than that.
I'm hesitant to reply on any of your other statements because they appear to be aimed at someone else. I don't think anyone in their right mind can say the US (or any other republic or democracy) will be without blemish. Of course there are violations throughout history and even today. Especially if you bring into discussion the inhumane treatment of African Americans, that's a stain that will shame the US as long as there are accurate history books. Regardless, you're picking single examples that serve your opinion instead of looking at the big picture. You are allowed to criticize the US, what do you think you're doing now?... but you picked an example during the Red Scare with McCarthy? Seriously? If you're going to make that argument I might as well bring in the Great Purge of the 1930's under Stalin where 681,692 people were shot to death for political reasons, averaging 1,000 executions per day. How's that for comparison? What do you think Pravda was reporting then? Oh, it was singing the praises of national heroes like it wasn't even happening. For most examples during the Red Scare in the US, the worst will be forever ostracized by society and/or sent to prison. In Russia they would have disappeared and the event would be silenced. If you don't think that's a difference of several orders of magnitude then you need your head checked.
Sure the US is hardly a heaven, you only need to look at current events and how our country is trending. You're certainly right about the terrorism business. It's infuriating to actually hear people support government "security" policies on the basis of feeling safer. But you really need to keep your personal cognitive biases in check, they're seriously out of balance. You remind me of one of my Russian pals who himself been drinking a little too much Pravda syrum.
Germany has money to spend and invest, they're the #3 exporter in the world.
The #1 and #2 exporters are too busy spending it on other stupid stuff like military and domestic security which I doubt everyone prefers.
I'm OK with having a national flood plan but not the way it's currently handled. There are only two categories of risk when it comes to determining the rate people pay, you're either a "high risk" or a "medium-low" risk. Your risk category is assigned by your location on the FEMA floodplain maps. The private sector would have far more incentive to price risk accurately than trying to pigeon everyone into 1 of 2 categories. This is an extremely poor way to handle things because it treats "Fabio" on a Florida coastline in hurricane alley the same way it treats "ma&pa" next to Seneca Creek, they're both hish risk. I agree they're both high risk, but one of those is *much much* higher than the other. In essence ma&pa will subsidize Fabio because will see many more floods during his lifetime. If they want to keep NFP solvent they need a lot more ma&pa's, or better yet everyone that's low risk, paying into the risk pool. But since they essentially punish the low risk insureds by making them pay more than their fair share they never join the NFP program unless their mortgage forces them to. That's why NFP is currently insolvent and requires government subsidy to stay afloat.
Unfortunately ff NFP was privatized again, Fabio would never be able to get insurance, who in their right mind would want to insure a house that's guaranteed to be destroyed every decade? An insurance company can walk away and say I'm not going to take you on as a risk because you're too damned dangerous and because I don't have to. Even if they can make money on Fabio they won't insure him. That's why I'm not totally against a national plan, but at least it needs to be priced fairly and accurately.
Coming from a country that lived under socialism under the fatherly caring hands of the Soviet Union, I am compelled to completely and utterly disagree with you on the point that Pravda was *ever* a "pretty good newspaper". It has never been a good newspaper, ever. Though it may have had varying degrees of lies and propaganda in any of its articles.
The public has become addicted to sound bites and the discussion of climate modeling and global warming is anything *but* a sound bite. In fact, if you feed the public a steady stream of sound bites you will generate the exact controversy we have today. Most tidbits you find/read/hear that are either in support or against arguments for global warming are usually all "true-ish" but they fail to fully explain the broader context and see the big picture in terms of the long term trends and effects. It's nice to try to explain things in simpler terms but you run the risk of oversimplifying everything and making no sense at all.
Nobody can sit there and deny our society has 0 effect to our environment. Of course we are. You only have to look outside and see some garbage or go to the beach to figure that out. You can argue what kind of effects we create but you can't argue we have affected it. Second, while you can try to claim we're not causing global warming on one hand because the evidence is inconclusive - you can't say that and sit on your behind and then do nothing about it. Once you take that logical path you better be allocating a ton of research to fricken conclude the hell out of it. Sitting there and saying it's inconclusive and then being happy with that answer and doing no additional research is simply ignorant.
Or just maybe, we could take the wiser road and listen to all opinions and pick and choose the best from everyone. Say, instead of drawing a line in the sand and stereotyping/demonizing the people on the other side. When people stupendously say "I'm right and they're wrong" they're usually wrong themselves on multiple counts. A majority of the time, each side of the argument will have at least some valid points. I think you also misunderstand the idiom of hindsight is 20/20 not even mentioning it's usually used in the context of sarcasm. Of course decisions are easier if you already know the outcome.
Agile development is a method that has its respective strengths and weaknesses, it's not the method. There is no "one way" to do everything. Especially with something as ridiculously broad as software development. We're not arguing religion here, c'mon folks, use some sense.
imho I think the math mindset is very similar to the cs mindset, I'd still deem it a useful mental training exercise regardless of anything I say from here on out.
In reality whether or not you use it completely depends on what field you catapult yourself into. There's a place in every industry for a cs grad, not a single industry escapes computer software. For example if you stay with just simple web stuff I'm doubtful you'll ever encounter any math beyond arithmetic; in fact I'll say right now you probably won't use even 90% of what you learn in cs for simple web stuff. But if you become a serious software engineer say working on "big data" problems, high speed trading, visual toolsets, or anything involving worlds that include engineering or sciences then there's a chance you will need to dust off some of those books. Even if you have "real" mathematicians doing the heavy lifting for you it's still a good idea to know what you're programming instead of being fed with a spoon.
Because it's like building a new bullet train behind you while still riding on the old one. As much as I dislike antiquated, outdated, clunky old systems (my company included) they *usually* do what they were designed to do really well because they have 10+ years of maturity behind them. 10 years maturity = 10 years of development, 10 years of undocumented specs, 10 years of testing. Granted everything we make today comes with a lot of frameworks, SDKs, toolsets, and many other wonderful technologies to do some of the "cool" stuff for us - none of it will handle the true line of business logic out of the box. The true line of business stuff you're going to be rewriting from scratch. If you don't have the original creators of said old software, or hardcore business analysts that really understand how it works, chances are you or anyone will miss 75% of the clever nooks, crannies, and workarounds built in the original antiquated system. This will balloon original projected estimates and make the folks promising salvation look like fools. It's a vicious endeavor, so never underestimate the task, ever.
The worst are any companies that deal with a lot of money, which includes insurance companies and banks. They have some of the oldest, outdated systems ever and extremely resistant to change because they are the most nervous of change. Oh and anything government related, but that's mostly because they have no profitability whip to motivate them.
My *biggest* complaint is the steady brain drain that's been going on in other departments. Back in the day when "companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff" these same people actually knew what the $@&! they were doing and could explain it to you. These days, everything is automated and done for you by software. Instead, you now have companies with rooms full of people that are professional button clickers and couldn't explain much of anything beyond the screen they look at nor produce a spec document worth its weight in paper.
Early 20th century just called, and they want their discounted justifications for eugenics back... So a double Y chromosome can make males more violent, but yet we can find perfectly ordinary citizens with an extra Y who are not only peaceful but notable contributors to their communities. One of those most fundamental traits of human beings is that we can overcome our own nature and choose who we want to be through our own choices. i.e. we have a predisposition to be gluttonous, humping, pleasure seeking, greedy bastards but we *can* rise above all of that if we choose to - I'm not denying many people don't.
So back to politics. All those people I know, that "switched" teams must have undergone a primordial morph in brain structure. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Since when have we gotten back into this notion that people are born the way they are and can't change? And why would the options be limited to a 2 party system of left and right? Apparently the "middle" has not only been vaporized from politics and media, but from research too. Are we really such simpletons that we have to paint everyone either blue or red? Really? Disgusting.
Can't I be a tree hugger and be pro capitalism at the same time? Can't I be pro gun ownership and pro gun control at the same time? Can't I be anti-abortion and pro women's rights at the same time? Why are we so stuck on these stupid stereotypes...
Slashdot Mirror
Tech startups don't create the kinds of jobs that the 99% actually need. Oh, sure, many of them will eventually hire one secretary, and will pay into their building's contract for one part-time janitor.
I have to admit that saying they're jobs we don't need sounds a bit misguided. Who says? Why wouldn't they be? Are you suggesting we shouldn't have a technical work force? That's what it sounds like... but if I were to guess how you'd respond if asked that, you'd say that's not what you're trying to say at all.
That being said, technology already permeates every industry. Even service, manufacturing, construction, and it continues to increase more and more every year. There's a growing need (and gap) in tuning our workforce to be more technical. Hence the growing calls for pushing math, science, and technology in schools. While there will always be a need for blue collar jobs like manufacturing/construction/service for the foreseeable future, those won't last in the same state as they do today either. So it's kind of inevitable. And in reference to exporting those jobs exported oversees, you probably already know the same jobs would only be a 100th in size over here because of the automation we'd employ.
As for taxes in my opinion, we already have a sliding scale that almost works OK. If we could eliminate some "loopholes" - first being special treatment on specific types of income like dividends and capital gains and instead treat them as ordinary income - second eliminate all interest deductions including mortgage interest. I believe those changes alone (allowing for no exceptions) we'd fix 80% of our tax problems and also simplify taxes for everyone across the board.
Regardless of whether or not mankind is fully, partially, or trivially responsible for climate change. Calling it a weapon of mass destruction is fully moronic. It's a distortion of reality for the sole sake of sensationalizing the issue. It's not worth tainting the argument for the sake of getting the point across.
/tongueincheek
Now it's just a matter of time before we start arresting people for starting bonfires or driving to work. Gas guzzler, hybrid, or all electric you'll all be terrorists wielding WMDs!
Any builder will also sign a contract stating to such an effect, or at least verbally state as much and take them on trust. It's certainly not some magical worldwide automatic assumption. That's what "binds" them to rebuilds/repairs. No contract, no binding agreement. Depending on project type and size, a builder may or may not add that stipulation to their contract. However a smart builder that wants to stay in business tomorrow, will price accordingly with that stipulation in mind.
Also, people get their panties in a twist over contracts. "But you signed the contract, you have to do it!!!!" Yes they do, but a contract is only good if it's followed. If someone chooses not to follow it, the only recourse is taking them to court.
Now slightly off topic but that's why imho trust >> contracts. Trust is "free" but hard to obtain, little nebulous but it's also far more reliable. Drafting a contract is easy and unambiguous (assuming the work is specified in there) but enforcing it can often be prohibitively expensive from both time and money. Dealing with bonded contractors can remove some of the burden because you have a small "guarantee" that someone else will do it if they don't.
Short answer: it doesn't apply to you unless you agreed to it upfront. So, the analogy is working off of fictitious assumptions.
Probably not a good idea. I suspect it will probably attract the students that shouldn't be going into engineering in the first place. I don't know what would be worse, having more subpar engineers or having fewer superb engineers.
Instead, all the focus should be made during childhood education. By either family or schools, preferably families. Along with touting maths and sciences, we should also drill children on how to use and how not to use money while we're at it. But those pesky 20-year-solution-plans are so distasteful, quick useless bandaids sound so much better tasting...
It's also not unreasonable to assume a majority of his house will likely be made of wood, a renewable resource. An argument can also be made that concrete, brick, and asphalt is also renewable since that can be crushed and repurposed. If you want to pick on other materials he would use like plastics, metals, and shingles you could still renew those materials if you really wanted to.
Anywho, let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. None of us here are innocent of using resources. I'm just glad you have no real power, you'd be in everyone's business sooner than you need to be.
UGH.
Sorry, but, please, can we stop this? Schizophrenia is not a "Hi I'm me. 'And I am me too!'" kind of deal. At all. Period. It's not Multiple Personality Disorder, in fact it usually doesn't involve anything like what any media portrayal has ever been. It's more of an intrusive pattern. You know who you are, but there are people whispering, singing, yelling, in your ears - outside your window - in the bathroom - anywhere around you. Telling you to do things? Maybe. Probably not. More like being annoying. But one turns into two turns into many turns into noise and chatter and intense periods of thoughts you can't escape, you can't focus on, and you can't stop. It's incredibly debilitating, but more often than not you have no problem understanding it's not "you" that's in those voices and thoughts - the real problem is understanding that those voices and thoughts are indeed coming FROM you.
The idea that schizophrenia is akin to what you see in Sybil or the media in general is usually wrong. I've yet to see any good reporting on the topic, but people throw it around plenty. "Oh, the market was up, the market was down: it's being schizophrenic." No, if the market was "schizophrenic" it would have trouble concentrating and possibly hallucinate while being extremely paranoid. At times. For the most part it would keep to itself and try to read or at least talk to someone else because it's going through something terribly difficult that no one takes the time to understand.
I've always thought of schizophrenia as those of us who have an imagination like the rest of us, but can't always recognize the difference. If you think about it, anyone can "hear" voices or "see" things in your head, as if they were truly real. We can recreate any experience in our minds because that's where experiences exist. But most people can tell the difference.
Yep, that's why we should have a single payer system of health care coverage. The hell with the insurance company middle men.
I have no problem with a single payer system for health care but everyone treats it as some magic silver bullet that will fix everything. It won't fix anything and if implemented like today's Medicare it will guarantee healthcare will be more expensive because of all of the illegitimate activity that current bilks 10-15% (latest estimates) through improper payments. That's far more than the profit margins of nearly every single insurance company. What most people don't realize is that insurance business is more tightly regulated than nearly any other industry, their premium and losses are scrutinized to be disallowed from making too much money (even though insurance companies try their damned best to get around it).
The US health care system needs to be addressed, point by point, from the bottom up - not the top down. Everyone loves to blame insurance companies because they're the ones holding the bag, but imho while certainly *not* innocent they're a small villain in the very long complicated list of bad guys.
Disclosure: I work for an insurance company
If it's so good for consumers, then why don't they want it? There's logic behind why they have to lobby for it... to force something down consumer's throats which would by rejected unanimously, if it were actually out in the wild.
Don't be so sure that those are really your grandparents. Illegitimacy rates in Western culture run around 1 in 30, and you have two parents.
The problem with some statistics is that some people enjoy regurgitating them in an obscene way that not only ignores their original intent but also abuse them to present a more dramatic falsely supported argument. This twisted behavior is especially enjoyed by politicians.
#1 Having illegitimate parents is not some random 1/30 curse that befalls you because you're now part of a western culture, stop making it sound like you'll never know if your grandparents are your grandparents b/c your parents cheated on each other. Based on demographics, wealth, culture, education... the numbers change dramatically.
#2 The term "illegitimate" doesn't only cover parents practicing infidelity in hidden closets, it covers children who belong to parents that aren't married. So yes, that includes divorce, "whoops", adoption, and modern family who never planned on getting married.
#3 Knowing who your real parents/grandparents are and having them tested instead of your "foster" parents, doesn't stop you from being illegitimate child but lets you continue the test for your sake.
But yeah, see how that makes your exclamation so much less fun and dramatic? Seeking out the truth isn't as fun, is it? Please don't spread crap around like that, it doesn't do anyone any good. Not even yourself.
After all of these years of rocketry experience, one would think that much new technology would be added to decrease the probability of failure, yes?
In all these years of rocketry experience, controlled entry and landing of the spent first stage has never been accomplished. I don't believe it's even been tried.
As a general rule...
New technology, new problems. Greater complexity, greater complex problems. All of that better technology also requires better talent which is also harder to find. Sure, they undoubtedly probably solved many of the old problems, but they've all been replaced them all with new ones because "problems" never go away. Just look at our modern world, do we have fewer problems than we did a century ago? hah...
The funny thing is, the article you linked cautions against the kind of sensationalism that you're suggesting. Unless you meant to lace you post with sarcasm that I failed to detect... I see this article resurface every year just like killer (Africanized) bees. Except these types of mosquito have already been native to most parts of N America for a very long time.
Technology has a habit of doing that...
Oh Microsoft... please continue screwing your unhappy army developers at your own expense
Splendid, yes, yes! In fact, let's lock more people up for non violent crimes! Plenty of room in our prisons, they're not full or anything absurd like that. Oh yeah, and that felony record stain on your person is no biggie, nothing that more crime couldn't wash away. That's not a ongoing problem for people trying to get rehabilitated for committing real crimes or anything like that...
Way to exacerbate all of our current justice's systems problems with something as stupid as this. Civil penalties is all the justice you need for a "crime" like this, it doesn't even rank the same as white collar crimes. So senseless. So you're going to "felonize" middle and lower class people for streaming video but not "felonize" upper class people for recklessly destroying people's wealth and jobs? Really? REALLY?
Gob says, "COME ON!"
Being a software engineer myself I understand the sense of excitement accomplishment after completing internal testing. But as with many projects, as soon as this leaves the controlled "lab testing" environment it's a whole different ball game. Until then it's still a white paper product and I'd suggest remaining cautiously optimistic...
Legal or not, it's still unethical. That's what it's "embarrassing" to be caught.
Like I said, it may have improved over brief periods of time but it was never a pretty good newspaper. Just varying degrees of less bad or ridiculous. Congratulations on reading one day's worth of Pravda, but if you think that somehow substantiates an opinion regarding the newspaper would be very misguided. I'm sure Fox News has a good day once in awhile too. But seriously, you reading the Pravda from the other side of the ocean is like looking through a telescope since you don't have any of the local context. You're going to need to give it a little more thought than that.
... but you picked an example during the Red Scare with McCarthy? Seriously? If you're going to make that argument I might as well bring in the Great Purge of the 1930's under Stalin where 681,692 people were shot to death for political reasons, averaging 1,000 executions per day. How's that for comparison? What do you think Pravda was reporting then? Oh, it was singing the praises of national heroes like it wasn't even happening. For most examples during the Red Scare in the US, the worst will be forever ostracized by society and/or sent to prison. In Russia they would have disappeared and the event would be silenced. If you don't think that's a difference of several orders of magnitude then you need your head checked.
I'm hesitant to reply on any of your other statements because they appear to be aimed at someone else. I don't think anyone in their right mind can say the US (or any other republic or democracy) will be without blemish. Of course there are violations throughout history and even today. Especially if you bring into discussion the inhumane treatment of African Americans, that's a stain that will shame the US as long as there are accurate history books. Regardless, you're picking single examples that serve your opinion instead of looking at the big picture. You are allowed to criticize the US, what do you think you're doing now?
Sure the US is hardly a heaven, you only need to look at current events and how our country is trending. You're certainly right about the terrorism business. It's infuriating to actually hear people support government "security" policies on the basis of feeling safer. But you really need to keep your personal cognitive biases in check, they're seriously out of balance. You remind me of one of my Russian pals who himself been drinking a little too much Pravda syrum.
Germany has money to spend and invest, they're the #3 exporter in the world. The #1 and #2 exporters are too busy spending it on other stupid stuff like military and domestic security which I doubt everyone prefers.
I'm OK with having a national flood plan but not the way it's currently handled. There are only two categories of risk when it comes to determining the rate people pay, you're either a "high risk" or a "medium-low" risk. Your risk category is assigned by your location on the FEMA floodplain maps. The private sector would have far more incentive to price risk accurately than trying to pigeon everyone into 1 of 2 categories. This is an extremely poor way to handle things because it treats "Fabio" on a Florida coastline in hurricane alley the same way it treats "ma&pa" next to Seneca Creek, they're both hish risk. I agree they're both high risk, but one of those is *much much* higher than the other. In essence ma&pa will subsidize Fabio because will see many more floods during his lifetime. If they want to keep NFP solvent they need a lot more ma&pa's, or better yet everyone that's low risk, paying into the risk pool. But since they essentially punish the low risk insureds by making them pay more than their fair share they never join the NFP program unless their mortgage forces them to. That's why NFP is currently insolvent and requires government subsidy to stay afloat.
Unfortunately ff NFP was privatized again, Fabio would never be able to get insurance, who in their right mind would want to insure a house that's guaranteed to be destroyed every decade? An insurance company can walk away and say I'm not going to take you on as a risk because you're too damned dangerous and because I don't have to. Even if they can make money on Fabio they won't insure him. That's why I'm not totally against a national plan, but at least it needs to be priced fairly and accurately.
Full disclosure, I work for an insurance company.
Coming from a country that lived under socialism under the fatherly caring hands of the Soviet Union, I am compelled to completely and utterly disagree with you on the point that Pravda was *ever* a "pretty good newspaper". It has never been a good newspaper, ever. Though it may have had varying degrees of lies and propaganda in any of its articles.
The public has become addicted to sound bites and the discussion of climate modeling and global warming is anything *but* a sound bite. In fact, if you feed the public a steady stream of sound bites you will generate the exact controversy we have today. Most tidbits you find/read/hear that are either in support or against arguments for global warming are usually all "true-ish" but they fail to fully explain the broader context and see the big picture in terms of the long term trends and effects. It's nice to try to explain things in simpler terms but you run the risk of oversimplifying everything and making no sense at all.
Nobody can sit there and deny our society has 0 effect to our environment. Of course we are. You only have to look outside and see some garbage or go to the beach to figure that out. You can argue what kind of effects we create but you can't argue we have affected it. Second, while you can try to claim we're not causing global warming on one hand because the evidence is inconclusive - you can't say that and sit on your behind and then do nothing about it. Once you take that logical path you better be allocating a ton of research to fricken conclude the hell out of it. Sitting there and saying it's inconclusive and then being happy with that answer and doing no additional research is simply ignorant.
Or just maybe, we could take the wiser road and listen to all opinions and pick and choose the best from everyone. Say, instead of drawing a line in the sand and stereotyping/demonizing the people on the other side. When people stupendously say "I'm right and they're wrong" they're usually wrong themselves on multiple counts. A majority of the time, each side of the argument will have at least some valid points. I think you also misunderstand the idiom of hindsight is 20/20 not even mentioning it's usually used in the context of sarcasm. Of course decisions are easier if you already know the outcome.
Agile development is a method that has its respective strengths and weaknesses, it's not the method. There is no "one way" to do everything. Especially with something as ridiculously broad as software development. We're not arguing religion here, c'mon folks, use some sense.
imho I think the math mindset is very similar to the cs mindset, I'd still deem it a useful mental training exercise regardless of anything I say from here on out.
In reality whether or not you use it completely depends on what field you catapult yourself into. There's a place in every industry for a cs grad, not a single industry escapes computer software. For example if you stay with just simple web stuff I'm doubtful you'll ever encounter any math beyond arithmetic; in fact I'll say right now you probably won't use even 90% of what you learn in cs for simple web stuff. But if you become a serious software engineer say working on "big data" problems, high speed trading, visual toolsets, or anything involving worlds that include engineering or sciences then there's a chance you will need to dust off some of those books. Even if you have "real" mathematicians doing the heavy lifting for you it's still a good idea to know what you're programming instead of being fed with a spoon.
Because it's like building a new bullet train behind you while still riding on the old one. As much as I dislike antiquated, outdated, clunky old systems (my company included) they *usually* do what they were designed to do really well because they have 10+ years of maturity behind them. 10 years maturity = 10 years of development, 10 years of undocumented specs, 10 years of testing. Granted everything we make today comes with a lot of frameworks, SDKs, toolsets, and many other wonderful technologies to do some of the "cool" stuff for us - none of it will handle the true line of business logic out of the box. The true line of business stuff you're going to be rewriting from scratch. If you don't have the original creators of said old software, or hardcore business analysts that really understand how it works, chances are you or anyone will miss 75% of the clever nooks, crannies, and workarounds built in the original antiquated system. This will balloon original projected estimates and make the folks promising salvation look like fools. It's a vicious endeavor, so never underestimate the task, ever.
The worst are any companies that deal with a lot of money, which includes insurance companies and banks. They have some of the oldest, outdated systems ever and extremely resistant to change because they are the most nervous of change. Oh and anything government related, but that's mostly because they have no profitability whip to motivate them.
My *biggest* complaint is the steady brain drain that's been going on in other departments. Back in the day when "companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff" these same people actually knew what the $@&! they were doing and could explain it to you. These days, everything is automated and done for you by software. Instead, you now have companies with rooms full of people that are professional button clickers and couldn't explain much of anything beyond the screen they look at nor produce a spec document worth its weight in paper.
Early 20th century just called, and they want their discounted justifications for eugenics back... So a double Y chromosome can make males more violent, but yet we can find perfectly ordinary citizens with an extra Y who are not only peaceful but notable contributors to their communities. One of those most fundamental traits of human beings is that we can overcome our own nature and choose who we want to be through our own choices. i.e. we have a predisposition to be gluttonous, humping, pleasure seeking, greedy bastards but we *can* rise above all of that if we choose to - I'm not denying many people don't.
So back to politics. All those people I know, that "switched" teams must have undergone a primordial morph in brain structure. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Since when have we gotten back into this notion that people are born the way they are and can't change? And why would the options be limited to a 2 party system of left and right? Apparently the "middle" has not only been vaporized from politics and media, but from research too. Are we really such simpletons that we have to paint everyone either blue or red? Really? Disgusting.
Can't I be a tree hugger and be pro capitalism at the same time? Can't I be pro gun ownership and pro gun control at the same time? Can't I be anti-abortion and pro women's rights at the same time? Why are we so stuck on these stupid stereotypes...
Anyway, malarkey.