That's a completely valid point. Anecdotal evidence is pretty weak for most things. But I think the point I was trying to make (albeit poorly) is that one who is never forced to face very unpleasant consequences for failure, who is never bullied, or is never taught without thought given to how entertained the student is, is one who is only nominally prepared for the harsh realities of adult life.
I still think you're succumbing to two major flaws in your logic:
You presuppose that home schooled children will never experience the traits you listed - being bullied, having unpleasant consequences for failure, being "bored," and so on.
You assume that all public school children experience all of those qualities in their public schooling.
Regarding (1), I don't see why home schooling has to be that way. Perhaps the home schooled persons you know had it that way - a focus on not being bored, no negative consequences to failure, and so on - but who says it has to be that way? Why can't a home schooled child be told something like, "You have to do your _insert boring task here_ lessons now. I know it's not fun, but this is important to learn. Sit down and get cracking." And I posit that a home school child has more pressure to succeed at home than at school. A poorly performing public school child can hide his grades, lie to his parents, etc. And a parent who home schools their child can put the same punishments in effect for not succeeding academically, such as no playing with toy X until you get your grades up, or whatever. Additionally, there are outlets outside of the home school where kids can have social interactions: sports leagues, clubs, etc. For example, I was in Boy Scouts throughout elementary school and there were sufficient amounts of bullying and teasing to give a home schooled child the experience!
Regarding (2), I think there are plenty of schools in poorer areas where there is not an impetus to succeed. Rather, teachers are more focused on teaching the requisite curriculum and getting the kids onto the next grade. Also, not all public schooled children experience bullying or even mild teasing. Do you think the star quarterback or prom queen is getting bullied?
For the record, I was public schooled and my mom has been a public school teacher her entire life. However, I plan on home schooling my daughter. Not because of religious reason (I'm not), not because of wanting to "protect" her from those that are different (I like different people), but rather because I think we can provide a more focused curriculum and foster her emotional and mental growth in a more positive way than is possible with public schools. That's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it works out.
That's nice in theory, but many parents think they know a lot more about a subject than they really do. It doesn't do anybody any good when they try to teach their kids something that they don't really understand either.
I have personally known homeschooled adults that were completely unprepared to do things like deal with workplace bullies, keeping track of their time for work, or see the value in something that wasn't 'fun' for them.
I hear this criticism against homeschooling a lot, namely: "I know a homeschooled person and he is X." Yet you never hear anyone say, "I know a public schooled person and he is X." Because I do know several public schooled people who are unprepared to do things like deal with workplace bullies, keeping track of their time for work, or see the value in something that wasn't 'fun' for them.
There are much fewer home schooled persons, so it is only natural for us to extend certain traits from a small known sample to the population as a whole, but to do so is faulty logic. Of course, I say this when the only person I know who is home schooled is a very bright, outgoing, socially adept person who does well with mundane and 'boring' tasks when needed.
The original showed an Asian guy, a black guy and a white woman. How tediously politically correct. Also completely unrealistic for Poland. (Is it even realistic for the US?)
Depends what part of the country you live in and whether the office is in a larger city or smaller city. For example, I live in San Diego, which is in Southern California. The African American population here is pretty small, but the Asian and Mexican population is quite substantial, larger than the white population when combined. Seeing a picture of one Asian, an African American, and a white person seems normal, although more realistically it would be one white person, one Asian, and one Latino.
However, if you are working in, say, Atlanta (a big city in the southeast part of the US) there is a much larger African American population. And you'll see a larger percentage of European immigrants in the northeast (New York, Boston, etc.).
Does anyone have any idea what typical sales for technical books are? I have no idea what it means numerically to be a technical best seller, or what the sales of an ordinary book that is not a dud are like. And yes, I've googled. Sales figures appear generally not to be public.
Sales figures depend on a number of factors:
The prominence of the author - Martin Fowler sells a certain number of copies based on his name alone)
The marketing abilities of the publisher - not every publisher has as deep a reach into the brick and mortar businesses like the big name companies (O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Sams, etc.)
The topic - an introductory book on PHP is going to sell more copies than a book targeting uber-advanced PHP developers
The existing coverage of said topic in the market - if there are 10 books covering the same topic you're going to sell fewer copies than if your book was the only option, obviously
The popularity/user base size of said topic - a book on Microsoft Word is going to sell more copies than a book on Open Office
I've written a number of books on a specific programming technology (ASP.NET) and have blogged about book sales and numbers and other metrics. Check out The economics of writing a computer trade book (with a comment from Tim O'Reilly of all people), as well as my list of blog entries on technical writing.
All the financial risk. Months of time don't get devoted to a project without having some sort of impact on the author's life.
That is (in part) why the author receives an advance on royalties. To help pay for the author's investment in time while the investment is being made rather than having to wait for the book to get typeset, copy edited, printed, distributed, and, finally, on shelves.
You're kidding me, 10-14% is a good royalty rate for an author?! That's disgusting.
Not to mention that the book store sells the book for double what they paid. So if you buy a $50 book at Barnes and Noble (or Amazon or wherever) the publisher made, say, $25, of which the author sees $2.50 or so. For a bit more detail on how authors get paid, check out The economics of writing a computer trade book.
I agree wholeheartedly that there are a lot of unfit parents out there, although I think that it's a stretch to say that most people shouldn't have kids. There is certainly a population of people who are bad parents and shouldn't procreate, but I believe this number of be the minority. I'd even go as far to say that people with bad upbringings could learn the skills needed to raise good kids.
In my experience, being a parent is more about patience, routine, and having the fortitude to take actions that are in the best interest of your kids in the long run regardless of how much they bitch and moan. In other words, it's mostly mechanical skills. There's no magic. Folks with great parents have an upperhand as they know the behavior to model, but I believe these behaviors could be taught to most people who had a poor childhood themselves.
And I do really hear you, too, but one thing that parenthood has taught me is that your opinions and views on parenting and child rearing morph a bit once you become a parent and go through some experiences. That's not to say that you don't have valid points - you do - but hearing a childless adult say, "What's wrong with parents these days is X" is a bit like a white trust fund baby who's never left the Hamptons except to tour Europe making comments on the problems of inner-city youth.:-)
Case in point: every parent before they are a parent has a list of things they plan on doing or not doing when they have kids. Trust me, that list differs substantially from its pre-kids to its post-kids state!
When you're young is the best time to have kids, because your DNA is in the best shape, and you are in the best shape.
In the best shape physically, perhaps, but not necessarily in the best shape emotionally, mentally, or economically. Try all that buying diapers, baby food, cribs, toys, etc. when you're making $8 an hour at WalMart. How many 14 year olds have the emotional maturity and patience to choose staying at home with to take care of a screaming, a colicky baby versus going outside to play with their friends? How much more likely is a tired and frustrated 15 year old to shake or strike the baby in a fit of anger versus someone who is 35?
The plan my wife and I have has worked well for us - married at 25, first kid at 30, with those first five years of marriage involving a lot of travel and other big adventures that you can't enjoy for some years after the first kid pops out.
I agree that people should do what they love, have new experiences, blah blah blah, and not worry about the money and career building and job safety when they're young and have no dependents. It's a little more sobering and a much more difficult decision when you're a father with a wife and children you need to provide and support. I can see the allure to job safety, even if it means sacrificing doing what you enjoy.
All that being said, I think it is possible for one to do what they enjoy and be less focused on money, even with a family, if they've made some prudent financial decisions and are content with not keeping up with their next door neighbors.
As someone else who interviews a lot of candidates, I agree with the parent. Age does not play a factor at all.
Age shouldn't matter at all in the hiring process, but I can understand why it can impact hiring decisions. Some people have a hard time having a much younger boss, which is likely for an older candidate being hired in this industry, especially an older candidate straight out of university.
Also, for those crazy dot com-type companies that like to work their employees to the bone, older employees are more likely to have real responsibilities (family, health issues, a life, etc.), and more of a backbone to stand up and not take the company's crap. Of course, when making such generalizations, you could also say that the young are foolish and irresponsible.:-)
The policy makes sense, as it touts Blockbuster's physical presence and gives consumers a reason to choose them over Netflix. This policy was the primary reason I chose a Blockbuster account, namely because we have a store down the street from us. So after watching a movie from the mail we could return it and pick something up in store, and get the next movie in our queue mailed out at the same time.
The people who study businesses and evaluate their potential upside have clearly signaled that Blockbuster is dying. Their share price has dropped 96% since 2004, whereas Netflix has increased 20% in the same time period.
That's not to say that Blockbuster will go out of business anytime soon, but it does imply that over the past five years their business has been contracting rather than growing.
when I purchased my home I signed all dates in YY/MM/DD format
I put down dates on contracts and other legal forms and whatnot as YYYY-MM-DD. That is the only unambiguous, language-agnostic, recognizable and easily understood by fellow humans date format, to my knowledge.
Bad taste and evil have two different meanings. Something done in bad taste means that the person showed poor judgment as to what is socially acceptable or appropriate for a given situation. Evil implies intent and it also implies willful hate or intent to do harm.
So murder and rape aren't in bad taste. Perhaps a murder scene or rape scene in a movie, play, or book may be in bad taste depending on how it's performed or its context in the story, but an actual rape or murder doesn't indicate poor judgment as to what is socially acceptable - it indicates a willingness and intent to harm someone.
If Microsoft purposefully generated a severance check in excess of what was contractually agreed upon, just so that they could later go back and demand a refund, then that is evil. If they mistakenly overpaid a former employee $5 more than he was due and are now asking for it back, that's not willful harm, but it is a case of poor judgment.
And that would be fine if the government would let you go bankrupt when your poor and risk-heavy investments fail.
Yes, everyone going bankrupt and the banks all going bust would be incredible for the economy.
Seriously though, how do people still think like this?
The government would continue to back deposits in FDIC-insured banks. They just wouldn't bailout the banks. Let the bank fail, have the government swoop in and sell off the assets (if any) and then use that money plus the monies in the FDIC insurance fund to refund depositors up to the insured limit ($100k/account holder in the past, $250k/account holder now, IIRC).
What good does it do to artificially prop up the banks (or the auto makers) with taxpayer money? Seriously, how do people still think like that? If I know the government will come and rescue me if I make risky gambles that don't pay off, then let's all go to Vegas with our life savings and put it on black.
The free market? Awesome, I'm investing all my money in sub-prime loans!
And that would be fine if the government would let you go bankrupt when your poor and risk-heavy investments fail.
The problem was not subprime, but the government's (ongoing) reaction to it. We are going to be in flat or declining economic growth for several years because of this reaction, whereas without it you'd have these institutions and investors fail. Yes, there would be a lot more pain in the short term, but the economy would be able to get back on its feet much more deftly.
While I agree as a technicality you can certainly see how its in bad taste for someone who has just told you that you're an unneeded expense to come back and say they overpaid you for the privilege of disposing of you, right?
I can certainly see that it's in bad taste, although how much bad taste depend on the discrepancy in payout. (E.g., if the severance package was for $25,000 and Microsoft accidentally paid out $250,000, then it is not in bad taste to ask for the overage back, but if it was overpaid as $25,100, then asking for $100 back is a bit boneheaded, IMO.)
But there's a very wide divide between EVIL and "in bad taste." You can certainly see that, no?
The abstract modifier indicates that the thing being modified has a missing or incomplete implementation. The abstract modifier can be used with classes, methods, properties, indexers, and events. Use the abstract modifier in a class declaration to indicate that a class is intended only to be a base class of other classes. Members marked as abstract, or included in an abstract class, must be implemented by classes that derive from the abstract class.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sf985hc5.aspx
Slashdot Mirror
How does the Govt. having this information help the govt. stop terrorism? Anyone?
Their job is not to stop terrorism, but rather to make people "feel" safer.
And by "feel safer" we really mean "scared shitless".
You can't very well make someone feel safe if they weren't scared in the first place.
How does the Govt. having this information help the govt. stop terrorism? Anyone?
Their job is not to stop terrorism, but rather to make people "feel" safer.
That's a completely valid point. Anecdotal evidence is pretty weak for most things. But I think the point I was trying to make (albeit poorly) is that one who is never forced to face very unpleasant consequences for failure, who is never bullied, or is never taught without thought given to how entertained the student is, is one who is only nominally prepared for the harsh realities of adult life.
I still think you're succumbing to two major flaws in your logic:
Regarding (1), I don't see why home schooling has to be that way. Perhaps the home schooled persons you know had it that way - a focus on not being bored, no negative consequences to failure, and so on - but who says it has to be that way? Why can't a home schooled child be told something like, "You have to do your _insert boring task here_ lessons now. I know it's not fun, but this is important to learn. Sit down and get cracking." And I posit that a home school child has more pressure to succeed at home than at school. A poorly performing public school child can hide his grades, lie to his parents, etc. And a parent who home schools their child can put the same punishments in effect for not succeeding academically, such as no playing with toy X until you get your grades up, or whatever. Additionally, there are outlets outside of the home school where kids can have social interactions: sports leagues, clubs, etc. For example, I was in Boy Scouts throughout elementary school and there were sufficient amounts of bullying and teasing to give a home schooled child the experience!
Regarding (2), I think there are plenty of schools in poorer areas where there is not an impetus to succeed. Rather, teachers are more focused on teaching the requisite curriculum and getting the kids onto the next grade. Also, not all public schooled children experience bullying or even mild teasing. Do you think the star quarterback or prom queen is getting bullied?
For the record, I was public schooled and my mom has been a public school teacher her entire life. However, I plan on home schooling my daughter. Not because of religious reason (I'm not), not because of wanting to "protect" her from those that are different (I like different people), but rather because I think we can provide a more focused curriculum and foster her emotional and mental growth in a more positive way than is possible with public schools. That's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it works out.
That's nice in theory, but many parents think they know a lot more about a subject than they really do. It doesn't do anybody any good when they try to teach their kids something that they don't really understand either.
That's why God created Wikipedia.
I have personally known homeschooled adults that were completely unprepared to do things like deal with workplace bullies, keeping track of their time for work, or see the value in something that wasn't 'fun' for them.
I hear this criticism against homeschooling a lot, namely: "I know a homeschooled person and he is X." Yet you never hear anyone say, "I know a public schooled person and he is X." Because I do know several public schooled people who are unprepared to do things like deal with workplace bullies, keeping track of their time for work, or see the value in something that wasn't 'fun' for them.
There are much fewer home schooled persons, so it is only natural for us to extend certain traits from a small known sample to the population as a whole, but to do so is faulty logic. Of course, I say this when the only person I know who is home schooled is a very bright, outgoing, socially adept person who does well with mundane and 'boring' tasks when needed.
The original showed an Asian guy, a black guy and a white woman. How tediously politically correct. Also completely unrealistic for Poland. (Is it even realistic for the US?)
Depends what part of the country you live in and whether the office is in a larger city or smaller city. For example, I live in San Diego, which is in Southern California. The African American population here is pretty small, but the Asian and Mexican population is quite substantial, larger than the white population when combined. Seeing a picture of one Asian, an African American, and a white person seems normal, although more realistically it would be one white person, one Asian, and one Latino.
However, if you are working in, say, Atlanta (a big city in the southeast part of the US) there is a much larger African American population. And you'll see a larger percentage of European immigrants in the northeast (New York, Boston, etc.).
Does anyone have any idea what typical sales for technical books are? I have no idea what it means numerically to be a technical best seller, or what the sales of an ordinary book that is not a dud are like. And yes, I've googled. Sales figures appear generally not to be public.
Sales figures depend on a number of factors:
I've written a number of books on a specific programming technology (ASP.NET) and have blogged about book sales and numbers and other metrics. Check out The economics of writing a computer trade book (with a comment from Tim O'Reilly of all people), as well as my list of blog entries on technical writing.
All the financial risk. Months of time don't get devoted to a project without having some sort of impact on the author's life.
That is (in part) why the author receives an advance on royalties. To help pay for the author's investment in time while the investment is being made rather than having to wait for the book to get typeset, copy edited, printed, distributed, and, finally, on shelves.
You're kidding me, 10-14% is a good royalty rate for an author?! That's disgusting.
Not to mention that the book store sells the book for double what they paid. So if you buy a $50 book at Barnes and Noble (or Amazon or wherever) the publisher made, say, $25, of which the author sees $2.50 or so. For a bit more detail on how authors get paid, check out The economics of writing a computer trade book.
If I have learnt, one thing, in my life, its that you don't take an intense porpoises's fish. It makes them very mad.
Not to mention the effect of the sugar on the bees' teeth.
I agree wholeheartedly that there are a lot of unfit parents out there, although I think that it's a stretch to say that most people shouldn't have kids. There is certainly a population of people who are bad parents and shouldn't procreate, but I believe this number of be the minority. I'd even go as far to say that people with bad upbringings could learn the skills needed to raise good kids.
In my experience, being a parent is more about patience, routine, and having the fortitude to take actions that are in the best interest of your kids in the long run regardless of how much they bitch and moan. In other words, it's mostly mechanical skills. There's no magic. Folks with great parents have an upperhand as they know the behavior to model, but I believe these behaviors could be taught to most people who had a poor childhood themselves.
And I do really hear you, too, but one thing that parenthood has taught me is that your opinions and views on parenting and child rearing morph a bit once you become a parent and go through some experiences. That's not to say that you don't have valid points - you do - but hearing a childless adult say, "What's wrong with parents these days is X" is a bit like a white trust fund baby who's never left the Hamptons except to tour Europe making comments on the problems of inner-city youth. :-)
Case in point: every parent before they are a parent has a list of things they plan on doing or not doing when they have kids. Trust me, that list differs substantially from its pre-kids to its post-kids state!
When you're young is the best time to have kids, because your DNA is in the best shape, and you are in the best shape.
In the best shape physically, perhaps, but not necessarily in the best shape emotionally, mentally, or economically. Try all that buying diapers, baby food, cribs, toys, etc. when you're making $8 an hour at WalMart. How many 14 year olds have the emotional maturity and patience to choose staying at home with to take care of a screaming, a colicky baby versus going outside to play with their friends? How much more likely is a tired and frustrated 15 year old to shake or strike the baby in a fit of anger versus someone who is 35?
The plan my wife and I have has worked well for us - married at 25, first kid at 30, with those first five years of marriage involving a lot of travel and other big adventures that you can't enjoy for some years after the first kid pops out.
I agree that people should do what they love, have new experiences, blah blah blah, and not worry about the money and career building and job safety when they're young and have no dependents. It's a little more sobering and a much more difficult decision when you're a father with a wife and children you need to provide and support. I can see the allure to job safety, even if it means sacrificing doing what you enjoy.
All that being said, I think it is possible for one to do what they enjoy and be less focused on money, even with a family, if they've made some prudent financial decisions and are content with not keeping up with their next door neighbors.
As someone else who interviews a lot of candidates, I agree with the parent. Age does not play a factor at all.
Age shouldn't matter at all in the hiring process, but I can understand why it can impact hiring decisions. Some people have a hard time having a much younger boss, which is likely for an older candidate being hired in this industry, especially an older candidate straight out of university.
Also, for those crazy dot com-type companies that like to work their employees to the bone, older employees are more likely to have real responsibilities (family, health issues, a life, etc.), and more of a backbone to stand up and not take the company's crap. Of course, when making such generalizations, you could also say that the young are foolish and irresponsible. :-)
The policy makes sense, as it touts Blockbuster's physical presence and gives consumers a reason to choose them over Netflix. This policy was the primary reason I chose a Blockbuster account, namely because we have a store down the street from us. So after watching a movie from the mail we could return it and pick something up in store, and get the next movie in our queue mailed out at the same time.
The people who study businesses and evaluate their potential upside have clearly signaled that Blockbuster is dying. Their share price has dropped 96% since 2004, whereas Netflix has increased 20% in the same time period.
That's not to say that Blockbuster will go out of business anytime soon, but it does imply that over the past five years their business has been contracting rather than growing.
when I purchased my home I signed all dates in YY/MM/DD format
I put down dates on contracts and other legal forms and whatnot as YYYY-MM-DD. That is the only unambiguous, language-agnostic, recognizable and easily understood by fellow humans date format, to my knowledge.
I bet they'll have better results than the last time I asked them for a refund for the copy of Windows I wasn't using with my last PC...
Apples, meet oranges.
(And last time I checked, no one forced you to buy a computer that had the Windows OS installed. There are plenty of companies that sell computers without Windows installed.)
Bad taste and evil have two different meanings. Something done in bad taste means that the person showed poor judgment as to what is socially acceptable or appropriate for a given situation. Evil implies intent and it also implies willful hate or intent to do harm.
So murder and rape aren't in bad taste. Perhaps a murder scene or rape scene in a movie, play, or book may be in bad taste depending on how it's performed or its context in the story, but an actual rape or murder doesn't indicate poor judgment as to what is socially acceptable - it indicates a willingness and intent to harm someone.
If Microsoft purposefully generated a severance check in excess of what was contractually agreed upon, just so that they could later go back and demand a refund, then that is evil. If they mistakenly overpaid a former employee $5 more than he was due and are now asking for it back, that's not willful harm, but it is a case of poor judgment.
Yes, everyone going bankrupt and the banks all going bust would be incredible for the economy.
Seriously though, how do people still think like this?
The government would continue to back deposits in FDIC-insured banks. They just wouldn't bailout the banks. Let the bank fail, have the government swoop in and sell off the assets (if any) and then use that money plus the monies in the FDIC insurance fund to refund depositors up to the insured limit ($100k/account holder in the past, $250k/account holder now, IIRC).
What good does it do to artificially prop up the banks (or the auto makers) with taxpayer money? Seriously, how do people still think like that? If I know the government will come and rescue me if I make risky gambles that don't pay off, then let's all go to Vegas with our life savings and put it on black.
The free market? Awesome, I'm investing all my money in sub-prime loans!
And that would be fine if the government would let you go bankrupt when your poor and risk-heavy investments fail.
The problem was not subprime, but the government's (ongoing) reaction to it. We are going to be in flat or declining economic growth for several years because of this reaction, whereas without it you'd have these institutions and investors fail. Yes, there would be a lot more pain in the short term, but the economy would be able to get back on its feet much more deftly.
While I agree as a technicality you can certainly see how its in bad taste for someone who has just told you that you're an unneeded expense to come back and say they overpaid you for the privilege of disposing of you, right?
I can certainly see that it's in bad taste, although how much bad taste depend on the discrepancy in payout. (E.g., if the severance package was for $25,000 and Microsoft accidentally paid out $250,000, then it is not in bad taste to ask for the overage back, but if it was overpaid as $25,100, then asking for $100 back is a bit boneheaded, IMO.)
But there's a very wide divide between EVIL and "in bad taste." You can certainly see that, no?
From Microsoft's website: