"I'm not talking about working yourself to death. Trust me on this one...I am one that refuses to work OT unless it just has to be done at a crunch time, and even then...I refuse to work for free (I now contract myself), so the customer has to really decide if they really need me or not..."
That's not work ethic, that the luxury of having a marketable skill. The vast majority of workers, of any generation, do not have the luxury of not being disposable and are unwilling or wholly unable to test their employer's resolve, risking that they will "really decide" to give their money to somebody else instead, if they want food on the table.
"I'm talking more about work ethic. Caring about your job, no matter what that job is."
Whether or not you care about the work you do has little to do with whether your employer cares about the work you do. Those of us without a sufficiently rare and in-demand skill will lose our job to people who care less but still manage to produce acceptable results for less money.
"I do remember when going to McDonalds or BK...the food was obviously put together better...standards were set and usually met. The cashiers were more friendly."
The value of a dollar has gone down while fast food pay rates have not gone up, especially while the big chains continue to compete on price. Those fast food employees today are working more hours for less money; they simply aren't being paid enough to give you the same service you'd get someplace where a tie is required.
"(And yes, the customers were nicer and move civil too)"
The customers, too, don't have marketable skills, are working more hours for less money, and get a kick out of watching somebody else squirm for a change.
"I hear stories from friends trying to hire kids for jobs....and the turnover is incredible..that is IF they can get them to show up on time or at all."
Capitalism 101: you get what you pay for.
Another way you can chase off employees you might actually value is the "Let them eat cake" attitude of yours.
"Most of them still don't know the difference between RAM and a HD. They don't even know the units used to calculate the amount of RAM or the speed of a computer."
Many of us understand that those silly figures you can toss out have little if anything to do with the speed of a computer. Applications always bloat to consume all available resources, to the point where it takes a similar (or longer) amount of time to do a task with a computer today than it did ten years ago.
Gigabytes and gigahertz are good for little more than dick-waving, especially if you're not playing some bleeding-edge game, and being around to toss around those numbers and concepts measures little more than one's ability to unzip and show off, which (shockingly enough) isn't really a marketable skill. It doesn't matter if "these go to eleven" if it still takes forever to load a website.
"Back in the 50s, most men knew how to fix their car, not just drive it."
Back in the 50's, nobody had a fuel injector and the most complicated piece of electronics in the vehicle was a relay. And even the parts that cars of 50 or 60 years ago have in common with those of today, the new parts tend to be machined to a much tighter standard, and "close enough" back then would ruin your engine today.
There are reasons why it takes a year or two of post-secondary education to work on cars today.
"in the 90s, more computer users had at least an understanding of what went on under the hood."
On the other hand, most people weren't computer users, as the barriers to entry were too great. Users then had that understanding because they needed it in order to operate their computers.
"now, most people who use them, consider them closed boxes, and take them to a tech (mechanic) to fix when it breaks."
Computers are less forgiving of experimentation and absent-minded errors today. Forget to plug in the cooling fan on your 486? It might flake out once or twice a week, barely often enough to notice. Forget to plug in the cooling fan on your Athlon quad core? Time to buy a new processor.
"but the real reason is nobody wants to be bothered with how it works"
Or is it that they do want to know, but not enough to shell out non-negligible sums of money on a formal education, or a similar amount of money on replacing hardware destroyed by attempting to learn on their own? The reason employers want some sort of certification to begin with is to ensure that a new hire knows enough not to wreck some mission-critical piece of technology; you can't learn as you go, because one mistake in the learning process costs the company far more than your paycheck.
"One of their primary concerns is a flexible schedule and healthy work/life balance."
I wonder if this will change once they start getting their real jobs. "Flexible schedule" is being able to come in whenever they tell you to come in, and "healthy work/life balance" means never taking a sick day.
Nolan Bushnell is complaining that games haven't been good since... well, since the last time Nolan Bushnell made a buck selling games. But of course he has the Next Big Thing that we didn't realize we've all been longing for, and if he could only scrape together some more venture capital...
Before there was John Romero, there was Nolan Bushnell.
"Please step into this time machine and listen to the sounds of the WW2 era."
Oh, yes! Everything I need to know about the period I can glean from the mass media of the time, rubber-stamped by the Office of War Information! Everybody was in favor of fighting in Europe, even though we'd been attacked in the Pacific! And volunteers for the war swelled the ranks of the US military so much, they never had to lower the draft age to 17!
"You will learn a lot about America, the country you and I (young people) never knew."
My grandparents never knew it, either. What you're being spoonfed here is a whitewashed, sterilized version of reality specially prepared for and by the mass media of the time. "Everybody" was happy and cheerful and good little citizens because they wanted you to happily march off to fight Europe's war as well. And as the Supreme Court had ruled for their parents, speaking out against the draft was punishable by imprisonment. So, yeah, everybody was happy with the war and all too willing to serve, especially that 75% of the military that were draftees.
"I always wondered why my local Comcast office was behind plexiglass (bullet-proof?). The Post Office down the street has no such physical barriers."
When choosing someplace to rob, people consider the $60+ cable bills people pay rather than the occasional $10 book of stamps, not to mention the expensive equipment that changes hands
The people that go into the office to pay their bill tend to be the poor/desperate type that can't get a checking account with which to pay their bills by mail, while standing in line at the post office is the great equalizer and knows no class distinctions
Comcast doesn't have its own armed federal agents on site.
"Can you name even one situation under which twenty armed men break into your home with assault weaponry, flash grenades, lexan shields and riot gear, screaming "clear" at the top of their lungs?"
Again: the whole point is to deny the suspects the opportunity to think.
"In fact, if you've done nothing wrong, you're facing 20 people whose vests are printed "POLICE" in extremely visible yellow, and you still can't figure it out, then maybe there's a second reason to remove you from the breeding population."
TFA points out one of the suspects was in his yard, at night, holding a deadly weapon, in response to a suspicious noise, i. e. while the police were still preparing to launch the raid. The police had not yet announced their presence (indeed, were still actively trying to mask their presence). There was nothing "extremely visible" to be read until the police made their move, and doubtless they did it with bright flashlights in the dark night, to dazzle the (presumed violent) suspect from having a visible target to lunge at with the deadly weapon that was already in his hand.
You get knocked down like that to prevent you from producing a weapon. The suspect here already had a weapon in his hand.
"Don't confuse "enough time to formulate a prosaic essay" with "not grabbing a gun.""
"Grab a weapon," sure. But not "grab a weapon and figure out where to use it," at least not before the police figure out exactly where to use theirs if they need to. Of course, again, the suspect already had a weapon in hand, which means he only had to figure out Phase 2. Entirely different situations prompting entirely different tactics by law enforcement.
"Please stop telling me that what I've done to survive isn't possible."
You've made repeated reference to the fact that you have an anecdote, but have yet to share it. Why not share it so that it can be properly compared and contrasted with this particular incident?
"Yeah. And if you do it, you don't die. If you reach for a gun, you do."
No reaching involved. Knife in hand. Sharp. Stabby-stabby.
"Sit still, shut up, and let the cops sort it out."
If he knew they were cops skulking around in his back yard, do you really think he'd have gone out there with the knife?
"If SWAT shows up at your house, if you really haven't done anything wrong, and if you resist arrest, then I hope you get shot, to get you the hell out of the gene pool."
Except that requires actually knowing that the people busting down your door are police. This isn't some bad 1970's movie where someone stands outside with a bullhorn, TFA points out that the victim was skulking around with a kitchen knife after he "heard a noise" when he was apprehended. These kinds of raids rely on surprise and disorientation, and it's certainly within the realm of possibility for the suspects to be disoriented to the point of not knowing that it is, in fact, the police.
"because I've been there, and I responded like an adult."
The whole point to these raids is that you don't get a chance to respond, "adult" or otherwise. They are made with the explicit assumption that allowing the suspects any opportunity to respond will result in further harm to potential victims, and so a fast and overwhelming assault is made with the calculated gamble that the suspects will be incapable of responding quickly enough, one way or the other.
This isn't "Put your hands on the hood, sir," this is "GET ON THE GROUND NOW!"
"Except that he was driving on the highways pretty much the whole way,"
"Pretty much."
"The US highway system was designed with high speed trafic in mind,"
"High speed" at the time the Interstate system was designed meant something different than it does today.
"and most parts of it are relatively safe to drive at 100+ MPH."
"Most parts," "relatively."
"The only reason we don't usually is because of the law.",
Show me a stretch of Interstate where everybody is abiding by the speed limit, and I'll show you a poorly-hidden state trooper.
"You'll notice the next time you are out on an actual highway that there is almost always high line of sight, meaning that you can see a very long way ahead"
"Ahead" is only in one direction. Risks come from many directions and need not be stationary, especially when overtaking another vehicle at high speed.
"they were prepared for all kinds of eventualities."
Did they have Miss Cleo in the back seat? Did she tell them about debris flying off a truck or lying on the road ahead but obscured by the traffic in front? Was she able to successfully predict when another car's tire was going to blow out?
Really, looking only at your post, its hard to imagine that there could ever be any traffic fatalities on the Interstate. But you also seem to have spent so little time driving on the Interstate system to actually see how a real accident occurs on one, since none of the hypotheticals you toss out cover the half-dozen or so I've witnessed (and have damn near been involved in).
"What's done is done and it made a heck of a story."
He did it for attention. Attitudes like yours give him what he wants and ensures that he and others like him will repeat it. Instead of dismissing it as something past, why not consider that you're helping to ensure that it will be in the future as well?
"You suggest that speed limits are there for a reason, then provide the reason: quick cash for the municipalities."
Do you vote in municipal elections?
"I have a 30 km/h sign right in front of my window - and my condo is in front of a freeway!"
But your condo is a residence.
"Speed limits and absurd, often intentional, road laws are demonstrably used to sanate local administrations' budgets and balances."
Do the race participants know enough (let alone care) to determine if each and every speed limit zone they cross is just or unjust before they decide to violate it?
"The couple the racers hit ran a stop sign and were hit by a porsche going 6 miles over the limit"
What, no "He knew what he was doing, he was a far superior driver than mere mortals, safe and slow aren't always the same" arguments for the victims? I could make any number of hand-waving arguments in defense of the victim's reckless driving (e. g. local knowledge of how busy the intersection usually is), so why isn't the same courtesy afforded him that you afford the race participants?
What sickened me the most in the link provided were the comments, which all amounted to "Oh noes, this might affect the race!" Forget that people died, the race must go on, apparently.
"Isn't this/.? Every day we get to read the hysteria about the "police state" and "big brother is watching", but for now it has been totally sublimated so that you can all hope this guy gets arrested for driving fast."
No, it is wholly consistent with an attitude of self-interest (though perhaps not always enlightened). People here are against government surveillance because they do not wish to have someone (government or corporate) rummaging through their personal information and communications. People here are against this kind of driving because they do not wish to have someone (government or individual) risking their lives and livelihoods as they drive daily down the road. Most people here have to endure the reckless endangerment of such drivers on a daily basis.
"Instead of giving up his dream, this guy did something about it and you all hate him for it."
"Sending them a tax bill seems a bit more sensible than arresting every janitor and secretary in the office."
Let's see... sending a bill to foreign executives in a foreign company, holders of foreign passports... what flight risk?
The whole point of arresting someone is to make sure they show up to stand trial and/or pay their fines. Whether or not raiding their offices like this was truly necessary will be determined by whether the arrest requests made to the home nation are honored.
"While wiretapping is wrong. Both sides have done it."
When first I read "both sides" I thought there'd be an interesting link on Congressional wiretaps. This is, after all, on its face a conflict between the federal executive and Congress, so that is naturally the dichotomy that came to my mind when I read "both sides."
I'm saddened by the realization that I am probably part of a slim minority that did not reflexively break this down into a partisan issue.
Why? At least Verizon has an opt-out policy. Does AT&T let you opt-out of their handing the exact same information to the federal government without a warrant?
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not talking about working yourself to death. Trust me on this one...I am one that refuses to work OT unless it just has to be done at a crunch time, and even then...I refuse to work for free (I now contract myself), so the customer has to really decide if they really need me or not..."
That's not work ethic, that the luxury of having a marketable skill. The vast majority of workers, of any generation, do not have the luxury of not being disposable and are unwilling or wholly unable to test their employer's resolve, risking that they will "really decide" to give their money to somebody else instead, if they want food on the table.
"I'm talking more about work ethic. Caring about your job, no matter what that job is."
Whether or not you care about the work you do has little to do with whether your employer cares about the work you do. Those of us without a sufficiently rare and in-demand skill will lose our job to people who care less but still manage to produce acceptable results for less money.
"I do remember when going to McDonalds or BK...the food was obviously put together better...standards were set and usually met. The cashiers were more friendly."
The value of a dollar has gone down while fast food pay rates have not gone up, especially while the big chains continue to compete on price. Those fast food employees today are working more hours for less money; they simply aren't being paid enough to give you the same service you'd get someplace where a tie is required.
"(And yes, the customers were nicer and move civil too)"
The customers, too, don't have marketable skills, are working more hours for less money, and get a kick out of watching somebody else squirm for a change.
"I hear stories from friends trying to hire kids for jobs....and the turnover is incredible..that is IF they can get them to show up on time or at all."
Capitalism 101: you get what you pay for.
Another way you can chase off employees you might actually value is the "Let them eat cake" attitude of yours.
"Most of them still don't know the difference between RAM and a HD. They don't even know the units used to calculate the amount of RAM or the speed of a computer."
Many of us understand that those silly figures you can toss out have little if anything to do with the speed of a computer. Applications always bloat to consume all available resources, to the point where it takes a similar (or longer) amount of time to do a task with a computer today than it did ten years ago.
Gigabytes and gigahertz are good for little more than dick-waving, especially if you're not playing some bleeding-edge game, and being around to toss around those numbers and concepts measures little more than one's ability to unzip and show off, which (shockingly enough) isn't really a marketable skill. It doesn't matter if "these go to eleven" if it still takes forever to load a website.
"Back in the 50s, most men knew how to fix their car, not just drive it."
Back in the 50's, nobody had a fuel injector and the most complicated piece of electronics in the vehicle was a relay. And even the parts that cars of 50 or 60 years ago have in common with those of today, the new parts tend to be machined to a much tighter standard, and "close enough" back then would ruin your engine today.
There are reasons why it takes a year or two of post-secondary education to work on cars today.
"in the 90s, more computer users had at least an understanding of what went on under the hood."
On the other hand, most people weren't computer users, as the barriers to entry were too great. Users then had that understanding because they needed it in order to operate their computers.
"now, most people who use them, consider them closed boxes, and take them to a tech (mechanic) to fix when it breaks."
Computers are less forgiving of experimentation and absent-minded errors today. Forget to plug in the cooling fan on your 486? It might flake out once or twice a week, barely often enough to notice. Forget to plug in the cooling fan on your Athlon quad core? Time to buy a new processor.
"but the real reason is nobody wants to be bothered with how it works"
Or is it that they do want to know, but not enough to shell out non-negligible sums of money on a formal education, or a similar amount of money on replacing hardware destroyed by attempting to learn on their own? The reason employers want some sort of certification to begin with is to ensure that a new hire knows enough not to wreck some mission-critical piece of technology; you can't learn as you go, because one mistake in the learning process costs the company far more than your paycheck.
"One of their primary concerns is a flexible schedule and healthy work/life balance."
I wonder if this will change once they start getting their real jobs. "Flexible schedule" is being able to come in whenever they tell you to come in, and "healthy work/life balance" means never taking a sick day.
"The future is fucked."
Yeah. LSL actually had replay value.
Nolan Bushnell is complaining that games haven't been good since... well, since the last time Nolan Bushnell made a buck selling games. But of course he has the Next Big Thing that we didn't realize we've all been longing for, and if he could only scrape together some more venture capital...
Before there was John Romero, there was Nolan Bushnell.
"Please step into this time machine and listen to the sounds of the WW2 era."
Oh, yes! Everything I need to know about the period I can glean from the mass media of the time, rubber-stamped by the Office of War Information! Everybody was in favor of fighting in Europe, even though we'd been attacked in the Pacific! And volunteers for the war swelled the ranks of the US military so much, they never had to lower the draft age to 17!
"You will learn a lot about America, the country you and I (young people) never knew."
My grandparents never knew it, either. What you're being spoonfed here is a whitewashed, sterilized version of reality specially prepared for and by the mass media of the time. "Everybody" was happy and cheerful and good little citizens because they wanted you to happily march off to fight Europe's war as well. And as the Supreme Court had ruled for their parents, speaking out against the draft was punishable by imprisonment. So, yeah, everybody was happy with the war and all too willing to serve, especially that 75% of the military that were draftees.
Because...
"when companies gave a dam... when people gave a dam doing their jobs..."
They gave out all their dams on the Colorado and Tennessee rivers, as I recall.
"They stood up in ww2,"
Yeah, they "stood up" with the helpful encouragement of the little man from the draft board.
"Can you name even one situation under which twenty armed men break into your home with assault weaponry, flash grenades, lexan shields and riot gear, screaming "clear" at the top of their lungs?"
Again: the whole point is to deny the suspects the opportunity to think.
"In fact, if you've done nothing wrong, you're facing 20 people whose vests are printed "POLICE" in extremely visible yellow, and you still can't figure it out, then maybe there's a second reason to remove you from the breeding population."
TFA points out one of the suspects was in his yard, at night, holding a deadly weapon, in response to a suspicious noise, i. e. while the police were still preparing to launch the raid. The police had not yet announced their presence (indeed, were still actively trying to mask their presence). There was nothing "extremely visible" to be read until the police made their move, and doubtless they did it with bright flashlights in the dark night, to dazzle the (presumed violent) suspect from having a visible target to lunge at with the deadly weapon that was already in his hand.
"Step 1: notice gun flavor in mouth. Step 2: crap pants. Step 3: cooperate. Step 4: survive."
You get knocked down like that to prevent you from producing a weapon. The suspect here already had a weapon in his hand.
"Don't confuse "enough time to formulate a prosaic essay" with "not grabbing a gun.""
"Grab a weapon," sure. But not "grab a weapon and figure out where to use it," at least not before the police figure out exactly where to use theirs if they need to. Of course, again, the suspect already had a weapon in hand, which means he only had to figure out Phase 2. Entirely different situations prompting entirely different tactics by law enforcement.
"Please stop telling me that what I've done to survive isn't possible."
You've made repeated reference to the fact that you have an anecdote, but have yet to share it. Why not share it so that it can be properly compared and contrasted with this particular incident?
"Yeah. And if you do it, you don't die. If you reach for a gun, you do."
No reaching involved. Knife in hand. Sharp. Stabby-stabby.
"Sit still, shut up, and let the cops sort it out."
If he knew they were cops skulking around in his back yard, do you really think he'd have gone out there with the knife?
"If SWAT shows up at your house, if you really haven't done anything wrong, and if you resist arrest, then I hope you get shot, to get you the hell out of the gene pool."
Except that requires actually knowing that the people busting down your door are police. This isn't some bad 1970's movie where someone stands outside with a bullhorn, TFA points out that the victim was skulking around with a kitchen knife after he "heard a noise" when he was apprehended. These kinds of raids rely on surprise and disorientation, and it's certainly within the realm of possibility for the suspects to be disoriented to the point of not knowing that it is, in fact, the police.
"because I've been there, and I responded like an adult."
The whole point to these raids is that you don't get a chance to respond, "adult" or otherwise. They are made with the explicit assumption that allowing the suspects any opportunity to respond will result in further harm to potential victims, and so a fast and overwhelming assault is made with the calculated gamble that the suspects will be incapable of responding quickly enough, one way or the other.
This isn't "Put your hands on the hood, sir," this is "GET ON THE GROUND NOW!"
"It's a pretty harrowing experience for the innocent victim but at least it was just a prank."
It's all fun and games until someone gets shot for resisting arrest?
"Except that he was driving on the highways pretty much the whole way,"
"Pretty much."
"The US highway system was designed with high speed trafic in mind,"
"High speed" at the time the Interstate system was designed meant something different than it does today.
"and most parts of it are relatively safe to drive at 100+ MPH."
"Most parts," "relatively."
"The only reason we don't usually is because of the law.",
Show me a stretch of Interstate where everybody is abiding by the speed limit, and I'll show you a poorly-hidden state trooper.
"You'll notice the next time you are out on an actual highway that there is almost always high line of sight, meaning that you can see a very long way ahead"
"Ahead" is only in one direction. Risks come from many directions and need not be stationary, especially when overtaking another vehicle at high speed.
"they were prepared for all kinds of eventualities."
Did they have Miss Cleo in the back seat? Did she tell them about debris flying off a truck or lying on the road ahead but obscured by the traffic in front? Was she able to successfully predict when another car's tire was going to blow out?
Really, looking only at your post, its hard to imagine that there could ever be any traffic fatalities on the Interstate. But you also seem to have spent so little time driving on the Interstate system to actually see how a real accident occurs on one, since none of the hypotheticals you toss out cover the half-dozen or so I've witnessed (and have damn near been involved in).
"What's done is done and it made a heck of a story."
He did it for attention. Attitudes like yours give him what he wants and ensures that he and others like him will repeat it. Instead of dismissing it as something past, why not consider that you're helping to ensure that it will be in the future as well?
"You suggest that speed limits are there for a reason, then provide the reason: quick cash for the municipalities."
Do you vote in municipal elections?
"I have a 30 km/h sign right in front of my window - and my condo is in front of a freeway!"
But your condo is a residence.
"Speed limits and absurd, often intentional, road laws are demonstrably used to sanate local administrations' budgets and balances."
Do the race participants know enough (let alone care) to determine if each and every speed limit zone they cross is just or unjust before they decide to violate it?
Thanks for posting this! There's nothing like a little attention to stroke the ol' ego and encourage more behavior like this!
"The couple the racers hit ran a stop sign and were hit by a porsche going 6 miles over the limit"
What, no "He knew what he was doing, he was a far superior driver than mere mortals, safe and slow aren't always the same" arguments for the victims? I could make any number of hand-waving arguments in defense of the victim's reckless driving (e. g. local knowledge of how busy the intersection usually is), so why isn't the same courtesy afforded him that you afford the race participants?
What sickened me the most in the link provided were the comments, which all amounted to "Oh noes, this might affect the race!" Forget that people died, the race must go on, apparently.
"Isn't this /.? Every day we get to read the hysteria about the "police state" and "big brother is watching", but for now it has been totally sublimated so that you can all hope this guy gets arrested for driving fast."
No, it is wholly consistent with an attitude of self-interest (though perhaps not always enlightened). People here are against government surveillance because they do not wish to have someone (government or corporate) rummaging through their personal information and communications. People here are against this kind of driving because they do not wish to have someone (government or individual) risking their lives and livelihoods as they drive daily down the road. Most people here have to endure the reckless endangerment of such drivers on a daily basis.
"Instead of giving up his dream, this guy did something about it and you all hate him for it."
Ted Bundy had a dream, too.
When did "don't kill people" become arbitrary?
Serves them right for messing with United Fruit!
"Sending them a tax bill seems a bit more sensible than arresting every janitor and secretary in the office."
Let's see... sending a bill to foreign executives in a foreign company, holders of foreign passports... what flight risk?
The whole point of arresting someone is to make sure they show up to stand trial and/or pay their fines. Whether or not raiding their offices like this was truly necessary will be determined by whether the arrest requests made to the home nation are honored.
"While wiretapping is wrong. Both sides have done it."
When first I read "both sides" I thought there'd be an interesting link on Congressional wiretaps. This is, after all, on its face a conflict between the federal executive and Congress, so that is naturally the dichotomy that came to my mind when I read "both sides."
I'm saddened by the realization that I am probably part of a slim minority that did not reflexively break this down into a partisan issue.
"they should legislate it as such."
And what happens when the president vetoes it?
Why? At least Verizon has an opt-out policy. Does AT&T let you opt-out of their handing the exact same information to the federal government without a warrant?