Calling it a phone is also a misnomer. It's a small computer that also makes phone calls.
They are still called phones because that is the primary reason most people carry them around. It may not be what they use it for the most, but it is still the core reason a person owns it.
Everyone basically needs to have a cellphone in today's world unless they want to deal with many social obstacles. If they have to carry the thing around anyway, why not use it as a computing device as well? The core reason they have the smartphone is still so they can call people and receive calls; they simply have found other uses for it as well.
When someone buys a tablet, the core reason is for a computing device. That is why they are far different than a smartphone, and are more readily considered a luxury than a smartphone is.
This advice only applies to people who are trying to be paid more than they are worth by searching for desperate employers or simply being good at interviewing and negotiating instead of their job. If your employers are happy with your performance, they will not complain about your salary. If they do, it is time to look for a new employer because your current one doesn't know how to value key employees.
In the kind of areas I'm talking about, software is usually a small industry and word gets around. A company might also decide to phase you out, because they see the writing on the wall and bringing someone new up to speed on what you currently do will be cheaper in the long run.
You want word to get around, because you are an exceptional employee and any employer will be happy to have you. Having a reputation that you expect to be treated like a key employee will help ensure that only employers who will treat you right will try to recruit you.
I personally try to cultivate a reputation that I am interested in tackling tough problems, helping set company strategy instead of just coding, and expect to be viewed as a revenue generating employee instead of a cost center. It has worked very well for me so far. I have yet to ask a former client for a reference without them trying to recruit me first, but have been able to stay on very good terms if they realize they don't have the right role for me. I also make sure current and potential employers know I am searching for the next challenging role, not just a better salary, but the right salary better be there too.
The trick is you have to be good enough to back up your contention that you should be treated this well. Being that valuable doesn't come easy to anyone I have ever met; myself included.
Although I think it is pretty obvious you are being sarcastic, my take on each of your points is that Great Programmers:
1) Understand that all estimates are inherently unreliable and constantly track real progress so deadlines or promised feature sets can be realigned periodically.
2) Understand that unplanned work will be added during development. They don't complain about it, they simply realistically assess how these changes could affect deadlines and/or other promised feature sets.
3) Take responsibility for their bugs and get them fixed, and keep management in the loop on how this may affect deadlines.
4) Pay attention to project deadlines when scheduling their personal lives, and notify project management well in advance when PTO may impact project deadlines.
5) Are willing to do whatever it takes to fix problems that are seriously impacting the business, but respect themselves enough to not let work unnecessarily impact their personal lives. Complaining about random and infrequent issues that cause significant work after hours is something only low-paid grunts should do, but letting your company constantly be #1 priority in your life is something only chumps do (unless you have significant equity stake in your company).
6) Respect the importance of their role in a company, and expect to be treated as such. Almost all truly great developers are paid at the top of the industry (in their area anyway), because part of being a great developer includes the interpersonal skills which usually help in negotiating top salaries.
Exactly my point. They are only trying to make money for themselves, and if exploiting a disaster make them more money, they will do that. Yet here we have people (like the OP) trying to claim that they are 'ensuring there are enough drivers'. Bullshit.
He said they are ensuring there are enough drivers, not ensuring there are enough drivers for a charitable reason. They are ensuring there are enough drivers to maximize revenue. Where did any of the parent posters try to make Uber out to be charitable in this situation?
Odd. In my experience, the people who insist you need a 'special mind' to code are deeply insecure people with no other skills.
Programming is absurdly simple. Back in the 80's, you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a kid who wrote games for his home micro as a hobby. Hell, the bulk of the users here taught themselves before the age of 10!
You've probably noticed this yourself, but there are a LOT of really stupid professional developers. It doesn't take genius; just interest and a little time.
Your comment is all over the place. First you are saying that programming is absurdly simple, but then admit even professional developers aren't very good at it. Or are you saying that even stupid developers are still very good at programming? I find it hard to take you seriously if that is your contention.
And you must have grown up in Silicon Valley if you thought kids writing video games as a hobby was common in the 80's. I was in high school in the 90's and it wasn't even common then. I grew up in a 12,000 population rural town so my experience may not be average as well, but there were not even half a dozen students out of 1000 in my high school that could even program their TI-82s. And that was in the 90's. I also went to regional programming competitions in high school and found the talent was not any better in neighboring towns. But again this was in rural Illinois about an hour outside of Chicago so your experience may have been much different.
I completely agree it doesn't take genius to program, but it takes something that most people don't have. I work with a large number of application "super-users" who work with technology all day but weren't trained as software developers. Even after years of writing reports and business workflow rules they still have trouble comprehending let alone creating complex conditional statements. Perhaps society just hasn't learned how to teach logical reasoning skills very well yet, but many very well educated people are just not capable of this type of work in today's workforce.
I also find it hard to believe an award for pioneering work in object-orientation which started in 2005 just got around to awarding Bjarne Stoustrup ten years later. Since they give out two awards each year, I wonder what the other 18 guys did. Off the top of my head only Alan Kay comes to mind as being more deserving.
I don't know about SV, but I live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and have a significantly higher cost of living than most of northern Illinois. For instance my parents live an hour southwest of Chicago and have a 50% larger house for 75% of the cost.
But I am not just paying the extra money to be closer to higher paying jobs. I get better schools, better restaurants, better entertainment options, and of course better career options. I also live next to more affluent neighbors, which means my daughter will have more affluent friends, have better internship opportunities, etc. That makes a big difference. My high school techie friends from the same small farm town my parents still live in mostly have jobs as satellite dish repair men or something similar. My wife's high school techie friends from the northwest suburbs build robots for Microsoft Research or other similar jobs. Part of my high cost of living is paying so my daughter has the same head start in the "who you know" category that my wife did.
When you look at "self-made" millionaires and other outstanding success stories, you will almost always notice they came from highly affluent upper middle class families in areas that would give them more opportunities than your average person. The creators of the next Microsoft, Facebook, etc. are mostly likely already born in a place like New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, etc, not the rural Midwest. And in a similar fashion, the next generation of C-level executives, big shot lawyers, etc. are probably also going to be mostly from these high COL areas.
Paying for that high COL in part helps increase the chance that your next generation has a chance of sitting at that table. And even if my children are not that ambitious, at least I enjoyed better food options and a better theater scene for my money.
No - the Nazis were in favor of better pensions than that given to Illinois' public employees. Illinois is actually demonizing pensions as a way to excuse increased spending.
Illinois has the largest unfunded pension in the US, so demonizing their ridiculously high pensions is exactly what should be happening. They come in #32 out of 50 in state spending per capita, so out of control spending is not the reason the pensions are out of whack. Illinois comes it as #14/50 in total state and local tax revenue per capita as well, so the problem isn't that they aren't taxing enough either.
The pensions are being demonized because they are the problem.
But if you are over thirty and don't take advantage of your parents experiences and knowledge, you are a complete moron.
While I don't agree with the post you are replying to, this is a pretty silly statement. I have friends whose parents are complete degenerates. One who beat his wife and kids and was regularly unemployed. He had absolutely nothing of value to teach my friend except for what not to do (which is not the same as taking advantage of his experience and knowledge).
My father in law was in a similar situation where he grew up in a very bad home with bad parents. He decided to let that experience shape his parenting by going the complete opposite direction and being a great father and excel in his career. If his father ever tried to give him advice on parenting or his career or basically anything, my father in law would probably just tell him to screw off (his father is dead now, but they didn't have a good relationship when he was alive).
Anyone can be a parent. Just being the parent of a 30 year old does not magically make your advice worth anything. My parents are wonderful and I eat up any advice they can give me when parenting my 5 month old or even pursuing my career, but not everyone is in the same position.
Or maybe... just maybe.... your choices in this life have an actual eternal implication. That's a heckuva lot of responsibility, and I don't blame you for preferring to disbelieve in it, because it's dramatically easier to cope with.
If you are really worrying about the afterlife because your actions could damn you for eternity, any attempts are almost certainly going to be futile. There have been so many religions in the history of mankind, most likely you will sent to a land of ice because you never slaughtered a chicken at the beginning of the summer solstice.
There is nothing cowardly about thinking your actions in this life are unlikely to help you in an afterlife. It is just common sense.
Some of my coworkers have kids who are have specialties like programming, robotics, cybersecurity, or pre-engineering.
While I see where you are coming from, classes like these are not about staring kids along a career path. They are intended to get children excited about learning.
I can easily see why a student would be more interested in learning physics and algebra when it is used to get a robotic arm to lift a ball for a robotics competition than it is having them solve equations.
The basic level of cyber-security you would teach a high school student is likely to be useful to any citizen, and is probably not intended to train them as a cyber-security specialist.
Basic programming that would allow students to write basic scripts, Excel macros, SQL queries, etc. are starting to become more useful to a wide range of jobs (basically anyone who would ever look at an Excel spreadsheet). My wife is a demand planning analyst with no programming training and is finding knowing SQL and VBA is very useful.
I'm not sure how Pre-Engineering would be any different than any other set of Calculus / Physics / etc. classes that an advanced student would take in high school, since even college Freshmen / Sophomores are usually just taking Calculus / Physics / etc. in their first two years of an engineering program.
These classes are more job-related than just taking Algebra / History / English, but are not any more career track focused than wood shop class. IMHO
Through my exposure to my coworkers' children, I'm seeing career specialization being encouraged during early high school.
Considering my secondary education was 20 years ago, and I don't have close friends or coworkers with kids in high school, I am curious as to what career specialization you see in high school today. My experience from 20 years ago is that high schools were moving away from vocational classes such as shop or automotive and spending more energy into college prep-like classes. I would be very surprised to hear that high schools are starting to teach plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, etc. with greater zeal than they did in the past.
To me and I think to GP, the phrase "cradle-to-career" doesn't mean that my daughter will pursue a career, but based on some "tests" my daughter might come out of the cradle with a specific career path to pursue.
Nothing about "cradle-to-career" initiatives are centered on an over-emphasis on student tracking like they do in Germany. It is about the community taking responsibility for making sure all citizens in their early 20s have been properly prepared for a fulfilling career. I found this explanation from a publication about a local Crade-To-Grave initiative:
The goal of this work is that by the age of 23, all Evanston young adults will be leading productive lives, building on the resources, education, and support that they and their families have had to help them grow into resilient, educated, healthy, self-sufficient, and socially responsible adults.
I found the phrase "cradle-to-career" particularly onerous.
Yeah, I know I am also horrified at the possibility my infant daughter might someday have to pursue a career. Will someone please think of the children?
School is supposed to shape good humans and grow a decent generation. It's not a corporate-driven training ground.
Honestly, a corporate-driven training ground is exactly what school is. An argument could be made that post-secondary education is meant for expanding your horizons, but the goal of elementary and secondary education is to train a workforce. There is a reason why our schools are designed to create good factory workers and office drones. While I also would like school to change its primary goal, lets not be dishonest about what the main goal of public schooling has always been.
Just because something is old, doesn't mean it needs replaced. In short, why not just upgrade the mainframe?
I have no idea how common VME developers are, but when dealing with legacy systems you do have to worry about being able to find qualified people to work on your software. Not only are the skills rare, but most people are going to be wary about pigeon-holing their career by focusing on such a obscure system. You will either have to rely on sub-par employees or pay well over market rates.
Hiring expensive employees / consultants may still be desirable over a risky migration, but the expense (either in salary or in low quality employees) shouldn't be ignored.
Marxism is not a religion in any way. It has similar qualities of a religion, just like you can find similarities between a truck and a wheel barrel, but they are very different.
There is a reason why faith and religion are different words in the English language. Just because something requires faith does not make it religious in nature.
Highlighting is mine. Penguinisto qualified his statement, which you willfully ignored.
Saying that a belief system is religious in a way is a meaningless statement if all you then need to prove is there are a few similar qualities between religion and the belief system in question. Since religion is a belief system, then every single belief system is religious in a way.
Since most people are taught religion by their parents, by using your argument everything taught to you by your parents would be religious in a way.
I would agree that Marxism is not a religion due to any aspect of faith, but it is a religion in the sense that it is an organized belief adhered to by many. It need not have any faith-based component or theology.
Religion loses a lot of its meaning if any ideology can be considered a religion. A religion requires either supernatural beings or at least the belief in some kind of higher order to the world. Marxism is merely a belief that the relationship between labor and capital fostered by capitalism is not a desirable one. Many economic, sociological, and philosophical theories are derived from this belief, but again I see no reason why that crosses over to religion.
I believe the theories derived from Marxism are flawed, but not ridiculous. While I can see why those who believe Marxism is ridiculous draw parallels between Marxism and religion, but not every ridiculous belief system should automatically be considered a religion.
Faith and religion are frequently used in a synonymous fashion. "People of various faiths" means the same as "people of various religions."
Just like car and convertible are frequently used in a synonymous fashion. "I am driving my convertible" means the same as "I am driving my car". But not all cars are convertibles just like not all faith is religious in nature. The fact that faith and religion have very different meanings and purposes is not changed by the fact that sometimes the two words are used to describe the same thing.
And they require supernatural agency as well, both to suspend disbelief about actual human behavior and to explain why things aren't working as expected (imaginary kulaks, counterrevolutionaries, capitalists, etc are always holding us back).
If all it takes to be considered supernatural is to have theories that haven't been validated yet, then I guess the wright brothers were starting their own religion before they got their first prototype working. I mean every other attempt to fly for thousands of years had failed so it was a pretty supernatural belief that humans could create flying machines.
Now we can have the obligatory "Islam sucks" conversation, which will lead to the inevitable "all religion sucks" conversation, both of which are infinitely more enjoyable than simply leaving it at "Crazy people suck."
I would hope our society is becoming advanced enough to jump straight to "all religion sucks" instead of having to dwell on criticizing a single religion as if today's terrorism is any different than the crusades. Its only the fact that the western world doesn't pay attention to our religions as much that makes our religions seem more enlightened.
Marxism is not a religion in any way. It has similar qualities of a religion, just like you can find similarities between a truck and a wheel barrel, but they are very different.
There is a reason why faith and religion are different words in the English language. Just because something requires faith does not make it religious in nature.
2. We're already paying for the games by watching the damn advertisements, so why should we have to pay for ESPN? Remove the ads and put on a radio announcer instead of the "color commentary" announcers and I'll gladly pay $5/game (= about $60/year to ESPN = $5/mo).
Just because you are paying something by watching advertisements, does not mean you are paying for it in full. Think of it more like the advertising is subsidizing part of your cable bill, not paying it in full.
A Scientists view of GOD is no more valid because he is a Scientist. Neither is a Theologian's view of Science more valid because he is respected in Theology. Mind you, I haven't read either's article, because I think such arguments are silly, on both accounts:-P
The scientist in this case is making no assertions about God. He is only refuting scientific claims made by the previous author. He is clearly staying within his area of expertise. And regardless of any authority either side of the argument has, Krauss simply has the more well reasoned argument (not hard to have in this case).
My "actual data" would of course entail my relatives and friends, who indeed can "fix shit", while the current generation is mostly useless in that regard. Can't solder, can't crimp, can't change an oil filter or even headlight bulb, can't measure nor cut nor fasten lumber, etc. etc.
And for every millennial who can't change an oil filter or fasten lumber there is a 50 year old who can't program their digital clock or reconfigure their new cellphone without waiting for their kids to come home for the holidays. Different generations have different skills, and they usually align with the skills that were useful to them in their early life.
Slashdot Mirror
Calling it a phone is also a misnomer. It's a small computer that also makes phone calls.
They are still called phones because that is the primary reason most people carry them around. It may not be what they use it for the most, but it is still the core reason a person owns it.
Everyone basically needs to have a cellphone in today's world unless they want to deal with many social obstacles. If they have to carry the thing around anyway, why not use it as a computing device as well? The core reason they have the smartphone is still so they can call people and receive calls; they simply have found other uses for it as well.
When someone buys a tablet, the core reason is for a computing device. That is why they are far different than a smartphone, and are more readily considered a luxury than a smartphone is.
This advice only applies to people who are trying to be paid more than they are worth by searching for desperate employers or simply being good at interviewing and negotiating instead of their job. If your employers are happy with your performance, they will not complain about your salary. If they do, it is time to look for a new employer because your current one doesn't know how to value key employees.
In the kind of areas I'm talking about, software is usually a small industry and word gets around. A company might also decide to phase you out, because they see the writing on the wall and bringing someone new up to speed on what you currently do will be cheaper in the long run.
You want word to get around, because you are an exceptional employee and any employer will be happy to have you. Having a reputation that you expect to be treated like a key employee will help ensure that only employers who will treat you right will try to recruit you.
I personally try to cultivate a reputation that I am interested in tackling tough problems, helping set company strategy instead of just coding, and expect to be viewed as a revenue generating employee instead of a cost center. It has worked very well for me so far. I have yet to ask a former client for a reference without them trying to recruit me first, but have been able to stay on very good terms if they realize they don't have the right role for me. I also make sure current and potential employers know I am searching for the next challenging role, not just a better salary, but the right salary better be there too.
The trick is you have to be good enough to back up your contention that you should be treated this well. Being that valuable doesn't come easy to anyone I have ever met; myself included.
Although I think it is pretty obvious you are being sarcastic, my take on each of your points is that Great Programmers:
1) Understand that all estimates are inherently unreliable and constantly track real progress so deadlines or promised feature sets can be realigned periodically.
2) Understand that unplanned work will be added during development. They don't complain about it, they simply realistically assess how these changes could affect deadlines and/or other promised feature sets.
3) Take responsibility for their bugs and get them fixed, and keep management in the loop on how this may affect deadlines.
4) Pay attention to project deadlines when scheduling their personal lives, and notify project management well in advance when PTO may impact project deadlines.
5) Are willing to do whatever it takes to fix problems that are seriously impacting the business, but respect themselves enough to not let work unnecessarily impact their personal lives. Complaining about random and infrequent issues that cause significant work after hours is something only low-paid grunts should do, but letting your company constantly be #1 priority in your life is something only chumps do (unless you have significant equity stake in your company).
6) Respect the importance of their role in a company, and expect to be treated as such. Almost all truly great developers are paid at the top of the industry (in their area anyway), because part of being a great developer includes the interpersonal skills which usually help in negotiating top salaries.
Exactly my point. They are only trying to make money for themselves, and if exploiting a disaster make them more money, they will do that. Yet here we have people (like the OP) trying to claim that they are 'ensuring there are enough drivers'. Bullshit.
He said they are ensuring there are enough drivers, not ensuring there are enough drivers for a charitable reason. They are ensuring there are enough drivers to maximize revenue. Where did any of the parent posters try to make Uber out to be charitable in this situation?
Odd. In my experience, the people who insist you need a 'special mind' to code are deeply insecure people with no other skills.
Programming is absurdly simple. Back in the 80's, you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a kid who wrote games for his home micro as a hobby. Hell, the bulk of the users here taught themselves before the age of 10!
You've probably noticed this yourself, but there are a LOT of really stupid professional developers. It doesn't take genius; just interest and a little time.
Your comment is all over the place. First you are saying that programming is absurdly simple, but then admit even professional developers aren't very good at it. Or are you saying that even stupid developers are still very good at programming? I find it hard to take you seriously if that is your contention.
And you must have grown up in Silicon Valley if you thought kids writing video games as a hobby was common in the 80's. I was in high school in the 90's and it wasn't even common then. I grew up in a 12,000 population rural town so my experience may not be average as well, but there were not even half a dozen students out of 1000 in my high school that could even program their TI-82s. And that was in the 90's. I also went to regional programming competitions in high school and found the talent was not any better in neighboring towns. But again this was in rural Illinois about an hour outside of Chicago so your experience may have been much different.
I completely agree it doesn't take genius to program, but it takes something that most people don't have. I work with a large number of application "super-users" who work with technology all day but weren't trained as software developers. Even after years of writing reports and business workflow rules they still have trouble comprehending let alone creating complex conditional statements. Perhaps society just hasn't learned how to teach logical reasoning skills very well yet, but many very well educated people are just not capable of this type of work in today's workforce.
I also find it hard to believe an award for pioneering work in object-orientation which started in 2005 just got around to awarding Bjarne Stoustrup ten years later. Since they give out two awards each year, I wonder what the other 18 guys did. Off the top of my head only Alan Kay comes to mind as being more deserving.
I don't know about SV, but I live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and have a significantly higher cost of living than most of northern Illinois. For instance my parents live an hour southwest of Chicago and have a 50% larger house for 75% of the cost.
But I am not just paying the extra money to be closer to higher paying jobs. I get better schools, better restaurants, better entertainment options, and of course better career options. I also live next to more affluent neighbors, which means my daughter will have more affluent friends, have better internship opportunities, etc. That makes a big difference. My high school techie friends from the same small farm town my parents still live in mostly have jobs as satellite dish repair men or something similar. My wife's high school techie friends from the northwest suburbs build robots for Microsoft Research or other similar jobs. Part of my high cost of living is paying so my daughter has the same head start in the "who you know" category that my wife did.
When you look at "self-made" millionaires and other outstanding success stories, you will almost always notice they came from highly affluent upper middle class families in areas that would give them more opportunities than your average person. The creators of the next Microsoft, Facebook, etc. are mostly likely already born in a place like New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, etc, not the rural Midwest. And in a similar fashion, the next generation of C-level executives, big shot lawyers, etc. are probably also going to be mostly from these high COL areas.
Paying for that high COL in part helps increase the chance that your next generation has a chance of sitting at that table. And even if my children are not that ambitious, at least I enjoyed better food options and a better theater scene for my money.
No - the Nazis were in favor of better pensions than that given to Illinois' public employees. Illinois is actually demonizing pensions as a way to excuse increased spending.
Illinois has the largest unfunded pension in the US, so demonizing their ridiculously high pensions is exactly what should be happening. They come in #32 out of 50 in state spending per capita, so out of control spending is not the reason the pensions are out of whack. Illinois comes it as #14/50 in total state and local tax revenue per capita as well, so the problem isn't that they aren't taxing enough either.
The pensions are being demonized because they are the problem.
But if you are over thirty and don't take advantage of your parents experiences and knowledge, you are a complete moron.
While I don't agree with the post you are replying to, this is a pretty silly statement. I have friends whose parents are complete degenerates. One who beat his wife and kids and was regularly unemployed. He had absolutely nothing of value to teach my friend except for what not to do (which is not the same as taking advantage of his experience and knowledge).
My father in law was in a similar situation where he grew up in a very bad home with bad parents. He decided to let that experience shape his parenting by going the complete opposite direction and being a great father and excel in his career. If his father ever tried to give him advice on parenting or his career or basically anything, my father in law would probably just tell him to screw off (his father is dead now, but they didn't have a good relationship when he was alive).
Anyone can be a parent. Just being the parent of a 30 year old does not magically make your advice worth anything. My parents are wonderful and I eat up any advice they can give me when parenting my 5 month old or even pursuing my career, but not everyone is in the same position.
Or maybe... just maybe.... your choices in this life have an actual eternal implication. That's a heckuva lot of responsibility, and I don't blame you for preferring to disbelieve in it, because it's dramatically easier to cope with.
If you are really worrying about the afterlife because your actions could damn you for eternity, any attempts are almost certainly going to be futile. There have been so many religions in the history of mankind, most likely you will sent to a land of ice because you never slaughtered a chicken at the beginning of the summer solstice.
There is nothing cowardly about thinking your actions in this life are unlikely to help you in an afterlife. It is just common sense.
Some of my coworkers have kids who are have specialties like programming, robotics, cybersecurity, or pre-engineering.
While I see where you are coming from, classes like these are not about staring kids along a career path. They are intended to get children excited about learning.
These classes are more job-related than just taking Algebra / History / English, but are not any more career track focused than wood shop class. IMHO
Through my exposure to my coworkers' children, I'm seeing career specialization being encouraged during early high school.
Considering my secondary education was 20 years ago, and I don't have close friends or coworkers with kids in high school, I am curious as to what career specialization you see in high school today. My experience from 20 years ago is that high schools were moving away from vocational classes such as shop or automotive and spending more energy into college prep-like classes. I would be very surprised to hear that high schools are starting to teach plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, etc. with greater zeal than they did in the past.
To me and I think to GP, the phrase "cradle-to-career" doesn't mean that my daughter will pursue a career, but based on some "tests" my daughter might come out of the cradle with a specific career path to pursue.
Nothing about "cradle-to-career" initiatives are centered on an over-emphasis on student tracking like they do in Germany. It is about the community taking responsibility for making sure all citizens in their early 20s have been properly prepared for a fulfilling career. I found this explanation from a publication about a local Crade-To-Grave initiative:
The goal of this work is that by the age of 23, all Evanston young adults will be leading productive lives, building on the resources, education, and support that they and their families have had to help them grow into resilient, educated, healthy, self-sufficient, and socially responsible adults.
I found the phrase "cradle-to-career" particularly onerous.
Yeah, I know I am also horrified at the possibility my infant daughter might someday have to pursue a career. Will someone please think of the children?
School is supposed to shape good humans and grow a decent generation. It's not a corporate-driven training ground.
Honestly, a corporate-driven training ground is exactly what school is. An argument could be made that post-secondary education is meant for expanding your horizons, but the goal of elementary and secondary education is to train a workforce. There is a reason why our schools are designed to create good factory workers and office drones. While I also would like school to change its primary goal, lets not be dishonest about what the main goal of public schooling has always been.
Just because something is old, doesn't mean it needs replaced. In short, why not just upgrade the mainframe?
I have no idea how common VME developers are, but when dealing with legacy systems you do have to worry about being able to find qualified people to work on your software. Not only are the skills rare, but most people are going to be wary about pigeon-holing their career by focusing on such a obscure system. You will either have to rely on sub-par employees or pay well over market rates.
Hiring expensive employees / consultants may still be desirable over a risky migration, but the expense (either in salary or in low quality employees) shouldn't be ignored.
Marxism displays many of the key qualities of religion that frequently justify opposition to religion.
Chocolate has many of the key qualities that makes my wife want me to stop eating so much fried food, but I still don't think they are the same thing.
Marxism is a religion in a way
Marxism is not a religion in any way. It has similar qualities of a religion, just like you can find similarities between a truck and a wheel barrel, but they are very different.
There is a reason why faith and religion are different words in the English language. Just because something requires faith does not make it religious in nature.
Highlighting is mine. Penguinisto qualified his statement, which you willfully ignored.
Saying that a belief system is religious in a way is a meaningless statement if all you then need to prove is there are a few similar qualities between religion and the belief system in question. Since religion is a belief system, then every single belief system is religious in a way.
Since most people are taught religion by their parents, by using your argument everything taught to you by your parents would be religious in a way.
I would agree that Marxism is not a religion due to any aspect of faith, but it is a religion in the sense that it is an organized belief adhered to by many. It need not have any faith-based component or theology.
Religion loses a lot of its meaning if any ideology can be considered a religion. A religion requires either supernatural beings or at least the belief in some kind of higher order to the world. Marxism is merely a belief that the relationship between labor and capital fostered by capitalism is not a desirable one. Many economic, sociological, and philosophical theories are derived from this belief, but again I see no reason why that crosses over to religion.
I believe the theories derived from Marxism are flawed, but not ridiculous. While I can see why those who believe Marxism is ridiculous draw parallels between Marxism and religion, but not every ridiculous belief system should automatically be considered a religion.
Faith and religion are frequently used in a synonymous fashion. "People of various faiths" means the same as "people of various religions."
Just like car and convertible are frequently used in a synonymous fashion. "I am driving my convertible" means the same as "I am driving my car". But not all cars are convertibles just like not all faith is religious in nature. The fact that faith and religion have very different meanings and purposes is not changed by the fact that sometimes the two words are used to describe the same thing.
And they require supernatural agency as well, both to suspend disbelief about actual human behavior and to explain why things aren't working as expected (imaginary kulaks, counterrevolutionaries, capitalists, etc are always holding us back).
If all it takes to be considered supernatural is to have theories that haven't been validated yet, then I guess the wright brothers were starting their own religion before they got their first prototype working. I mean every other attempt to fly for thousands of years had failed so it was a pretty supernatural belief that humans could create flying machines.
Now we can have the obligatory "Islam sucks" conversation, which will lead to the inevitable "all religion sucks" conversation, both of which are infinitely more enjoyable than simply leaving it at "Crazy people suck."
I would hope our society is becoming advanced enough to jump straight to "all religion sucks" instead of having to dwell on criticizing a single religion as if today's terrorism is any different than the crusades. Its only the fact that the western world doesn't pay attention to our religions as much that makes our religions seem more enlightened.
Marxism is a religion in a way
Marxism is not a religion in any way. It has similar qualities of a religion, just like you can find similarities between a truck and a wheel barrel, but they are very different.
There is a reason why faith and religion are different words in the English language. Just because something requires faith does not make it religious in nature.
2. We're already paying for the games by watching the damn advertisements, so why should we have to pay for ESPN? Remove the ads and put on a radio announcer instead of the "color commentary" announcers and I'll gladly pay $5/game (= about $60/year to ESPN = $5/mo).
Just because you are paying something by watching advertisements, does not mean you are paying for it in full. Think of it more like the advertising is subsidizing part of your cable bill, not paying it in full.
A Scientists view of GOD is no more valid because he is a Scientist. Neither is a Theologian's view of Science more valid because he is respected in Theology. Mind you, I haven't read either's article, because I think such arguments are silly, on both accounts :-P
The scientist in this case is making no assertions about God. He is only refuting scientific claims made by the previous author. He is clearly staying within his area of expertise. And regardless of any authority either side of the argument has, Krauss simply has the more well reasoned argument (not hard to have in this case).
My "actual data" would of course entail my relatives and friends, who indeed can "fix shit", while the current generation is mostly useless in that regard. Can't solder, can't crimp, can't change an oil filter or even headlight bulb, can't measure nor cut nor fasten lumber, etc. etc.
And for every millennial who can't change an oil filter or fasten lumber there is a 50 year old who can't program their digital clock or reconfigure their new cellphone without waiting for their kids to come home for the holidays. Different generations have different skills, and they usually align with the skills that were useful to them in their early life.