Certainly sex and art provide a richer and more soul-fulfilling part of our lives, but what good are they if you're locked up in a fascist dictatorship because your forebears were too busy chasing sex and art to pay attention to the theft of their liberties?
I believe GP's point was that the more theories there are, the better - and I agree. Hell, let's chuck all the 'theories' in there, right down to the last turtle.
I'll explain:
While the Earth is a whole hell of a lot lot older than ~6,000 orbits, it does provide one benefit: You get to force students to think outside the box. Show them what crap science looks like. Towards that end, we really ought to force the little rugrats to think - long and hard; the earlier, the better. Meanwhile, maybe as a reaction, this will spur the school boards to bring back a few things that have been missing from public schools for way the hell too long: Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific Methodology, Critical Thinking, and (actual) Debate. I learned all of this in Catholic school around 6-8th grades, whereas most public high schools don't even bother (let alone at the lower grades). Basically, I want to see this Creationism stunt force the schools into teaching kids to question everything they're told, and more importantly, giving them the tools to actually do it.
Let's face it - nowadays, kids are basically taught to do what they're told in matters that are critical (e.g. civics, science), but to be overly-creative in superfluous matters (art, sex, etc). Maybe in a perverse way, this push for creationism, such as it is, will reverse the slide.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, it doesn't quite work out to be an automatic protection. IIRC, there are a few really big obstacles you have to hurdle, and I believe that you have to work with some US-recognized legal authority while you do it.
That said, my best hopes for Snowden is to have whoever replaces Obama will simply grant a presidential pardon and be done with it. Not holding my breath, though...
Keep that in mind next time you're in a salary negotiation with the real deal. This person is probably making serious personal sacrifice to be in a position where you can hire them.
Understood completely... and yes, oftentimes there are some real bullshit questions at an interview. On the other hand, to be fair, some of them are designed to gauge how well you fit into the company culture. As a candidate, I usually use those questions (and their reactions to my answers) as a cue to see how well I would fit in as well. That part is kinda vital to the success of both the employee and the company (I've worked at places which has some rather toxic cultures... sucks to say the least.)
As for the search? I guess the hardest part is finding a person who is a technical wizard who can fluently speak Stakeholder. Our company's org chart is rather flat for our size (trust me, I like that - only two human beings sit betwixt me and the CEO), so you not only have to know how to deliver the solution, but you don't get a filter between you and the people who want that solution. And yeah, we're willing to pay well above average around here for such people. Why? Because the act of hiring is a soul-grinding time-suck, and having to do it repeatedly would suck even more; I'd rather be tinkering with stuff.
You are missing part of the equation. Buy a house in Slicon Valley and when you come to retire, move to a region with low cost of living, taking with you a much larger cash pile from selling that much more expensive house. Leverage can produce wonderful effects (it can also bankrupt you as many people found out during the recession).
You could do that, but the housing market is just as subject to ups and downs as any other market, and on average stays reasonably close to inflation. Don't get me wrong - I've seen it firsthand as a younger man in Arkansas, where CA residents would sell their ungodly expensive house and retire in the Ozarks off of the proceeds. If you do it with a long enough time frame, it's totally doable. Folks would sell their paid-off house they bought 30 years ago (at $12-20k), and show up with $400k in their pockets from doing that.
I would also argue that start-ups tend to be in California because employment agreements that prevent you from moving to a competitor are not enforcable in CA.
I don't think this is unique, really. There are quite a few states that will laugh at a non-compete nowadays. For instance, Oregon will tell the previous company to piss off unless the non-compete agreement was made under some *very* narrow circumstances.
Even in states with somewhat-enforceable generic non-competes, that non-compete agreement usually becomes null and void the moment your U-Haul crosses the state line - if not in the legal sense, then in the practical sense. Unless you're a C-level executive (or held patents the old company relied on), what company is going to chase you to your new state of residence, spend a ton of money on an out-of-state lawyer, pray that your new job has the exact same job description as your old one, and then hope that some years-off result falls to their favor? Even if your new job is a at a direct competitor to the old company, it's more time and trouble than it's worth; even with a favorable (to the old company) outcome, by the time it's all said and done? The 'damage' is done as well.
Well, sort-of... until the labor market gets tight enough. If you're DevOps or a sysadmin with chops, the market is plenty tight enough in many regions nowadays.
(I know because I'm trying to hire a few right now... top-notch talent is damned hard to find once you weed out the inexperienced and the bullshitters.)
1) conspire all you want, but Silly Valley isn't the end-all/be-all - there are lots of other just-as-exciting places to work.
2) You can gain more from their reputation than they can save by keeping your wages lower. For example, I could go there, do my time for a couple of years at $HOUSEHOLD_NAME, maybe do that at two or more of them, then go back to my home region with one hell of an intimidating resume, plus experience and ideas that can be put to damned good use. This allows me to command a far more comfortable salary/cost-of-living arrangement when I get back home. (Note: raw dollar counts are a stupid metric - always count cost-of-living, but I digress...)
3) Because of the above (and more), It's Silly Valley that loses out more than I do. I'll explain: I have personally turned down point-blank job offers from a few of the aforementioned names in TFA, because I already have similar big names on my resume, and they're not willing to compensate enough for the area's insane cost-of-living. What I mean is, after cost-of-living adjustments, they'd have to pay me $180k/yr or more to match the same level of financial comfort that I enjoy where I am now. Meet or beat that comfort level, and I'll move. Otherwise, unless I have no real alternative? I'll turn it down with a smile.
4) Because of the above (and more), the smarter tech folks are similarly clued-in, and are therefore harder to find and get (let alone keep) in that area. This in turn means this: over time, those companies lose out on the best talent, but upstart companies elsewhere gain that talent instead, allowing the little guys to more effectively compete. Meanwhile, Silly Valley winds up with a majority of people who boil down to two types:kids with no experience who leave as soon as they wise-up, or burn-outs chasing their own eventual start-up on the side (which means the latter will be somewhat worthless to the corp who hires them, and are likely stealing the company's ideas along the way while those ideas are still embryonic.)
QED: The market eventually does even things out, if you let it. Just because it doesn't happen on an instant-gratification timescale doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, eh?
What you have is a myriad of proprietary networks instead.
Oh, you mean like how private networking began with ArcNet, AppleTalk, IPX/SPX, LANManager, SNA, NetBIOS, TCP/IP... and yet it all eventually coalesced around TCP/IP w/o a governmental mandate?...or were you thinking of a different example?;)
Hint: Islam (which is what the folks in KSA practice) doesn't read The Bible as you may know it.
They do have supplementary books to the Q'uran, such as the Tawrat (a radically copy of the Hebrew Torah), and the Injil (a highly abbreviated and bastardized version of the New Testament Gospels) - but they're not required reading, and are usually only used by Islamic scholars or the more liberal Muslims.
So no, don't expect to see, say, Song of Solomon in their scriptures.
The problem is that people who have a strong desire to censor the internet have no idea how it works, and aren't willing to acknowledge that just because they don't want to see it the rest of us are willing to be censored.
...and for once, I find myself grateful for incompetence. Here's hoping it remains that way until we can remove such intent from the world.
KSA has this little army of sorts known loosely as the "morality police" (forgot their real name, too lazy to hunt it down). They have lackeys on nearly every street corner or so of nearly every village. These chumps spend their time busily looking for someone who forgets to stop and show respect during the 5x-daily prayers, lets a curse-word slip, wears a Chador with the hemline a bit too high, looks a little too long at a girl, etc.
I'm pretty sure the king could spare a couple thousand of these soi-disant 'guardians' to maintain a simple blocklist...
The difference is that in the adult world, the basis is on work performance, competence, and factors that directly affect how a given candidate will (or won't) contribute to the team.
In a "high school clique", the criteria is based on crap like fashion choices, who you slept with (or didn't), and other superfluous garbage.
It's on a way different level. You quickly find out from others whether someone is lazy, incompetent, conniving, or suchlike. You find out in short order if someone is a dick. On the other hand, you also find out if someone who was nervous at an interview is in fact highly competent but not much of a people-person. You discover that someone who seems 'green' in a given area has a knack for learning quickly, and otherwise has excellent work-habits.
These are things you cannot know from asking the standard "STAR" interviewing techniques, because even the least bright among us is smart enough to know how to at least half-ass their way through such things.
The word "culture" in this context is in reference to corporate culture.
Corporate culture is an amorphous mixture of personality, motivation, lifestyle, methods, and work ethic. Work somewhere that matches yours, and you do very well. Work somewhere that does not, and you will either gain ulcers, ruin your career, and eventually get fired, laid-off, or worse.
Each company has a different approach to how they work. Part of it is due to the industry they're in, part of it is due to the job type, some of it by ideology, and all of it is driven by the leadership.
Take for instance Nike. They're headquartered in nearby Beaverton, OR. They have a work-hard/play-hard culture, and expect their employees to be the same. It is a very Type-A organization. I went after an opening they had, but the interview told me that I would be expected to dump any thought of a home life, quit smoking, and essentially compete with my co-workers for everything. Oh, and did I mention that the prevailing political ideology is strongly promulgated, and it is a diametric opposite of my own? Long-term prospects there would require me to essentially abandon what I am and who I am - unless I'm otherwise facing homelessness, no dice.
I've worked at such organizations before... they suck, and I don't fit into them, so I turned it down.
In tech circles, your name gets passed around a lot farther than you think. Even if you turn down that job, the fact that you were a dickhat will pass around - eventually to the jobs you do want. IF you don't fit into the culture, you won't fit into the job.
This is doubly true in medium and smaller tech markets (like here in PDX, for instance). We've been trying to hire sysadmins here with experience, and we've been able to weed out at least a couple of resumes so far based just on (bad) reputation.
While I and my cohorts don't know everyone in the biz here, we do know who we really want, and who we don't want.
Actually, that question, while itself lame, does serve a purpose if the job requires creativity. They want to watch your come up with something different, and do it outside your comfort zone. If the interviewers are sharp enough, it will also give them a clue as to how you would fit into their culture.
In my current job (originally as a sysadmin, now DevOps)? I went through a battery of technical grilling, then I was asked point-blank:
"Is there intelligent life in Outer Space"?
I answered yes, then asked to defend my position. I spent the next 45 minutes in back-and-forth debate involving my bringing out Drake's Equation, panspermia, extrapolation of odds, and many other related topics.
I got the job, and quickly discovered the reason why... the company is chock-full of full-on geeks, many of whom have a passion for their respective skills, and share many common cultural touchpoints, which allowed me to fit in perfectly.
It's stuff like that which you really cannot pick up on by asking dumb crap like "what is your greatest weakness."
...if only they made a version that works on an x86 OSX box - I unlimbered my old Mac-flavored install media, and no effing joy. Maybe I should get out and look, though.
(When it came out, I bought a version for Windows, for Linux (w/ the special metal case), and even for OSX - just so that I could play it on every computer I owned at the time.)
Slashdot Mirror
Err, recipes in and of themselves are not copyrightable.
Now collections of recipes are (e.g. cookbooks), but recipes themselves do not hold a copyright.
Agreed.
And (sadly) as soon as PostgreSQL gets the same featureset and broad industry acceptance...
First, art and sex are not superfluous
Compared to civics and STEM, they are.
Certainly sex and art provide a richer and more soul-fulfilling part of our lives, but what good are they if you're locked up in a fascist dictatorship because your forebears were too busy chasing sex and art to pay attention to the theft of their liberties?
I believe GP's point was that the more theories there are, the better - and I agree. Hell, let's chuck all the 'theories' in there, right down to the last turtle.
I'll explain:
While the Earth is a whole hell of a lot lot older than ~6,000 orbits, it does provide one benefit: You get to force students to think outside the box. Show them what crap science looks like. Towards that end, we really ought to force the little rugrats to think - long and hard; the earlier, the better. Meanwhile, maybe as a reaction, this will spur the school boards to bring back a few things that have been missing from public schools for way the hell too long: Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific Methodology, Critical Thinking, and (actual) Debate. I learned all of this in Catholic school around 6-8th grades, whereas most public high schools don't even bother (let alone at the lower grades). Basically, I want to see this Creationism stunt force the schools into teaching kids to question everything they're told, and more importantly, giving them the tools to actually do it.
Let's face it - nowadays, kids are basically taught to do what they're told in matters that are critical (e.g. civics, science), but to be overly-creative in superfluous matters (art, sex, etc). Maybe in a perverse way, this push for creationism, such as it is, will reverse the slide.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, it doesn't quite work out to be an automatic protection. IIRC, there are a few really big obstacles you have to hurdle, and I believe that you have to work with some US-recognized legal authority while you do it.
That said, my best hopes for Snowden is to have whoever replaces Obama will simply grant a presidential pardon and be done with it. Not holding my breath, though...
Anyone with an Internet connection is capable of 'enabling child porn'.
Fuck sakes - is CP now the backdoor to the whole US Constitution (not to mention the means by which anyone, anywhere, can be arrested for any reason?)
Someone needs to seriously put a curb on this.
Keep that in mind next time you're in a salary negotiation with the real deal. This person is probably making serious personal sacrifice to be in a position where you can hire them.
I know, because I was one until recently. ;)
Send it here - they seem to encourage it. ;)
Understood completely... and yes, oftentimes there are some real bullshit questions at an interview. On the other hand, to be fair, some of them are designed to gauge how well you fit into the company culture. As a candidate, I usually use those questions (and their reactions to my answers) as a cue to see how well I would fit in as well. That part is kinda vital to the success of both the employee and the company (I've worked at places which has some rather toxic cultures... sucks to say the least.)
As for the search? I guess the hardest part is finding a person who is a technical wizard who can fluently speak Stakeholder. Our company's org chart is rather flat for our size (trust me, I like that - only two human beings sit betwixt me and the CEO), so you not only have to know how to deliver the solution, but you don't get a filter between you and the people who want that solution. And yeah, we're willing to pay well above average around here for such people. Why? Because the act of hiring is a soul-grinding time-suck, and having to do it repeatedly would suck even more; I'd rather be tinkering with stuff.
Portland, OR.
You are missing part of the equation. Buy a house in Slicon Valley and when you come to retire, move to a region with low cost of living, taking with you a much larger cash pile from selling that much more expensive house. Leverage can produce wonderful effects (it can also bankrupt you as many people found out during the recession).
You could do that, but the housing market is just as subject to ups and downs as any other market, and on average stays reasonably close to inflation. Don't get me wrong - I've seen it firsthand as a younger man in Arkansas, where CA residents would sell their ungodly expensive house and retire in the Ozarks off of the proceeds. If you do it with a long enough time frame, it's totally doable. Folks would sell their paid-off house they bought 30 years ago (at $12-20k), and show up with $400k in their pockets from doing that.
I would also argue that start-ups tend to be in California because employment agreements that prevent you from moving to a competitor are not enforcable in CA.
I don't think this is unique, really. There are quite a few states that will laugh at a non-compete nowadays. For instance, Oregon will tell the previous company to piss off unless the non-compete agreement was made under some *very* narrow circumstances.
Even in states with somewhat-enforceable generic non-competes, that non-compete agreement usually becomes null and void the moment your U-Haul crosses the state line - if not in the legal sense, then in the practical sense. Unless you're a C-level executive (or held patents the old company relied on), what company is going to chase you to your new state of residence, spend a ton of money on an out-of-state lawyer, pray that your new job has the exact same job description as your old one, and then hope that some years-off result falls to their favor? Even if your new job is a at a direct competitor to the old company, it's more time and trouble than it's worth; even with a favorable (to the old company) outcome, by the time it's all said and done? The 'damage' is done as well.
Well, sort-of... until the labor market gets tight enough. If you're DevOps or a sysadmin with chops, the market is plenty tight enough in many regions nowadays.
(I know because I'm trying to hire a few right now... top-notch talent is damned hard to find once you weed out the inexperienced and the bullshitters.)
Nice troll, but I'll have fun with it...
1) conspire all you want, but Silly Valley isn't the end-all/be-all - there are lots of other just-as-exciting places to work.
2) You can gain more from their reputation than they can save by keeping your wages lower. For example, I could go there, do my time for a couple of years at $HOUSEHOLD_NAME, maybe do that at two or more of them, then go back to my home region with one hell of an intimidating resume, plus experience and ideas that can be put to damned good use. This allows me to command a far more comfortable salary/cost-of-living arrangement when I get back home. (Note: raw dollar counts are a stupid metric - always count cost-of-living, but I digress...)
3) Because of the above (and more), It's Silly Valley that loses out more than I do. I'll explain: I have personally turned down point-blank job offers from a few of the aforementioned names in TFA, because I already have similar big names on my resume, and they're not willing to compensate enough for the area's insane cost-of-living. What I mean is, after cost-of-living adjustments, they'd have to pay me $180k/yr or more to match the same level of financial comfort that I enjoy where I am now. Meet or beat that comfort level, and I'll move. Otherwise, unless I have no real alternative? I'll turn it down with a smile.
4) Because of the above (and more), the smarter tech folks are similarly clued-in, and are therefore harder to find and get (let alone keep) in that area. This in turn means this: over time, those companies lose out on the best talent, but upstart companies elsewhere gain that talent instead, allowing the little guys to more effectively compete. Meanwhile, Silly Valley winds up with a majority of people who boil down to two types:kids with no experience who leave as soon as they wise-up, or burn-outs chasing their own eventual start-up on the side (which means the latter will be somewhat worthless to the corp who hires them, and are likely stealing the company's ideas along the way while those ideas are still embryonic.)
QED: The market eventually does even things out, if you let it. Just because it doesn't happen on an instant-gratification timescale doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, eh?
What you have is a myriad of proprietary networks instead.
Oh, you mean like how private networking began with ArcNet, AppleTalk, IPX/SPX, LANManager, SNA, NetBIOS, TCP/IP... and yet it all eventually coalesced around TCP/IP w/o a governmental mandate? ...or were you thinking of a different example? ;)
Hint: Islam (which is what the folks in KSA practice) doesn't read The Bible as you may know it.
They do have supplementary books to the Q'uran, such as the Tawrat (a radically copy of the Hebrew Torah), and the Injil (a highly abbreviated and bastardized version of the New Testament Gospels) - but they're not required reading, and are usually only used by Islamic scholars or the more liberal Muslims.
So no, don't expect to see, say, Song of Solomon in their scriptures.
The problem is that people who have a strong desire to censor the internet have no idea how it works, and aren't willing to acknowledge that just because they don't want to see it the rest of us are willing to be censored.
...and for once, I find myself grateful for incompetence. Here's hoping it remains that way until we can remove such intent from the world.
As sibling post said...
KSA has this little army of sorts known loosely as the "morality police" (forgot their real name, too lazy to hunt it down). They have lackeys on nearly every street corner or so of nearly every village. These chumps spend their time busily looking for someone who forgets to stop and show respect during the 5x-daily prayers, lets a curse-word slip, wears a Chador with the hemline a bit too high, looks a little too long at a girl, etc.
I'm pretty sure the king could spare a couple thousand of these soi-disant 'guardians' to maintain a simple blocklist...
The difference is that in the adult world, the basis is on work performance, competence, and factors that directly affect how a given candidate will (or won't) contribute to the team.
In a "high school clique", the criteria is based on crap like fashion choices, who you slept with (or didn't), and other superfluous garbage.
That's what I meant by a way different level.
It's on a way different level. You quickly find out from others whether someone is lazy, incompetent, conniving, or suchlike. You find out in short order if someone is a dick. On the other hand, you also find out if someone who was nervous at an interview is in fact highly competent but not much of a people-person. You discover that someone who seems 'green' in a given area has a knack for learning quickly, and otherwise has excellent work-habits.
These are things you cannot know from asking the standard "STAR" interviewing techniques, because even the least bright among us is smart enough to know how to at least half-ass their way through such things.
The word "culture" in this context is in reference to corporate culture.
Corporate culture is an amorphous mixture of personality, motivation, lifestyle, methods, and work ethic. Work somewhere that matches yours, and you do very well. Work somewhere that does not, and you will either gain ulcers, ruin your career, and eventually get fired, laid-off, or worse.
Each company has a different approach to how they work. Part of it is due to the industry they're in, part of it is due to the job type, some of it by ideology, and all of it is driven by the leadership.
Take for instance Nike. They're headquartered in nearby Beaverton, OR. They have a work-hard/play-hard culture, and expect their employees to be the same. It is a very Type-A organization. I went after an opening they had, but the interview told me that I would be expected to dump any thought of a home life, quit smoking, and essentially compete with my co-workers for everything. Oh, and did I mention that the prevailing political ideology is strongly promulgated, and it is a diametric opposite of my own? Long-term prospects there would require me to essentially abandon what I am and who I am - unless I'm otherwise facing homelessness, no dice.
I've worked at such organizations before... they suck, and I don't fit into them, so I turned it down.
*That* is what I mean by culture.
This, right here.
In tech circles, your name gets passed around a lot farther than you think. Even if you turn down that job, the fact that you were a dickhat will pass around - eventually to the jobs you do want. IF you don't fit into the culture, you won't fit into the job.
This is doubly true in medium and smaller tech markets (like here in PDX, for instance). We've been trying to hire sysadmins here with experience, and we've been able to weed out at least a couple of resumes so far based just on (bad) reputation.
While I and my cohorts don't know everyone in the biz here, we do know who we really want, and who we don't want.
Actually, that question, while itself lame, does serve a purpose if the job requires creativity. They want to watch your come up with something different, and do it outside your comfort zone. If the interviewers are sharp enough, it will also give them a clue as to how you would fit into their culture.
In my current job (originally as a sysadmin, now DevOps)? I went through a battery of technical grilling, then I was asked point-blank:
"Is there intelligent life in Outer Space"?
I answered yes, then asked to defend my position. I spent the next 45 minutes in back-and-forth debate involving my bringing out Drake's Equation, panspermia, extrapolation of odds, and many other related topics.
I got the job, and quickly discovered the reason why... the company is chock-full of full-on geeks, many of whom have a passion for their respective skills, and share many common cultural touchpoints, which allowed me to fit in perfectly.
It's stuff like that which you really cannot pick up on by asking dumb crap like "what is your greatest weakness."
-Good. And do you have any weaknesses?
-I'm a liar.
Welcome to Marketing - you'll be a very valuable addition to the team!
Well, good news is, if I'm willing to give my old OSX install a quick lobotomy, it looks doable. :)
...if only they made a version that works on an x86 OSX box - I unlimbered my old Mac-flavored install media, and no effing joy. Maybe I should get out and look, though.
(When it came out, I bought a version for Windows, for Linux (w/ the special metal case), and even for OSX - just so that I could play it on every computer I owned at the time.)