Furthermore, you're also subject to US taxation for a full TEN YEARS after you've renounced your citizenship.
Not limited to just U.S. citizens. I'm a U.S. citizen living in Germany and I'm married to a German. Because my wife lived in the U.S. for about a decade with a green card, I understand that my wife who was never a U.S. citizen has to pay taxes for ten years. WTF? How is that even legal? Why does Germany put up with that? How can the U.S. demand that she pay taxes for ten years?
Maybe, perhaps, she can just "not pay"... but then they'll probably arrest her or me when we visit my parents.
But from the business side it sucks. Also as a developer you have to be careful you don't get yourself locked into one technology. To me learning new stuff is part of what makes my job enjoyable but far too many of us get comfortable and find ourselves reaching into our middle years with skills that are no longer in demand.
I think this just happened to me. I was trying to keep my previous employer happy and I had to work on older technologies. Well, not really older. Just more mature. More stock C# and Java stuff as opposed to the bells and whistles. Web technologies have no use for them and I certainly couldn't justify anything like web programming that for the group I was in. Besides, I was happier doing that kind of stuff rather than we programming. My personal circumstances changed (family stuff) and I had to quit my job and move. I'm looking around and everyone wants a programmer with web experience. Very hard to break into a new place as a generic programmer without the skill of the day that everyone seems to want. With time passing, it looks as if my career is over. Very sad. Programming is my passion. I'd think about upgrading my skills, but I think these articles hit the nail on the head. I'm left with a very tough choice -- go into something more stable and get a lower paying job or keep the high risk, high reward, wicked pain in the ass career.
What's interesting is that I may take a job that has nothing to do with programming and my first personal project with be writing a program for a friend. He needs an Android program. We've already flushed out the requirements over about 10 pages. I just need to find the time to code. No one would want to pay for this program but it would definitely help my friend and people with his disabilities.
An aside: it seems the job offers don't readily split backend and frontend programmers. You're kind of expected to do it all. At least that what a lot of the job descriptions read.
Perhaps you did, but you didn't do anything with it. I just opened my 86 MB file (only a text file) in Word 2010 and forced it to scroll to the end of the file. I got the following error message: "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by Microsoft Word or this document may be damaged. Microsoft Word will save the document, but to repair the document, use Open and Repair command (click Open, and then click the arrow next to the Open button)." LibreOffice Writer can scroll to the end of the document. It takes it a very long time, but it can do it without giving up.
I would also highly recommend that you not work on files over 100 pages in Word. Saving them has historically introduced intermittent errors and those errors increase over time. I have seen many, many examples of this over many versions. And it wasn't just me. I was in a help desk like position and I had a lot of complaints about that. (Unfortunately, our customer was a moron so we had to deal with those huge Word files.) My wife has also seen this in her profession as well and she came to the same conclusion: 100 pages. No more.
I lived in New Orleans for two or three decades. They don't really get snow. When freezing weather comes in, it usually only brings ice. I remember getting excited as a 10 year old at seeing snow for the first time in my front yard. It was so thin, the lawn was mostly green and we had to scrape it off the cars to make actual snowballs. They were rust colored snow balls. (We didn't have the latest and greatest cars.) I've also lived in Indiana where we got both snow and ice in varying layers. The cheapest and most effective solution for people in Louisiana is to stay off the streets for a day or two until the ice melts. I have family and friends in Indiana, Atlanta, and New Orleans and I'm following the cold weather closely. I know what they are going through and how well prepared they are -- both on a personal level and on a city level.
I agree. I've used MS Office since the '97 version and I used OpenOffice for a few years until they split to LibreOffice... then I used LibreOffice. I have gone in depth in both the spreadsheets and word processors. Especially the word processors.
My conclusion? Both have bugs. Both have their advantages. I'd rank them about equal, although the current version of Excel does have feature advantages over Calc if you need to make your spreadsheet really pretty. I've had all of them crash on me over the years (although LibreOffice has gotten much better). Word has a particular problem with corrupting and losing data especially with large files. (In contrast, I've successfully loaded 86 MB text files into Writer.) My wife (and very heavy word processor user) has had to rely on LibreOffice several times to load and re-save a file that Word saved and then couldn't read anymore.
At home, I use LibreOffice. I have the capability but only very rarely use Word or Excel.
When you hear that schools are having a difficult time getting teachers, that indicates that the school/district/state is an awful place to work.
Yup. It sounds a lot like the IT world as well. I also suspect it sounds a lot like many other professions.
My Mom was a teacher and taught science and math for 30+ years. I have never heard her say "I quit" before -- especially for teaching which she is so passionate about. I was flabbergasted she did this in the middle of a school year. This is a woman who is passionate about kids and passing on knowledge to children of all ages from very young to seniors in high school. She then went on to explain she was teaching at one of the better schools. The stories she told were harrowing. This does not bode well for America's position in the future.
Wish I had mod points. I'd bump you up. It took me a little longer to understand how things were, but things never felt right in school... and my Mom was a teacher. You should hear her horror stories. To say that school is a "goddamn bad and nefarious joke" is an understatement, but there are no words in the English language to reflect how you and I really feel. I doubt any language can support that.
I just tell people now that I didn't let school get in the way of my education and when I got my bachelors from the university, I swore I'd never set foot in a school again. It is ironic that I recently had to go against what I swore to do and go back to school for six months to "keep the system satisfied [or] lose out in some major way" as you put it. My latest stint has only reinforced my belief that there are much better ways to educate.
You have some really good things to say, but I think I'm going to disagree with you on one key point.
I'd say the computer programming course is more valuable to them
I think computer programming is as valuable as a foreign language. I think both are equally relevant.
You do bring up an excellent point: If a student never goes to a foreign country, what good is a foreign language if they simply forget everything by the time they get into business. Unfortunately, I believe that they'll teach programming in equally a crappy way as I learned back in high school and college... and I have a CS degree. That means teaching programming in high school is useless with the current way things are done.
As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate that foreign language is a good thing if taught right -- with foreign culture and exposing students to different ways of thinking and challenging them. My foreign language classes never did any of that. Quite frankly, none of my programming classes taught me logic either.
I also need to tell you about my background so you can get a little perspective. I am a U.S. citizen living in Germany with a German wife. I sucked in Spanish in high school. I sucked in Spanish in college. I sucked in German while taking classes here in Germany. I am absolutely horrible in foreign language and my fellow students have repeatedly kicked my butt when it came to learning in every class. I was near the bottom of the barrel every time. To say I have problems speaking to the typical German right now is an understatement. I hate learning foreign languages. It is frustrating, slow, and hits everyone of my weaknesses. I have been programming since I was 10 and that is in my blood. Even when I'm a nodding off because I'm so tired, I can usually still program simple stuff. I'm not the best programmer out there, but programming does come naturally to me and my stuff does work. Oh... and my wife is a translator.
With that said, I'll reiterate: I think programming and learning a foreign language are equally as important. Not because programming or speaking another language is really what is important, but because if both are taught well, it can help train a person to think outside the box for problem solving in different ways. I'm not talking memorization. I'm talking about going beyond that.
I think one of the biggest problems today is that students are taught to memorize and regurgitate. I've gone beyond what they teach in classes. It can be amazing.
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
For many years, I had this same damn question unanswered. If I were to ever live in a foreign country, I knew that I'd learn that language and move on with my life. Well... I'm now living in a foreign country and I'm learning that language.
School never answered it for me, but Cracked did. How sad.
Other answers from my own personal experience? From a world-business perspective, you are more valuable if you know a foreign language. Unfortunately, you really have to live abroad to learn it or live in an area that naturally multilingual.
Also, I have found that it is the learning of a culture that has been the most important for me. Learning that other culture after you have formed a lot of your own opinions helps you understand that you've made mistakes along the way and that you have come to a lot of wrong conclusions. Just because someone has a different opinion than you [pick a hot topic and it doesn't matter the side: abortion, guns, social welfare, religion] doesn't necessarily mean that they are wrong or that you are right.
I must admit that the multi-lingual Europe is not immune from American-like stupidity. A lot of Europeans also have the same stuck-up, pig headed, I'm-always-right opinion as their American counterparts. Like I said, it's the cultural learning that is important and foreign language merely opens that door. I also believe learning it later in life rather than as a child can also make a difference. Being dependent on the grace of others while living in a foreign land (until I can speak their language) has most definitely given me a different opinions about certain aspects of the whole Mexicans-in-America thing. And before you think I was for or against Mexicans-in-America, keep in mind that I did and continue to disagree with both sides of the main arguments. I'm also married to a non-Mexican, non-American who lived with me in the U.S.
Being married to a foreigner has given me the best education of all. Interestingly enough, it was her foreign language skills and her cultural involvement that helped me to truly begin learning. I wish my fellow Americans were more open to hearing the answers that I have to the question you posed. (I just scratched the surface.) I wish neither of us had to ask that question and have it linger for so long without an answer.
Hope what I said helped to begin to answer that question for you.
Rebellion and revolution can restore wealth and equality... just like voting can restore wealth and equality too. At this point, I'd rather vote. Rebellion and revolution are always messy. There is no scenario where most people come out totally happy. War is ugly. Especially civil war. Who are your foes? It becomes brother against brother and father against son.
War also leads to only conclusion: Might makes right. Whoever is strongest and tenacious and dominates will be the winner. Anyone caught in the middle gets it bad. Only the strongest survive. No mercy for the weak. A lot of people come out broken. I know someone personally who survived a civil war and he is only in his 20s. It's not pleasant. I've heard his stories and some of them are stomach churning.
Yes, sometimes war, rebellion, or revolution is necessary, but if there is another option, I'd rather the other option. Going to war because people are stupid and vote in bad politicians is a sure way to lose. If you go to war against the stupid and uneducated, you just make more enemies than you can defeat. You have to educate those who don't know better and get them on your side. Education is the answer to win a war... and it also happens to be the answer we need to prevent war as well.
Am I up against the wall? Yes. I don't know how to out propaganda the current political regime. They do a great job with their propaganda, but I'm not about take up arms against them. Are you?
Snowden took American national secrets and gave them to the Russians, our enemies.
I didn't realize he gave specific things to the Russians and no one else. I didn't realize the Russians were our enemies. Just out of curiosity, did this "National Secrets to Russian Enemies" thing happen before or after Snowden was accused of being a traitor?
A whistleblower goes up the chain of command to the person above the obstruction; a traitor goes to the enemy.
How does one go above the president? How does one go above organizations that are trained in both character assassination and real-life assassination?
And finally: Who do you work for and how did you get modded to a 3?
No, voting 3rd party does not actually help. It, unfortunately, is tightly integrated into the problem and contributes to the very effect proponents claim it counters. Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
Then what do you suggest? Let's tally: Voting 3rd party does not help, Voting for the current two parties does not help; Trying to get into the current 2 parties and work it from the inside does not help. What's next up on the list? Are you advocating rebellion? Historically, that doesn't tend to work too well either.
I see no good option. They're all ugly. So far, voting 3rd party seems to be the best of bad options I can come up with.
So, what is your solution? I'm all ears for that option that actually does help and give us a net gain instead of eroding our freedoms and taking away our wealth and equality.
This may surprise a lot of people here, but in Germany the general rule is, if you get sick on vacation days and have a medical attestation prooving it, your affected (infected?) vacation days go back in your unused vacation.
I like this part of Germany, but I don't like another part. You're required to go to the doctor if you're sick to get a slip of paper saying you're excused. For me, without a car, that means getting on a bus and / or train and spreading my germs and being out in the cold weather at the absolute worst time to be out in it. People get sicker when they are out in the weather. Been there. Done that.
I debated for a while as to whether or not I should post my link. I will.
Somethings to keep in mind:
1) My experience is from 5 years ago. Seagate is a different company today and what I say in my link does not apply today. What I wrote back then does NOT directly apply to the discussion in this Slashdot thread.
2) My email address at the end is no longer valid. Feel free to use the one at Slashdot instead. (Somehow, in my recent international move, the password I was using stopped working at that particular account.)
3) I'm posting this because I think those on Slashdot may enjoy what I wrote. It has a table of contents and an obscene number of summaries and tallies throughout so one can accurate keep track of what went on.
4) I'm also posting this because if you're from a company, it may be a good case study in how not to do things. Feel free to do a "Save As". It's only a single page with a CSS.
5) I never did register this link with Google so it never showed up when searching, but it has been out there for 5 years. I was about one day away from making it searchable and posting my link in a bunch of forums when I got a call from the last guy who finally helped me out.
6) In my writings, I say the following: " It does me no good to see Seagate lose sales and have problems. It doesn't benefit me to see Seagate distribute products that are of poor quality. It does me no good to bad mouth Seagate just to bad mouth them." What I was trying to say is this: I want to see Seagate (and every company) fairly compete and fully succeed. Taking the cheap way out every time is a bad idea and companies forget that. In my case, the warning signs were all there, but the customer service reps didn't listen to me and address the actual problems I was having. It's a very common problem that way too many companies have had for a very long time. It is not limited to Seagate.
7) I'm re-emphasizing that what is written in my link is not a reflection of the Seagate of today. Five years is a long time for any company and quality can go in either direction in that time frame. I'll let others speak about the Seagate today.
Don't knock me too badly for it being on angelfire. It was free, and meant to be throw away. Oh... and use noscript. The only javascript I wrote was to obfuscate my email address, but it looks like a thousand javascript functions are added to my stuff from Angelfire. I have no idea what they put on there.
Software is one thing. Hardware (like heated seats) is another. I understand that it is cheaper to manufacture lots of things than just a few, but this "upgrade hardware" with a software unlock really bothers me. I find it morally wrong, repulsive, and repugnant. If you buy the cheap option, you are paying for these pieces of hardware even if you never use them. If you pay to unlock them, you're paying doubly so.
I wouldn't exactly say free. Back in 2009, after 3 months of warranty hell and multiple failed hard drives, I was told by Seagate I'd either have to ship the drive in myself and wait a long while for replacement or pay $20 for them to ship me one and that would take a few days as well. In the meantime, I was out a hard drive and I didn't have any good spares at the time.
That experience was so bad, I wound up writing a long letter, posting it on the Internet, and sending a link to that along with an accusation of stealing $20 (because I needed the drive sooner rather than later and they did not deliver on that promise) to the three email addresses (all sales people) I could find. About a week later, I got a call from a guy who finally gave me the service I should have had months before (by personally handling my case instead of having me bounce around to everyone and their grandmother). He said it was the most detailed story he had ever read. I had names and dates from the entire three months along with summaries of the transactions.
I had accused Seagate of a 75% failure rate (based on my personal experience), stealing $20, and not caring about customers or quality. I also provided feedback on the quality of specific people I spoke to in over a dozen instances (rating them as poor, neutral, good, or excellent).
In the end, they finally addressed my issues but only because I raised such a huge stink and posted about 15 pages of details from my awful experience.
Since then, I haven't bought many hard drives and I had hoped they had cleaned up their quality since then. Too bad they haven't.
Your audience is another human being who will be maintaining that code a few years later.
And he's a violent psychopath who knows where you sleep at night.
Or even worse... that human being who reads your code a few years later might be a violent psychopath who sleeps in your bed, wears your clothes, and stares at you in the mirror while you shave.
[Shivering] Damn. That does it. I'm never coding again.
don't expect a hardware maker to cater to the needs of the 1 person in several thousand that writes software for a living
Who uses the cap locks key? I do. I'm a programmer and a writer and I use it in both of my professions / hobbies. I would use it to type words in all caps like you did. The extra keystrokes or hunt-and-peck method that you must have used to write "HATE" and "NEVER" is too inefficient for me. Want to move the caps lock some place different? I'm open to suggestions. Just don't take it away entirely.
Next: Who uses the scroll lock? I do. Very rarely, but I do. It's useful on occasion in spreadsheet applications. (Although it seems to be going the way of the do-do. It can still be used in Excel, but not in LibreOffice Calc. Don't professional financial people who use Excel all day long use this key from time to time?) I use the same kind of functionality in IDEs too to scroll my text up and down without moving my cursor, but IDEs use different key strokes to accomplish the same thing. (Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down).
The 1 person in several thousand can be important enough to keep keys around. If it's used heavily by a certain group of people, why not keep special keys around? Some people use keyboards a lot more than mice. I picked up a lot of my keyboard habits from working with people who are blind. (They don't tend to use mice as much as a fully sighted person.) It also sounds like you suggest actually taking away the function keys. You'd be surprised how often they are used in niche fields or custom programs... and the function keys are the keys that are the least in the way when I'm doing heavy duty typing in a word processor (which is what most people probably use).
I'm all for innovation, but I just don't want to see keys that are rarely used go away entirely because "most people" don't use for it. For instance, I'd love to see a different German layout. The German keyboard sucks for languages like Java, C#, and any bracket languages. (Right Alt+8, Right Alt+9) U.S. keyboard, of course, sucks for writing in German. I switch between the two settings depending on what I'm doing. I'd love to see improvements in the U.S. keyboards too. I also like someone else's idea of backlit keyboard keys.
On topic: What's wrong with American Christians? The ones outside America I know are so much more sane.
Found one.
I recently moved from America to Germany. I thought I had left all of that bullshit behind. I'm currently trying to be much more social and a couple of months ago sat down with some strangers at dinner in a large group. The next thing I know, the German lady next to me won't shut up about how right everything in the Bible is. I even challenged her a little asking her about the genocide tendencies in the old testament not quite aligning with the new testament teachings. Whoa. Big mistake. In the middle of an expensive dinner with suits and nice dresses, I'm getting monologued about religion. Not a pleasant way to spend an evening. So far, she seems to be the exception and not the rule, but the nutters are out there. They just may not be as vocal as the nutters in America.
The Catholics who study the Old Testament in the original Hebrew know that the translation into modern English means "7 days" or "seven periods of time". There are many high-ranking people within the Catholic church who are quite comfortable with the idea of evolution. It is quite sad to see the church at the everyday man-to-man level teaching only the idea of "7 days". Unfortunately, that comes from the church trying to keep the everyday person under their power for hundreds of years. Apparently, the idea of power over the masses (pun intended) still holds true today.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, you're also subject to US taxation for a full TEN YEARS after you've renounced your citizenship.
Not limited to just U.S. citizens. I'm a U.S. citizen living in Germany and I'm married to a German. Because my wife lived in the U.S. for about a decade with a green card, I understand that my wife who was never a U.S. citizen has to pay taxes for ten years. WTF? How is that even legal? Why does Germany put up with that? How can the U.S. demand that she pay taxes for ten years?
Maybe, perhaps, she can just "not pay"... but then they'll probably arrest her or me when we visit my parents.
But from the business side it sucks. Also as a developer you have to be careful you don't get yourself locked into one technology. To me learning new stuff is part of what makes my job enjoyable but far too many of us get comfortable and find ourselves reaching into our middle years with skills that are no longer in demand.
I think this just happened to me. I was trying to keep my previous employer happy and I had to work on older technologies. Well, not really older. Just more mature. More stock C# and Java stuff as opposed to the bells and whistles. Web technologies have no use for them and I certainly couldn't justify anything like web programming that for the group I was in. Besides, I was happier doing that kind of stuff rather than we programming. My personal circumstances changed (family stuff) and I had to quit my job and move. I'm looking around and everyone wants a programmer with web experience. Very hard to break into a new place as a generic programmer without the skill of the day that everyone seems to want. With time passing, it looks as if my career is over. Very sad. Programming is my passion. I'd think about upgrading my skills, but I think these articles hit the nail on the head. I'm left with a very tough choice -- go into something more stable and get a lower paying job or keep the high risk, high reward, wicked pain in the ass career.
What's interesting is that I may take a job that has nothing to do with programming and my first personal project with be writing a program for a friend. He needs an Android program. We've already flushed out the requirements over about 10 pages. I just need to find the time to code. No one would want to pay for this program but it would definitely help my friend and people with his disabilities.
An aside: it seems the job offers don't readily split backend and frontend programmers. You're kind of expected to do it all. At least that what a lot of the job descriptions read.
Perhaps you did, but you didn't do anything with it. I just opened my 86 MB file (only a text file) in Word 2010 and forced it to scroll to the end of the file. I got the following error message: "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by Microsoft Word or this document may be damaged. Microsoft Word will save the document, but to repair the document, use Open and Repair command (click Open, and then click the arrow next to the Open button)." LibreOffice Writer can scroll to the end of the document. It takes it a very long time, but it can do it without giving up.
I would also highly recommend that you not work on files over 100 pages in Word. Saving them has historically introduced intermittent errors and those errors increase over time. I have seen many, many examples of this over many versions. And it wasn't just me. I was in a help desk like position and I had a lot of complaints about that. (Unfortunately, our customer was a moron so we had to deal with those huge Word files.) My wife has also seen this in her profession as well and she came to the same conclusion: 100 pages. No more.
I lived in New Orleans for two or three decades. They don't really get snow. When freezing weather comes in, it usually only brings ice. I remember getting excited as a 10 year old at seeing snow for the first time in my front yard. It was so thin, the lawn was mostly green and we had to scrape it off the cars to make actual snowballs. They were rust colored snow balls. (We didn't have the latest and greatest cars.) I've also lived in Indiana where we got both snow and ice in varying layers. The cheapest and most effective solution for people in Louisiana is to stay off the streets for a day or two until the ice melts. I have family and friends in Indiana, Atlanta, and New Orleans and I'm following the cold weather closely. I know what they are going through and how well prepared they are -- both on a personal level and on a city level.
I agree. I've used MS Office since the '97 version and I used OpenOffice for a few years until they split to LibreOffice... then I used LibreOffice. I have gone in depth in both the spreadsheets and word processors. Especially the word processors.
My conclusion? Both have bugs. Both have their advantages. I'd rank them about equal, although the current version of Excel does have feature advantages over Calc if you need to make your spreadsheet really pretty. I've had all of them crash on me over the years (although LibreOffice has gotten much better). Word has a particular problem with corrupting and losing data especially with large files. (In contrast, I've successfully loaded 86 MB text files into Writer.) My wife (and very heavy word processor user) has had to rely on LibreOffice several times to load and re-save a file that Word saved and then couldn't read anymore.
At home, I use LibreOffice. I have the capability but only very rarely use Word or Excel.
When you hear that schools are having a difficult time getting teachers, that indicates that the school/district/state is an awful place to work.
Yup. It sounds a lot like the IT world as well. I also suspect it sounds a lot like many other professions.
My Mom was a teacher and taught science and math for 30+ years. I have never heard her say "I quit" before -- especially for teaching which she is so passionate about. I was flabbergasted she did this in the middle of a school year. This is a woman who is passionate about kids and passing on knowledge to children of all ages from very young to seniors in high school. She then went on to explain she was teaching at one of the better schools. The stories she told were harrowing. This does not bode well for America's position in the future.
Wish I had mod points. I'd bump you up. It took me a little longer to understand how things were, but things never felt right in school... and my Mom was a teacher. You should hear her horror stories. To say that school is a "goddamn bad and nefarious joke" is an understatement, but there are no words in the English language to reflect how you and I really feel. I doubt any language can support that.
I just tell people now that I didn't let school get in the way of my education and when I got my bachelors from the university, I swore I'd never set foot in a school again. It is ironic that I recently had to go against what I swore to do and go back to school for six months to "keep the system satisfied [or] lose out in some major way" as you put it. My latest stint has only reinforced my belief that there are much better ways to educate.
Y'all Goto 10
That's only if you're working with a single thread. "All Y'all Goto 10" is for multi-threading.
You have some really good things to say, but I think I'm going to disagree with you on one key point.
I'd say the computer programming course is more valuable to them
I think computer programming is as valuable as a foreign language. I think both are equally relevant.
You do bring up an excellent point: If a student never goes to a foreign country, what good is a foreign language if they simply forget everything by the time they get into business. Unfortunately, I believe that they'll teach programming in equally a crappy way as I learned back in high school and college... and I have a CS degree. That means teaching programming in high school is useless with the current way things are done.
As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate that foreign language is a good thing if taught right -- with foreign culture and exposing students to different ways of thinking and challenging them. My foreign language classes never did any of that. Quite frankly, none of my programming classes taught me logic either.
I also need to tell you about my background so you can get a little perspective. I am a U.S. citizen living in Germany with a German wife. I sucked in Spanish in high school. I sucked in Spanish in college. I sucked in German while taking classes here in Germany. I am absolutely horrible in foreign language and my fellow students have repeatedly kicked my butt when it came to learning in every class. I was near the bottom of the barrel every time. To say I have problems speaking to the typical German right now is an understatement. I hate learning foreign languages. It is frustrating, slow, and hits everyone of my weaknesses. I have been programming since I was 10 and that is in my blood. Even when I'm a nodding off because I'm so tired, I can usually still program simple stuff. I'm not the best programmer out there, but programming does come naturally to me and my stuff does work. Oh... and my wife is a translator.
With that said, I'll reiterate: I think programming and learning a foreign language are equally as important. Not because programming or speaking another language is really what is important, but because if both are taught well, it can help train a person to think outside the box for problem solving in different ways. I'm not talking memorization. I'm talking about going beyond that.
I think one of the biggest problems today is that students are taught to memorize and regurgitate. I've gone beyond what they teach in classes. It can be amazing.
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
For many years, I had this same damn question unanswered. If I were to ever live in a foreign country, I knew that I'd learn that language and move on with my life. Well... I'm now living in a foreign country and I'm learning that language.
School never answered it for me, but Cracked did. How sad.
Other answers from my own personal experience? From a world-business perspective, you are more valuable if you know a foreign language. Unfortunately, you really have to live abroad to learn it or live in an area that naturally multilingual.
Also, I have found that it is the learning of a culture that has been the most important for me. Learning that other culture after you have formed a lot of your own opinions helps you understand that you've made mistakes along the way and that you have come to a lot of wrong conclusions. Just because someone has a different opinion than you [pick a hot topic and it doesn't matter the side: abortion, guns, social welfare, religion] doesn't necessarily mean that they are wrong or that you are right.
I must admit that the multi-lingual Europe is not immune from American-like stupidity. A lot of Europeans also have the same stuck-up, pig headed, I'm-always-right opinion as their American counterparts. Like I said, it's the cultural learning that is important and foreign language merely opens that door. I also believe learning it later in life rather than as a child can also make a difference. Being dependent on the grace of others while living in a foreign land (until I can speak their language) has most definitely given me a different opinions about certain aspects of the whole Mexicans-in-America thing. And before you think I was for or against Mexicans-in-America, keep in mind that I did and continue to disagree with both sides of the main arguments. I'm also married to a non-Mexican, non-American who lived with me in the U.S.
Being married to a foreigner has given me the best education of all. Interestingly enough, it was her foreign language skills and her cultural involvement that helped me to truly begin learning. I wish my fellow Americans were more open to hearing the answers that I have to the question you posed. (I just scratched the surface.) I wish neither of us had to ask that question and have it linger for so long without an answer.
Hope what I said helped to begin to answer that question for you.
Erm... no, not me.
[Pause.]
Excuse me. I have to shut down a script.
Doesn't sound like every patent will cost $10K.
Rebellion and revolution can restore wealth and equality... just like voting can restore wealth and equality too. At this point, I'd rather vote. Rebellion and revolution are always messy. There is no scenario where most people come out totally happy. War is ugly. Especially civil war. Who are your foes? It becomes brother against brother and father against son.
War also leads to only conclusion: Might makes right. Whoever is strongest and tenacious and dominates will be the winner. Anyone caught in the middle gets it bad. Only the strongest survive. No mercy for the weak. A lot of people come out broken. I know someone personally who survived a civil war and he is only in his 20s. It's not pleasant. I've heard his stories and some of them are stomach churning.
Yes, sometimes war, rebellion, or revolution is necessary, but if there is another option, I'd rather the other option. Going to war because people are stupid and vote in bad politicians is a sure way to lose. If you go to war against the stupid and uneducated, you just make more enemies than you can defeat. You have to educate those who don't know better and get them on your side. Education is the answer to win a war... and it also happens to be the answer we need to prevent war as well.
Am I up against the wall? Yes. I don't know how to out propaganda the current political regime. They do a great job with their propaganda, but I'm not about take up arms against them. Are you?
Snowden took American national secrets and gave them to the Russians, our enemies.
I didn't realize he gave specific things to the Russians and no one else. I didn't realize the Russians were our enemies. Just out of curiosity, did this "National Secrets to Russian Enemies" thing happen before or after Snowden was accused of being a traitor?
A whistleblower goes up the chain of command to the person above the obstruction; a traitor goes to the enemy.
How does one go above the president? How does one go above organizations that are trained in both character assassination and real-life assassination?
And finally: Who do you work for and how did you get modded to a 3?
No, voting 3rd party does not actually help. It, unfortunately, is tightly integrated into the problem and contributes to the very effect proponents claim it counters. Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
Then what do you suggest? Let's tally: Voting 3rd party does not help, Voting for the current two parties does not help; Trying to get into the current 2 parties and work it from the inside does not help. What's next up on the list? Are you advocating rebellion? Historically, that doesn't tend to work too well either.
I see no good option. They're all ugly. So far, voting 3rd party seems to be the best of bad options I can come up with.
So, what is your solution? I'm all ears for that option that actually does help and give us a net gain instead of eroding our freedoms and taking away our wealth and equality.
This may surprise a lot of people here, but in Germany the general rule is, if you get sick on vacation days and have a medical attestation prooving it, your affected (infected?) vacation days go back in your unused vacation.
I like this part of Germany, but I don't like another part. You're required to go to the doctor if you're sick to get a slip of paper saying you're excused. For me, without a car, that means getting on a bus and / or train and spreading my germs and being out in the cold weather at the absolute worst time to be out in it. People get sicker when they are out in the weather. Been there. Done that.
I debated for a while as to whether or not I should post my link. I will.
Somethings to keep in mind:
1) My experience is from 5 years ago. Seagate is a different company today and what I say in my link does not apply today. What I wrote back then does NOT directly apply to the discussion in this Slashdot thread.
2) My email address at the end is no longer valid. Feel free to use the one at Slashdot instead. (Somehow, in my recent international move, the password I was using stopped working at that particular account.)
3) I'm posting this because I think those on Slashdot may enjoy what I wrote. It has a table of contents and an obscene number of summaries and tallies throughout so one can accurate keep track of what went on.
4) I'm also posting this because if you're from a company, it may be a good case study in how not to do things. Feel free to do a "Save As". It's only a single page with a CSS.
5) I never did register this link with Google so it never showed up when searching, but it has been out there for 5 years. I was about one day away from making it searchable and posting my link in a bunch of forums when I got a call from the last guy who finally helped me out.
6) In my writings, I say the following: " It does me no good to see Seagate lose sales and have problems. It doesn't benefit me to see Seagate distribute products that are of poor quality. It does me no good to bad mouth Seagate just to bad mouth them." What I was trying to say is this: I want to see Seagate (and every company) fairly compete and fully succeed. Taking the cheap way out every time is a bad idea and companies forget that. In my case, the warning signs were all there, but the customer service reps didn't listen to me and address the actual problems I was having. It's a very common problem that way too many companies have had for a very long time. It is not limited to Seagate.
7) I'm re-emphasizing that what is written in my link is not a reflection of the Seagate of today. Five years is a long time for any company and quality can go in either direction in that time frame. I'll let others speak about the Seagate today.
My link for your reading:http://badexperience.angelfire.com/Seagate.html
Don't knock me too badly for it being on angelfire. It was free, and meant to be throw away. Oh... and use noscript. The only javascript I wrote was to obfuscate my email address, but it looks like a thousand javascript functions are added to my stuff from Angelfire. I have no idea what they put on there.
When all car manufacturers do this, you won't have a choice. I feel your pain.
Software is one thing. Hardware (like heated seats) is another. I understand that it is cheaper to manufacture lots of things than just a few, but this "upgrade hardware" with a software unlock really bothers me. I find it morally wrong, repulsive, and repugnant. If you buy the cheap option, you are paying for these pieces of hardware even if you never use them. If you pay to unlock them, you're paying doubly so.
I wouldn't exactly say free. Back in 2009, after 3 months of warranty hell and multiple failed hard drives, I was told by Seagate I'd either have to ship the drive in myself and wait a long while for replacement or pay $20 for them to ship me one and that would take a few days as well. In the meantime, I was out a hard drive and I didn't have any good spares at the time.
That experience was so bad, I wound up writing a long letter, posting it on the Internet, and sending a link to that along with an accusation of stealing $20 (because I needed the drive sooner rather than later and they did not deliver on that promise) to the three email addresses (all sales people) I could find. About a week later, I got a call from a guy who finally gave me the service I should have had months before (by personally handling my case instead of having me bounce around to everyone and their grandmother). He said it was the most detailed story he had ever read. I had names and dates from the entire three months along with summaries of the transactions.
I had accused Seagate of a 75% failure rate (based on my personal experience), stealing $20, and not caring about customers or quality. I also provided feedback on the quality of specific people I spoke to in over a dozen instances (rating them as poor, neutral, good, or excellent).
In the end, they finally addressed my issues but only because I raised such a huge stink and posted about 15 pages of details from my awful experience.
Since then, I haven't bought many hard drives and I had hoped they had cleaned up their quality since then. Too bad they haven't.
Your audience is another human being who will be maintaining that code a few years later.
And he's a violent psychopath who knows where you sleep at night.
Or even worse... that human being who reads your code a few years later might be a violent psychopath who sleeps in your bed, wears your clothes, and stares at you in the mirror while you shave.
[Shivering] Damn. That does it. I'm never coding again.
I'll give it a try. Thanks.
Seriously, who uses freaking caps-lock?
don't expect a hardware maker to cater to the needs of the 1 person in several thousand that writes software for a living
Who uses the cap locks key? I do. I'm a programmer and a writer and I use it in both of my professions / hobbies. I would use it to type words in all caps like you did. The extra keystrokes or hunt-and-peck method that you must have used to write "HATE" and "NEVER" is too inefficient for me. Want to move the caps lock some place different? I'm open to suggestions. Just don't take it away entirely.
Next: Who uses the scroll lock? I do. Very rarely, but I do. It's useful on occasion in spreadsheet applications. (Although it seems to be going the way of the do-do. It can still be used in Excel, but not in LibreOffice Calc. Don't professional financial people who use Excel all day long use this key from time to time?) I use the same kind of functionality in IDEs too to scroll my text up and down without moving my cursor, but IDEs use different key strokes to accomplish the same thing. (Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down).
The 1 person in several thousand can be important enough to keep keys around. If it's used heavily by a certain group of people, why not keep special keys around? Some people use keyboards a lot more than mice. I picked up a lot of my keyboard habits from working with people who are blind. (They don't tend to use mice as much as a fully sighted person.) It also sounds like you suggest actually taking away the function keys. You'd be surprised how often they are used in niche fields or custom programs... and the function keys are the keys that are the least in the way when I'm doing heavy duty typing in a word processor (which is what most people probably use).
I'm all for innovation, but I just don't want to see keys that are rarely used go away entirely because "most people" don't use for it. For instance, I'd love to see a different German layout. The German keyboard sucks for languages like Java, C#, and any bracket languages. (Right Alt+8, Right Alt+9) U.S. keyboard, of course, sucks for writing in German. I switch between the two settings depending on what I'm doing. I'd love to see improvements in the U.S. keyboards too. I also like someone else's idea of backlit keyboard keys.
On topic: What's wrong with American Christians? The ones outside America I know are so much more sane.
Found one.
I recently moved from America to Germany. I thought I had left all of that bullshit behind. I'm currently trying to be much more social and a couple of months ago sat down with some strangers at dinner in a large group. The next thing I know, the German lady next to me won't shut up about how right everything in the Bible is. I even challenged her a little asking her about the genocide tendencies in the old testament not quite aligning with the new testament teachings. Whoa. Big mistake. In the middle of an expensive dinner with suits and nice dresses, I'm getting monologued about religion. Not a pleasant way to spend an evening. So far, she seems to be the exception and not the rule, but the nutters are out there. They just may not be as vocal as the nutters in America.
The Catholics who study the Old Testament in the original Hebrew know that the translation into modern English means "7 days" or "seven periods of time". There are many high-ranking people within the Catholic church who are quite comfortable with the idea of evolution. It is quite sad to see the church at the everyday man-to-man level teaching only the idea of "7 days". Unfortunately, that comes from the church trying to keep the everyday person under their power for hundreds of years. Apparently, the idea of power over the masses (pun intended) still holds true today.