Before you get too self-righteous, it's not necessarily quite that simple. First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
All available information points to the opposite being true: affluence results in fewer children (through causation or otherwise). Case in point: endemic Western populations are decreasing in size (and have been for 30+ years), while starvation-plagued countries like India and the majority of the African continent have population surpluses (though I believe the overall African affluence has increased somewhat in the last couple years, and there is a tremendous die-off due to disease right now, which might make their population growth somewhat less than it was in the past).
I think that it's necessary for population to reach an equilibrium where the population density and social/technological progress are advancing at a closely paired rate (don't ask me what it would be) in order for the birth rate to drop. Population growth would have to not out-pace affluence growth, at any rate.
One might even argue that, due to the passive and docile nature of modern life, it is a psychological necessity for many people to get a "little dose of violence" every once in a while to keep them sane. If a violent existence is the status quo for the most of humanity's existence, we're bred to require it in much the same way that we're bred to seek sex and other forms of cost/fulfillment.
The 'release' received from violent displays might very well be necessary on a number of levels: * It might help offset a severe psychological reaction in the face of actual severe violence (PTSD?) * It might provide a momentary release for aggressive violent feelings/inclinations, resulting in the person to maintain a more docile existence. * It might (in the case of males/aggressive types) provide hormones to their body which they would otherwise not produce without actual violence - hormones which are necessary for their physical/mental health. * Like sexual pornography, it might help sate a desire which may help delay or retard growing insatiable desires.
no. But consider: I've been playing Fallout 3 for the last couple weeks, on and off. I work from home, which is a nice way of saying I'm essentially unemployed and doing side contracts when available.
I recently had an interview, where I had to go to a building which had water fountains. To get there, I traveled through an airport. While I was in the airport, I saw some chicklet gum in a green package and I mentally sublimated the actual lettering on the package (at a glance) to "Mentats" and had to do a double take. upon seeing one of the older, square, brown water fountains in the building I arrived at, I caught myself thinking "I wonder how many rads that'll give me".
I should also note that I've had DNR tunes playing through my head when I wake up in the morning, and various other "artifacts" of the game world. It's somewhat disturbing to see how much of a game world can impact your real-world perceptions.
I remember doing similar things in bygone years with games like Deus Ex, and as a younger child, allowing my imagination to "turn me into" Batman, a Ninja Turtle, or the like. Sure, it's fantastical, and a certain element of it is probably healthy. But when the fantasy world is so greatly divorced from reality (or what is acceptable in reality) I think it's probably quite unhealthy (and potentially socially destructive).
Just because it doesn't happen with you doesn't mean it doesn't happen with others, or that it can't happen.
I can certainly relate. I played a lot of games like Doom, Quake, and Hexen as a teenager. I loved the "splatalogical" gore and the like. Likewise for UT, Doom 3, HL1 and 2, and so on.
I hadn't played many games (make that "any") since after beating Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 until recently, when I picked up Fallout 3. I was initially blown away by how realistic things had gotten - very impressive. But after a couple hours(++) of play, it became somewhat dissonant when I entered VATS on a female Raider (and then saw their head break into a dozen chunks after a successful kill). I became desensitized to it by the time I beat the game, I think, which is somewhat perplexing/disturbing in retrospect.
And then I saw all the 'nude' user-contributed mods out there. Topless painstake armor? Please, guys, no need to air your extreme fetishes. That's just disturbing.
It's not science, it's evolution which is at issue here. No need to be trite and belittling; I'm not insulting science or the process, but questioning what has led to the specific conclusions made here.
My problems with evolutionary theory/Darwinism? * For a scientific theory, there are quite a few proponents of Darwinism-as-infallible-science who have some pretty fantastical (and completely unsupported by anything) views on the origin of life. (Crystals, lightning, aliens... We might as well add ecktoplasma to the list.) * For a unified theory of where all life began, it's got some notably large holes which have been present since Darwin conceived the theory. For instance, where did flowering plants come from? * Darwinism has its own dogma - immutable and unchallengeable, until the evidence is insurmountable in opposition (see: skeletal fossils). It's akin to the idiotic "6000 year-old Earth" people: they pick a single source, and then think "how can we make our facts fit our assumptions?" * Darwinism necessitates n+1 levels of fossil complexity. If the Darwin model for evolution holds, then there would be no "missing link": there would be many, many missing links while at the same time we would see clear gradation from "then" until "now". * Punctuated equilibrium faces many of the same problems. But it, like much of theology, is pretty much just an unsupportable point of belief based on an unproven but presumed fact (in this case, that Darwinian evolution occurs as speculated at all). * Evolutionary biology is treated as the "source" science for many other rearward-looking sciences, such as archeology and geology, the results of which are many obvious incongruities between what's on the ground and what's in the texts. * It is widely accepted as absolute, undisputed fact despite the above faults, and any claims to the contrary are met with zealous hostility. Yes, I realize that many theories are considered fact now, due to extensive vetting and a significant lack of contrary evidence. But this does not hold true for evolutionary theory.
Please don't mistake me as saying that Evolution is just the God of Atheists or some such thing (though there is an interesting correlation amongst its biggest proponents, I must say). I'm not. But I do think that there is a similarity between current "scientific" thought and the scientific thought at, say, the time of Newton or Einstein. What came before was an Incomplete idea - better than what came before, but still lacking critical, game-changing perspective. As the science is practiced now, it has some very obvious theoretical holes - there is a great deal of incongruity between "what is observed" and "what is theorized".
Yeah, no doubt. This is particularly true when you consider that: Columbus' ships were small (fast) ships for the day; a 'treasure ship' is big and essentially a transport; and the sail structure on the treasure ship looks ungainly and frail (almost as if it's a seperate structure than the rest of the ship, vs. an integral part).
Oh yeah, there's also the postulation that the 'treasure ships' were just basically used as diplomatic ferries for going up and down the Yangtze River and were not sea worthy due to hypothesized size and their sail arrangement. Which would make sense. But again, it's just postulation (which is all we've got, as there is insufficient documentation which more closely mimics myth than history).
He's looking for someone to do a relatively simple DB-related job. He's asking a few questions that should be dead simple for anyone who's only so much as worked through tutorials in a few related subjects. It ain't rocket science.
No, it's a technical trade. Regardless of all the schooling a person has, unless they're actively and regularly doing something, or have done so for years in the past, pulling it to active memory might be a bit iffy - regardless of how it is conveyed.
but those are all hand-waving and pretty feeble excuses for not having a clue of basic concepts of the job they're applying for.
Maybe he's getting BS and masters grads applying for his job postings because nobody is hiring them for appropriate jobs? Maybe they're fibbing a bit because the high-level concepts they've learned (with only a modicum of actual hands-on experience) is not sufficient for the intermediate-pretending-to-be-entry level positions available? Have you looked for entry-level programming jobs lately? "BS in CS, IT required, minimum 2 years exp. writing SQL, C#, C, or similar languages". That's not an entry level position, but it's the closest thing you'll find.
If they can't handle this kind of stuff they should submit their application to MacDonalds.
But they probably can handle it, if they're in the least bit bright. Someone with a decent GPA in CS/IT from a state school is going to have a decent understanding of technology; they're going to have the conceptual background in how things work that will make learning new technologies - and applying them correctly - useful. Which would you rather have, someone who picked up SQL and C# at a 'trade school' in India, specifically to get a job in the US, or someone who is familiar with SQL and C#, having taken courses where he has utilized them, but understands not only why, but mostly how to normalize a database, the OSI model, the -why- behind OO programming, and an aptitude for (and dedication to) learning?
No, I'm not saying he could pick up the job on the first day. But, realistically, neither could the 'trained' person. IT employers expect way, way too much these days (and you'd realize this if you've seen what is generally expected of people in other 'professional' fields like engineering and nursing).
Did the GP poster bother to ask the interviewee why he put specific things on his resume if he could not answer the questions he, the interviewer, thought someone with those specific "skills" should be able to perform?
Think about it for a second. It is pretentious and belittling to assume that an entry-level position candidate, regardless of field, can perform day-in-day-out tasks from wrote memory. There's a reason it's an "entry level" position: the person hasn't got any experience. Personally, if someone applied for such a position could rattle off SELECT statements and the like, I'd be very suspicious of the person's deeper understanding of the field of IT (and whether they'd sink me due to a decision based on a flawed, ignorant assumption). (Either that, or they'd be over-qualified for the position, but their resume would probably indicate that via experience.)
Something occurred to me. Why are they digging to harness geothermal for power?
I know that it's a known power source, but consider. There are a lot of other energy types within the earth, all of which are 'vibratory'. What if they could construct a structure which would harness and amplify the various energy/radiation types and catalyze them into an energy source - say, by agitating/exciting hydrogen, helium or the like to a point just before explosion/implosion, creating sufficient heat to power a steam generator?
If Noah's sons all looked alike and went to different corners of the earth, it's still possible for black populations, white populations, and east asian populations to arise.
Has this been demonstrated to be possible? Or just postulated on based on fossil records and circumstantial (yet technically unassociated) evidence?
if you fiat it away (as theists often do),
Seems to me you're doing the exact same thing - your "god" is just the infallible truth of evolutionary biology instead of a spaghetti monster in the sky.
I dunno. How many of those Indians work their asses off at an intellectual trade through their early 20s, and how does that societal proportion relate to Americans? I'd imagine the "per capita" is slightly different if you were only to consider the literate Indians, given their drastic economic divide.
I'll tell you one thing. It's damn easy for an American with several thousand dollars saved up to go bum and vacation around the entire hemisphere that India is located in for a year or so - all while living like a king on the "high side" of society. I have a hard time believing that $725 equiv a year per capita is all that bad.
Wow, so chock full of errors in assumption I don't even know where to begin.
The reason your typical Dell computer costs $400 is because they can ship part of the costs of support out to India.
Wrong. The only thing they can't effectively outsource to India is support (they tried, it didn't work). But everything else is made by the lowest bidder, leaving only the "support" jobs to Americans. What was that idea Ford had which made him massively successful? Oh yeah, he made is so his products were cheap enough for his factory employees to buy. Only problem is that we forgot the second half of that statement: we're just making them cheap, now, and the "company employees" aren't making much at all (because all the high-pay jobs are no longer: they're being done at essentially-flat rates overseas.)
The same is true of big-box retailers like Walmart selling t-shirts and teapots cranked out in Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian factories for substantially less than local boutiques like American Apparel that sell US-made goods. Part of what you're paying for is branding, distribution chain inefficiency, fashion, etc. but it's important not to discount the labor cost--no matter how small--because that's all part of the race to the bottom.
Wrong. Chinese Walmart shit is cheaper because: a) it's (often) poorly made, with poor QC. b) economy of scale. Walmart buys a LOT of stuff, much more than anyone else can afford, and can therefore c) You honestly think that it might be cheaper to make - and subsequently ship - a t-shirt from China than it would be to make it locally (within say, 500 miles)? Considering the majority of a product's cost (including food) is in transportation expenses, that's highly, highly unlikely.
Now, if there is no -real- distinction in product brands/manufacturer, sure, buy the cheap shit. I do often. But how many "cheap shit" items do you need to buy to say "forget this, I'm going to buy a quality item made in the US/West"? For me, not that many.
The problem here is not the available candidates, it is your approach to trying to fill the position. Please, hear me out (as this is something I've run into myself, more or less).
First, if you're looking for someone with specific skills, you are intrinsically expecting them to have experience with those things. Like most things in life, you can not gain experience or knowledge in something without doing it, first. If you are looking for entry-level candidates, you are looking for intellectual aptitude, a foundational skill-set indicative of the ability to learn, and a broad but shallow understanding of many different topics. If you want someone who has a more topical understanding than just the basics, but not someone more skilled than "entry level" (say, intermediate or experienced) then you are looking for someone with a PhD.
We're not (necessarily) talking about incompetent students, here. A student who was (say) a tech while going through school is going to put the things on his resume which relate to his academic preferences and strengths. There isn't all that much which can be covered in a semester.
Also, consider that something known is not always easily conveyed in a foreign format. It's damn hard to orally convey a lot of the things I type on a daily basis (and the logic/process is sometimes also difficult to convey: the "speech" part of my brain is somewhat disconnected from the part which performs the work, it would seem). I imagine I'm not alone in this, at all. (Likewise, pen + paper isn't the same thing, especially if your experience is very environmentally confined or "mostly academic".)
Now, granted, I do not know your hiring process or requirements, but I can see such a scenario play out in such a fashion (and have seen it a number of times). IT is complex; there are a lot of things to look at, and unless you're already locked into a sub-field, the amount of things you can (and might have to) study to land a job to start a career in a sub-field is intimidatingly large. Not everyone has the opportunity to grow in their field "organically", and it's very difficult to hit a moving target (ie land a job) when the market is tight.
I've seen a lot of job postings, and been to a couple job interviews with questions like you describe. Sometimes they're looking for an introductory position and don't realize it. Sometimes (as I suspect the case is with you) they're trying to pull an experienced or intermediate-level developer or systems person in at entry-level wages.
I think the difference between a US college graduate IT person and an Indian worker is probably that the Indian worker's schooling has been more highly tailored towards job postings and the fact that he very well may have "abandoned all hope" (at all) for a number of years while he underwent his schooling. Sure, you'll get a programmer that way, I imagine. There's also a good chance he's fairly interesting and knows where to get the good curry. Maybe doing that is the "productive" and "financially conscious" thing to do - or whatever the going phrase is these days for selling your country (and countryman) short to the benefit of your company.
I was in a position a while back where I was hired as a "systems administrator". Both the job description and my understanding of the job was that I was supposed to operate primarily within the planning/making infrastructure work/keep working role. However, the reality was that I ended up reimaging workstations and fixing various user-caused problems more often than not. So it was "my job", but it was initially represented as a minor fraction of the work I'd be doing, not the primary role (which is more akin to "desktop support" and can be/should be mostly mitigated through proper sysadmin planning and control anyway). But you can't do that primary role if you're focused on user support.
I'm curious why there's all this evidence of barrows (a type of tomb, in a sense) but none of the supposed living quarters of these people. Why is that, do you suppose? Maybe these were not "ceremonial buildings" but actual living quarters and they (like many a people group) buried their deceased nearby?
That's more true than you think, for contemporary archaeologists.
Ever wonder why anything they find is a "tomb", "ritual site" or "burial site" if it demonstrates even the least bit of architectural complexity and it's older than (say) 3,000 years old? IE, it couldn't possibly have served a functionality beyond some primitive goal, because people back then couldn't possibly have been technologically/intellectually advanced to achieve such a goal! The Giza pyramid is a perfect example of this: despite having had multiple groups attempt to rebuild the pyramids to scale using the supposed tools used by the pyramid builders, nobody has been able to do so; and the Giza pyramid, despite having no overt indication of being a tomb or religious site, still gets categorized as such.
Let's think about this: if you were a privative people, why would you build tombs as your "most advanced architecture"? You wouldn't. You'd make dwelling places and utilitarian buildings. Sure, they may have been made from something else - which doesn't last as long, such as wood - but tombs. Or maybe they were primarily tombs - made by a later people who used the homes of a lost people to bury their dead.
Archeology would be well suited to ditch the millstone of evolutionary theory and start basing their theories on their own discoveries and the evidence manifest. Even as a "soft science" they should be asking "what does this evidence support?" not "how does this evidence fit our theory?"
It's not 24 hours installing Windows, it's 24 hours installing windows - and all the applications and drivers you'd been using previously, as well as restoring your data - if you don't sit there the whole time and watch it. A minimal application set + drivers might be doable in 2-3 hours, though. Just not half a dozen heavy applications from the original media.
A 10-minute reinstall? I think you're drastically underestimating the time it takes. I've not seen that, even on fairly new hardware.
The best way to do a Windows install is to use an up-to-date install medium and then have a post-install script install your applications. I use unattended for this, and it's probably overkill for most home users. However, it's quicker and easier for me to do this in the 'home user repair' gig than it is pretty much anything else.
Exactly what I was thinking. That is so incredibly ass-backwards - in terms of complexity, man hours, and cost, I don't know what to say. There is a REASON we don't do everything in silicon: it's cheaper, by far, to do it in software. You optimize your OS for the hardware, not vice versa.
I recently tried out W7 RC for the first time, and put fallout 3 on there while I was at it. It's known as a glitchy game, but it ran OK.
Then, after about a day of play, the system ran the automatic update while I was playing. No problem. The following day when I tried to play, the game would randomly freeze every 5-10 minutes of play. I rolled the system back, systematically (damn nice, and absolutely necessary, feature, what with the likelihood that updates =will= break things) until I found the fault.
The fault was an update which was unremovable from within Windows itself and could only be removed through such a rollback. It was the first update performed, and the subsequent updates depended on it (apparently). Supposedly the update was to test whether W7 would update properly, and that alone - ie, supposedly no functional changes. Right.
Apparently you haven't tried this on newer hardware. Like, anything with SATA and/or lacking a real (non-USB) floppy drive.
XP, pre SP1? You're not going to find:
- network drivers for anything - video drivers for anything - disk/controller drivers for anything
To top it off, you won't be able to effectively interface with Windows Update until after it's been updated to SP2 or so. And there's a chance the drivers for networking won't even install before that.
In short, you'll have about as much installing Win9x. It'll be a huge pain in the ass.
Personally, I won't do a Windows install (w/o OEM restore disk) anymore unless I'm using unattended to do so. It's literal hours of hunting for drivers, waiting, rebooting, and conflicts otherwise.
Why don't you take a closer look at those "craters" on the moon. You sure they were made by asteroids or might there be a mechanism which is more consistent with the available evidence (contemporary scientific stasis be damned)?
Even if both halves remain in the same orbit, very close together, there would be a reduced gravitational pull from "the moon" - ie, the single point where the moon used to occupy. So we'd have two, diminished tidal forces (and likely no tides to speak of).
There's also the option that the diminished mass would result in a moon-half or two plummeting to earth under Earth's gravitational pull. Water or no, that'd make the experiments pretty moot.
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Before you get too self-righteous, it's not necessarily quite that simple. First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
All available information points to the opposite being true: affluence results in fewer children (through causation or otherwise). Case in point: endemic Western populations are decreasing in size (and have been for 30+ years), while starvation-plagued countries like India and the majority of the African continent have population surpluses (though I believe the overall African affluence has increased somewhat in the last couple years, and there is a tremendous die-off due to disease right now, which might make their population growth somewhat less than it was in the past).
I think that it's necessary for population to reach an equilibrium where the population density and social/technological progress are advancing at a closely paired rate (don't ask me what it would be) in order for the birth rate to drop. Population growth would have to not out-pace affluence growth, at any rate.
One might even argue that, due to the passive and docile nature of modern life, it is a psychological necessity for many people to get a "little dose of violence" every once in a while to keep them sane. If a violent existence is the status quo for the most of humanity's existence, we're bred to require it in much the same way that we're bred to seek sex and other forms of cost/fulfillment.
The 'release' received from violent displays might very well be necessary on a number of levels:
* It might help offset a severe psychological reaction in the face of actual severe violence (PTSD?)
* It might provide a momentary release for aggressive violent feelings/inclinations, resulting in the person to maintain a more docile existence.
* It might (in the case of males/aggressive types) provide hormones to their body which they would otherwise not produce without actual violence - hormones which are necessary for their physical/mental health.
* Like sexual pornography, it might help sate a desire which may help delay or retard growing insatiable desires.
no. But consider: I've been playing Fallout 3 for the last couple weeks, on and off. I work from home, which is a nice way of saying I'm essentially unemployed and doing side contracts when available.
I recently had an interview, where I had to go to a building which had water fountains. To get there, I traveled through an airport. While I was in the airport, I saw some chicklet gum in a green package and I mentally sublimated the actual lettering on the package (at a glance) to "Mentats" and had to do a double take. upon seeing one of the older, square, brown water fountains in the building I arrived at, I caught myself thinking "I wonder how many rads that'll give me".
I should also note that I've had DNR tunes playing through my head when I wake up in the morning, and various other "artifacts" of the game world. It's somewhat disturbing to see how much of a game world can impact your real-world perceptions.
I remember doing similar things in bygone years with games like Deus Ex, and as a younger child, allowing my imagination to "turn me into" Batman, a Ninja Turtle, or the like. Sure, it's fantastical, and a certain element of it is probably healthy. But when the fantasy world is so greatly divorced from reality (or what is acceptable in reality) I think it's probably quite unhealthy (and potentially socially destructive).
Just because it doesn't happen with you doesn't mean it doesn't happen with others, or that it can't happen.
I can certainly relate. I played a lot of games like Doom, Quake, and Hexen as a teenager. I loved the "splatalogical" gore and the like. Likewise for UT, Doom 3, HL1 and 2, and so on.
I hadn't played many games (make that "any") since after beating Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 until recently, when I picked up Fallout 3. I was initially blown away by how realistic things had gotten - very impressive. But after a couple hours(++) of play, it became somewhat dissonant when I entered VATS on a female Raider (and then saw their head break into a dozen chunks after a successful kill). I became desensitized to it by the time I beat the game, I think, which is somewhat perplexing/disturbing in retrospect.
And then I saw all the 'nude' user-contributed mods out there. Topless painstake armor? Please, guys, no need to air your extreme fetishes. That's just disturbing.
It's not science, it's evolution which is at issue here. No need to be trite and belittling; I'm not insulting science or the process, but questioning what has led to the specific conclusions made here.
My problems with evolutionary theory/Darwinism?
* For a scientific theory, there are quite a few proponents of Darwinism-as-infallible-science who have some pretty fantastical (and completely unsupported by anything) views on the origin of life. (Crystals, lightning, aliens... We might as well add ecktoplasma to the list.)
* For a unified theory of where all life began, it's got some notably large holes which have been present since Darwin conceived the theory. For instance, where did flowering plants come from?
* Darwinism has its own dogma - immutable and unchallengeable, until the evidence is insurmountable in opposition (see: skeletal fossils). It's akin to the idiotic "6000 year-old Earth" people: they pick a single source, and then think "how can we make our facts fit our assumptions?"
* Darwinism necessitates n+1 levels of fossil complexity. If the Darwin model for evolution holds, then there would be no "missing link": there would be many, many missing links while at the same time we would see clear gradation from "then" until "now".
* Punctuated equilibrium faces many of the same problems. But it, like much of theology, is pretty much just an unsupportable point of belief based on an unproven but presumed fact (in this case, that Darwinian evolution occurs as speculated at all).
* Evolutionary biology is treated as the "source" science for many other rearward-looking sciences, such as archeology and geology, the results of which are many obvious incongruities between what's on the ground and what's in the texts.
* It is widely accepted as absolute, undisputed fact despite the above faults, and any claims to the contrary are met with zealous hostility. Yes, I realize that many theories are considered fact now, due to extensive vetting and a significant lack of contrary evidence. But this does not hold true for evolutionary theory.
Please don't mistake me as saying that Evolution is just the God of Atheists or some such thing (though there is an interesting correlation amongst its biggest proponents, I must say). I'm not. But I do think that there is a similarity between current "scientific" thought and the scientific thought at, say, the time of Newton or Einstein. What came before was an Incomplete idea - better than what came before, but still lacking critical, game-changing perspective. As the science is practiced now, it has some very obvious theoretical holes - there is a great deal of incongruity between "what is observed" and "what is theorized".
Yeah, no doubt. This is particularly true when you consider that: Columbus' ships were small (fast) ships for the day; a 'treasure ship' is big and essentially a transport; and the sail structure on the treasure ship looks ungainly and frail (almost as if it's a seperate structure than the rest of the ship, vs. an integral part).
Oh yeah, there's also the postulation that the 'treasure ships' were just basically used as diplomatic ferries for going up and down the Yangtze River and were not sea worthy due to hypothesized size and their sail arrangement. Which would make sense. But again, it's just postulation (which is all we've got, as there is insufficient documentation which more closely mimics myth than history).
He's looking for someone to do a relatively simple DB-related job. He's asking a few questions that should be dead simple for anyone who's only so much as worked through tutorials in a few related subjects. It ain't rocket science.
No, it's a technical trade. Regardless of all the schooling a person has, unless they're actively and regularly doing something, or have done so for years in the past, pulling it to active memory might be a bit iffy - regardless of how it is conveyed.
but those are all hand-waving and pretty feeble excuses for not having a clue of basic concepts of the job they're applying for.
Maybe he's getting BS and masters grads applying for his job postings because nobody is hiring them for appropriate jobs? Maybe they're fibbing a bit because the high-level concepts they've learned (with only a modicum of actual hands-on experience) is not sufficient for the intermediate-pretending-to-be-entry level positions available? Have you looked for entry-level programming jobs lately? "BS in CS, IT required, minimum 2 years exp. writing SQL, C#, C, or similar languages". That's not an entry level position, but it's the closest thing you'll find.
If they can't handle this kind of stuff they should submit their application to MacDonalds.
But they probably can handle it, if they're in the least bit bright. Someone with a decent GPA in CS/IT from a state school is going to have a decent understanding of technology; they're going to have the conceptual background in how things work that will make learning new technologies - and applying them correctly - useful. Which would you rather have, someone who picked up SQL and C# at a 'trade school' in India, specifically to get a job in the US, or someone who is familiar with SQL and C#, having taken courses where he has utilized them, but understands not only why, but mostly how to normalize a database, the OSI model, the -why- behind OO programming, and an aptitude for (and dedication to) learning?
No, I'm not saying he could pick up the job on the first day. But, realistically, neither could the 'trained' person. IT employers expect way, way too much these days (and you'd realize this if you've seen what is generally expected of people in other 'professional' fields like engineering and nursing).
Did the GP poster bother to ask the interviewee why he put specific things on his resume if he could not answer the questions he, the interviewer, thought someone with those specific "skills" should be able to perform?
Think about it for a second. It is pretentious and belittling to assume that an entry-level position candidate, regardless of field, can perform day-in-day-out tasks from wrote memory. There's a reason it's an "entry level" position: the person hasn't got any experience. Personally, if someone applied for such a position could rattle off SELECT statements and the like, I'd be very suspicious of the person's deeper understanding of the field of IT (and whether they'd sink me due to a decision based on a flawed, ignorant assumption). (Either that, or they'd be over-qualified for the position, but their resume would probably indicate that via experience.)
Something occurred to me. Why are they digging to harness geothermal for power?
I know that it's a known power source, but consider. There are a lot of other energy types within the earth, all of which are 'vibratory'. What if they could construct a structure which would harness and amplify the various energy/radiation types and catalyze them into an energy source - say, by agitating/exciting hydrogen, helium or the like to a point just before explosion/implosion, creating sufficient heat to power a steam generator?
If Noah's sons all looked alike and went to different corners of the earth, it's still possible for black populations, white populations, and east asian populations to arise.
Has this been demonstrated to be possible? Or just postulated on based on fossil records and circumstantial (yet technically unassociated) evidence?
if you fiat it away (as theists often do),
Seems to me you're doing the exact same thing - your "god" is just the infallible truth of evolutionary biology instead of a spaghetti monster in the sky.
No, he couldn't. Look at Indian immigration law lately?
I dunno. How many of those Indians work their asses off at an intellectual trade through their early 20s, and how does that societal proportion relate to Americans? I'd imagine the "per capita" is slightly different if you were only to consider the literate Indians, given their drastic economic divide.
I'll tell you one thing. It's damn easy for an American with several thousand dollars saved up to go bum and vacation around the entire hemisphere that India is located in for a year or so - all while living like a king on the "high side" of society. I have a hard time believing that $725 equiv a year per capita is all that bad.
Wow, so chock full of errors in assumption I don't even know where to begin.
The reason your typical Dell computer costs $400 is because they can ship part of the costs of support out to India.
Wrong. The only thing they can't effectively outsource to India is support (they tried, it didn't work). But everything else is made by the lowest bidder, leaving only the "support" jobs to Americans. What was that idea Ford had which made him massively successful? Oh yeah, he made is so his products were cheap enough for his factory employees to buy. Only problem is that we forgot the second half of that statement: we're just making them cheap, now, and the "company employees" aren't making much at all (because all the high-pay jobs are no longer: they're being done at essentially-flat rates overseas.)
The same is true of big-box retailers like Walmart selling t-shirts and teapots cranked out in Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian factories for substantially less than local boutiques like American Apparel that sell US-made goods. Part of what you're paying for is branding, distribution chain inefficiency, fashion, etc. but it's important not to discount the labor cost--no matter how small--because that's all part of the race to the bottom.
Wrong. Chinese Walmart shit is cheaper because:
a) it's (often) poorly made, with poor QC.
b) economy of scale. Walmart buys a LOT of stuff, much more than anyone else can afford, and can therefore
c) You honestly think that it might be cheaper to make - and subsequently ship - a t-shirt from China than it would be to make it locally (within say, 500 miles)? Considering the majority of a product's cost (including food) is in transportation expenses, that's highly, highly unlikely.
Now, if there is no -real- distinction in product brands/manufacturer, sure, buy the cheap shit. I do often. But how many "cheap shit" items do you need to buy to say "forget this, I'm going to buy a quality item made in the US/West"? For me, not that many.
The problem here is not the available candidates, it is your approach to trying to fill the position. Please, hear me out (as this is something I've run into myself, more or less).
First, if you're looking for someone with specific skills, you are intrinsically expecting them to have experience with those things. Like most things in life, you can not gain experience or knowledge in something without doing it, first. If you are looking for entry-level candidates, you are looking for intellectual aptitude, a foundational skill-set indicative of the ability to learn, and a broad but shallow understanding of many different topics. If you want someone who has a more topical understanding than just the basics, but not someone more skilled than "entry level" (say, intermediate or experienced) then you are looking for someone with a PhD.
We're not (necessarily) talking about incompetent students, here. A student who was (say) a tech while going through school is going to put the things on his resume which relate to his academic preferences and strengths. There isn't all that much which can be covered in a semester.
Also, consider that something known is not always easily conveyed in a foreign format. It's damn hard to orally convey a lot of the things I type on a daily basis (and the logic/process is sometimes also difficult to convey: the "speech" part of my brain is somewhat disconnected from the part which performs the work, it would seem). I imagine I'm not alone in this, at all. (Likewise, pen + paper isn't the same thing, especially if your experience is very environmentally confined or "mostly academic".)
Now, granted, I do not know your hiring process or requirements, but I can see such a scenario play out in such a fashion (and have seen it a number of times). IT is complex; there are a lot of things to look at, and unless you're already locked into a sub-field, the amount of things you can (and might have to) study to land a job to start a career in a sub-field is intimidatingly large. Not everyone has the opportunity to grow in their field "organically", and it's very difficult to hit a moving target (ie land a job) when the market is tight.
I've seen a lot of job postings, and been to a couple job interviews with questions like you describe. Sometimes they're looking for an introductory position and don't realize it. Sometimes (as I suspect the case is with you) they're trying to pull an experienced or intermediate-level developer or systems person in at entry-level wages.
I think the difference between a US college graduate IT person and an Indian worker is probably that the Indian worker's schooling has been more highly tailored towards job postings and the fact that he very well may have "abandoned all hope" (at all) for a number of years while he underwent his schooling. Sure, you'll get a programmer that way, I imagine. There's also a good chance he's fairly interesting and knows where to get the good curry. Maybe doing that is the "productive" and "financially conscious" thing to do - or whatever the going phrase is these days for selling your country (and countryman) short to the benefit of your company.
Maybe it's his job, maybe it isn't.
I was in a position a while back where I was hired as a "systems administrator". Both the job description and my understanding of the job was that I was supposed to operate primarily within the planning/making infrastructure work/keep working role. However, the reality was that I ended up reimaging workstations and fixing various user-caused problems more often than not. So it was "my job", but it was initially represented as a minor fraction of the work I'd be doing, not the primary role (which is more akin to "desktop support" and can be/should be mostly mitigated through proper sysadmin planning and control anyway). But you can't do that primary role if you're focused on user support.
I'm curious why there's all this evidence of barrows (a type of tomb, in a sense) but none of the supposed living quarters of these people. Why is that, do you suppose? Maybe these were not "ceremonial buildings" but actual living quarters and they (like many a people group) buried their deceased nearby?
That's more true than you think, for contemporary archaeologists.
Ever wonder why anything they find is a "tomb", "ritual site" or "burial site" if it demonstrates even the least bit of architectural complexity and it's older than (say) 3,000 years old? IE, it couldn't possibly have served a functionality beyond some primitive goal, because people back then couldn't possibly have been technologically/intellectually advanced to achieve such a goal! The Giza pyramid is a perfect example of this: despite having had multiple groups attempt to rebuild the pyramids to scale using the supposed tools used by the pyramid builders, nobody has been able to do so; and the Giza pyramid, despite having no overt indication of being a tomb or religious site, still gets categorized as such.
Let's think about this: if you were a privative people, why would you build tombs as your "most advanced architecture"? You wouldn't. You'd make dwelling places and utilitarian buildings. Sure, they may have been made from something else - which doesn't last as long, such as wood - but tombs. Or maybe they were primarily tombs - made by a later people who used the homes of a lost people to bury their dead.
Archeology would be well suited to ditch the millstone of evolutionary theory and start basing their theories on their own discoveries and the evidence manifest. Even as a "soft science" they should be asking "what does this evidence support?" not "how does this evidence fit our theory?"
It's not 24 hours installing Windows, it's 24 hours installing windows - and all the applications and drivers you'd been using previously, as well as restoring your data - if you don't sit there the whole time and watch it. A minimal application set + drivers might be doable in 2-3 hours, though. Just not half a dozen heavy applications from the original media.
A 10-minute reinstall? I think you're drastically underestimating the time it takes. I've not seen that, even on fairly new hardware.
The best way to do a Windows install is to use an up-to-date install medium and then have a post-install script install your applications. I use unattended for this, and it's probably overkill for most home users. However, it's quicker and easier for me to do this in the 'home user repair' gig than it is pretty much anything else.
What? No, that makes no sense at all.
SCO UNIX had little technical merit in the mid-1990s. Now, it's an anachronism at best.
And how would he or she go about doing that? (Presuming the GP poster excluded non-C: drives from his list through a lack of hindsight).
Exactly what I was thinking. That is so incredibly ass-backwards - in terms of complexity, man hours, and cost, I don't know what to say. There is a REASON we don't do everything in silicon: it's cheaper, by far, to do it in software. You optimize your OS for the hardware, not vice versa.
Can you give an example of them doing this in the past? Nothing comes to mind for me.
Yeah, good luck with that.
I recently tried out W7 RC for the first time, and put fallout 3 on there while I was at it. It's known as a glitchy game, but it ran OK.
Then, after about a day of play, the system ran the automatic update while I was playing. No problem. The following day when I tried to play, the game would randomly freeze every 5-10 minutes of play. I rolled the system back, systematically (damn nice, and absolutely necessary, feature, what with the likelihood that updates =will= break things) until I found the fault.
The fault was an update which was unremovable from within Windows itself and could only be removed through such a rollback. It was the first update performed, and the subsequent updates depended on it (apparently). Supposedly the update was to test whether W7 would update properly, and that alone - ie, supposedly no functional changes. Right.
Apparently you haven't tried this on newer hardware. Like, anything with SATA and/or lacking a real (non-USB) floppy drive.
XP, pre SP1? You're not going to find:
- network drivers for anything
- video drivers for anything
- disk/controller drivers for anything
To top it off, you won't be able to effectively interface with Windows Update until after it's been updated to SP2 or so. And there's a chance the drivers for networking won't even install before that.
In short, you'll have about as much installing Win9x. It'll be a huge pain in the ass.
Personally, I won't do a Windows install (w/o OEM restore disk) anymore unless I'm using unattended to do so. It's literal hours of hunting for drivers, waiting, rebooting, and conflicts otherwise.
Why don't you take a closer look at those "craters" on the moon. You sure they were made by asteroids or might there be a mechanism which is more consistent with the available evidence (contemporary scientific stasis be damned)?
Even if both halves remain in the same orbit, very close together, there would be a reduced gravitational pull from "the moon" - ie, the single point where the moon used to occupy. So we'd have two, diminished tidal forces (and likely no tides to speak of).
There's also the option that the diminished mass would result in a moon-half or two plummeting to earth under Earth's gravitational pull. Water or no, that'd make the experiments pretty moot.