"I am not saying that better education makes for better people" - that was a direct quote, you DID type that, go back and check.
As far as fiscal policy, I'd like to ask those people who think Obama's plan is good only one question, "How much credit card debt are you carrying, and have you taken personal responsibility for getting rid of it at least two years ago now?"
If not, the person simply isn't qualified to judge "fiscal policy" because they don't even have one of their own. (Or if they do have a policy of carrying high balances of unsecured debt, it's so far against my own personal views on finance and most experts too, that I am shocked.)
"But don't decide that Obama is less of a human being because he's well educated." Fine. In the same regard, don't give him too much credit for it. That was all I was saying.
As far as the complexity of policies... the reason many of them are complex is that NEITHER party actually has a WRITTEN one. Find me a document called "U.S. Foreign Policy" that doesn't change every year. We do not have a consistent foreign policy.
Neither Obama nor McCain are bad people, it's the policies behind both of them -- and moreso with Obama -- that must be judged. As for VP's, I'll take Palin over Biden any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Biden is the anchor chain around Obama's neck, weighing Obama down to the old-school (multi-millionaire) Democrats who are out of touch with the new Democrats (people who feel guilty about making money in their 30's and want to save everyone, even people living in our country illegally). They're dying for an pseudo-intellectual icon to follow right now... smart 30-something people who were kept under the thumb of the baby-boomers, now find competition in general to be "uncivilized" and call for things like "level playing fields" and what-not, instead of stepping up and creating the capital and the world they want to have.
It's a very gutless move, voting for Obama to take their money and hand it to everyone... go build capital and hand it out yourself, wimps! They think there's no risk in making everyone pay, instead of putting their own money where their mouths are. Want to fight medical bills being too high? Pay someone else's.
Don't play games with 18th Century failed economic systems. We had enough of Lenin's ghost this week with the government bailouts, brought on 100% by people taking out loans -- that they simply COULD NOT AFFORD.
Being stupid with finance, leads to asking the government to take it from you and take care of you.
ANY American who can come up with $4000 a year can still be a millionaire, if they start young. But young people leave 12-18 years of "education" without a clue about how compound interest works, the rule of 72's, anything financial.
The day is coming where the tax burden won't allow it, if Obama is elected with a Democratic Congress in place.
Teach people EARLY how to manage their money, even if they have none. That should be the mantra of BOTH parties RIGHT NOW.
If 50% or more of the people (disregarding the electoral college for a minute) really are so enthralled with other's futures more than their own, that's just odd. And if they believe their "tax refund" under Obama won't be eaten alive three-fold... they're nuts.
The people that control the Party are going to slam as many taxes through in as many creative ways possible as they can think of, as soon as a Democrat hits the White House. Then they'll point at the clockwork-like 10 year economic cycle climbing back up, and claim it was all their doing -- think those people want the average Joe to REALLY learn how markets work? Nah... it keeps them in power over them.
Come to us little children, we will save you. All we ask is just a LITTLE more in taxes.
I think I've heard similar offers on Sunday afternoon pseudo-talk-shows that want to sell me things. None of which are good purchases or long-term investments.
On the blanket statement: Okay, fine. I've never met anyone with a pedigree who wasn't a schumuck who thought their you-know-what didn't stink, and that colors my judgement of the whole group. I have no problems "owning" that.
On your next point, harder classes do not mean "better people". People are more than their education. Some of the worst people in the world as far as compassion, "common sense", or any other of the myriad of buckets we try to put people into, are highly educated. Your argument still doesn't hold true to what I'm talking about. Let's try a simplistic analogy to get the point across: "Would you want the guy in a foxhole with you during battle?" That particular analogy isn't broad enough for the concept I'm trying to convey here, but your narrow viewpoint of education=qualification doesn't hold water when looking at the bigger picture of a person's VALUE a human being. You dismiss Palin because of education, you'd be making a mistake. Lots of normal people "out here" won't do that. You give Obama more "credit" as a human because of education, you'd also be making a mistake. Lots of people "out here" won't miss that one either. Many people's instincts will be to trust a hard-working mother of five over a schmuck that never once wrote a SINGLE article for the Law Review he headed up, and can't seem to figure out which career he wanted -- to be a radical religious leader in a racist church, or a "everyman's" politician. Her career is pretty straight-forward -- his is an utter mess. And this from a "better educated" person who knew better the risks of getting involved with wackos, and how it can mess with your social standing.
As far as impressions on schools. They're my own. I own them, and I haven't wavered from them. You don't LIKE them, but that doesn't mean you can belittle my OPINON on them. You can hand-wave it away, but a lot of people out there agree with me. Ask someone who's NOT an intellectual how much they trust Harvard graduates. Or MIT graduates. Or -- if they even know who they are, RPI graduates. Or add in Princeton, and Yale and all the rest. Yale gave Bush (who's obviously a complete idiot with a multitude of connections and a lot of money) a lot of passing grades (even if they were "C"'s), and they guy can barely speak the English language. I dread to think of whether or not he can WRITE above a 9th grade level. That in and of itself is a damning piece of evidence for your continual repetition that Ivy League schools pump out "more qualified" and/or "better people". They don't. There's still a bell curve, and it still applies to Ivy League schools. And they still offer classes designed to allow idiots to pass -- not to stereotype, but we all know the football players aren't GENERALLY taking advanced physics or engineering regimens.
So your argument STILL holds no water that education at a top notch school means that you're somehow better "qualified" to lead people. Leaders need to really relate to the people they're serving, and Obama and I aren't ever going to "relate". Same thing with Biden. They'll never live anything like my life. Palin on the other hand, appeals to a lot of people who still believe that ANYONE can be President, Vice-President, whatever... without the need for an expensive piece of sheepskin, family or other political ties, etc. Given the right circumstances, the American people want to believe that ANYONE can be called upon to serve, and I think they'll vote to make sure that dream happens. That same vote is also a veiled threat, or "back in your face" or however you want to look at it, at the overly-intellectual who believe intelligence/education is the ONLY end to a means. Have you ever talked to a farmer who can accurately predict weather by looking at the sky without any formal meteorology training, and who consistently beats the local meteorologists? I have. And there's millions of that type of folk in our country. They get tired of being talked down to by the meritocracy.
No I didn't say the ALL are that way, I said I've never MET anyone with a pedigree who didn't act utterly arrogant.
There probably are SOME, but the MAJORITY... are arrogant as hell, and pretty bad PEOPLE at their core. They may be "qualified" but they're assholes who look down their noses at the average person, and assholes with arrogance aren't who I want running the country.
Hey, there's a good slogan for the Obama/Biden campaign: "Intellectual Assholes with Arrogance"
As far as non-arrogant pedigreed people, I bet the non-arrogant ones are the ones who worked damn hard to even pay to go to the schools. Obama had a scholarship, right?
Comparatively, and to be fair, there ARE some pedigrees worth paying for, and Harvard is one of them if you're out to be "qualified" and make money... or run for President. Because people THINK the pedigree means something qualitative. It doesn't. It's all about class and status, first -- education second, once you hit the Ivy League.
On the contrary, there are some good PEOPLE in some DIFFERENT schools that are pedigree mills, too.
MIT grads tend to run about 50/50. Either they're pompous asses who believe they're here to save the world with technology, or they're highly intelligent inquisitive folks who bring a lot to the table.
Also, comparatively I've met more than my fair share of RPI grads over the years, and they have both the mega-arrogance AND the skillset, so you put up with it. (THAT is a school that cranks out some brilliant real-world engineers, year after year after year.)
So again, I point out -- I'm going off of personal experience with grads here. Beyond Harvard, MIT, and RPI... haven't seen too many other "pedigreed" folks hanging around out here in the West. (Colorado) We're boring to them, and the few that make it here are division heads wishing they could move back to the East coast. A few want to go West, they usually work in Tech and miss Silicon Valley.
Only the cream of the crop move here for OTHER reasons, like being avid every-weekend skiiers, or similar. Otherwise, they just buy overly-expensive vacation homes in places like Aspen, Vail and "Breck" (everyone here calls it Breckenridge) and dump money into the mountain town economy, while making it impossible for locals to afford second homes up there. Whatever. That's just what happens when "Money Gone Wild" shows up in Western states.
Judging by your reply, you probably are one of these pedigreed people? Or are you one of those who truly believes that the pedigree means someone is worth -- at their core -- being President, more than someone else?
If not - why do you think "better schools really do turn out more qualified people"? That's discrimination right there, bud.
Maybe you're right... since "qualified" isn't objective in virtually any job role these days.
Any idiot from Harvard can run a company into the ground just as fast as an idiot from a State no-name school. None of these people in leadership positions really end up held accountable at the end of the day. Not Democrats, not Republicans.
It's just that the Harvard guy has better contacts, can get the job in the first place, and the job comes with the perk of a golden parachute, and can get another one. Run any old corporation through the bankruptcy carwash, bud... they'll give you another one to run, and say you are a "great leader" who had to have a "learning experience".
Wheee... no wonder they end up thinking the rest of the world works at their whim.
Anyway... Palin "driving out" people and being arrogant... were the people EFFECTIVE at their jobs that she drove out? I don't care their background, their whatever... did they do their jobs?
Plus, any Party and any leader does that... it's just the usual changing of the guard in politics.
Palin ended up their leader somehow, and I doubt the "great" folks working there prior OR AFTER she did the personnel swaps would pay a single bit of attention to what she wanted to
Plan ahead for important items -- most of which are about things that won't happen for more than 24 hours, and put them on an internal company website.
The only "time sensitive" things are often IT announcements about outages, etc... and even most of those go in the bit-bucket.
I typically don't give a crap if e-mail isn't working in Timbuktu. Only IT and the users there do. I usually DO care if the outage is going to take an extended period of time, like into the next day.
Since that's rare... I'm running out of things that might be "time sensitive" enough to even warrant e-mail notification.
Generally most "company-wide" announcements really don't need to be, anyway.
If your inbox is somehow associated with direct customer support requests, you do have to respond when it arrives.
Thus, you're "watching" the alert boxes and/or the client all the time, and then the usual "noise" e-mails from co-workers and of course, the boss, get more "attention" than they should.
Yeah, and interestingly the "rate limiting" Comcast was doing was ultimately a lot more fair than the caps they're now forced to impose on residential customers.
But the whiners pushed it.
Thankfully, I have a commercial account with them. No caps. Works for me.
When I see a University "pedigree" I instantly know it also comes with an incredible level of arrogance. "Pedigreed" students have access to not only top-notch learning, but also start building connections via networking, and other "intangible" benefits from going to good schools, and one of the inevitable things that happens is they start to feel "anointed" or perhaps "entitled".
Never met a "pedigreed" person who wasn't also at least an order of magnitude more arrogant than someone who didn't have the "pedigree", even the humblest ones.
I'll pass on putting "good college background" up as a good reason to vote for someone. As someone who's attended "state schools" (which you apparently look down your nose at), I'm regularly offended by the arrogance of supposedly smarter people who I've watched make as many mistakes as others, including Harvard MBAs running businesses into the ground, etc etc etc...
You can keep the "pedigree" if you think it's worth something. Seeing someone "make it" from a humble State school background and a Communications degree, makes me feel better about all the times I've watched "pedigreed" people hurt others with their arrogance and greed.
Most people have made up their minds before the mud slinging starts. The mud slinging is just a way to both handle "just in case" investigations about background, and "how will my candidate handle adversity", in most people's minds.
Very few people change their minds because of mud-slinging. Unless of course, you have (as the previous replier pointed out) something big like Swift Boats that quickly and deeply emotionally moves a very LARGE group of voters.
Ahh.. you were doing good right up until that "oil being stolen" part. The oil is being purchased -- whether it's at fair market value, is debatable -- but money is changing hands.
Also, multiple countries are protecting ABOT, the offshore terminal that 95% of Iraq's oil passes through. Iraq has three small boats (I wouldn't call them warships) that assist, but they're not in a position to defend the terminal themselves. Some type of payment for this protection is needed or more than 90% of the country's income goes poof.
Sure would be nice if all these whiners who want the "American Dream" back -- hadn't spent more money than they MADE and signed contracts on the dotted line for these mortgages...
They've apparently decided that the American Dream included safety nets to save your ass if you screw up, financially. Not sure where that came in, but certainly it wasn't the original American Dream.
Now I'll admit that a FEW people were duped into signing things they didn't understand, but the majority of these people (almost 1 in 10 Americans!) already behind on their mortgages certainly weren't that stupid, were they?
Maybe they were. Who the fuck didn't understand, "Spend less than you make"?! And why is the public sentiment now to spread this pain they caused themselves around to EVERYONE? Fuck the investors. They took a risk.
Every damn prospectus says, "You might not get your money back." It doesn't say, "If we fuck this up really badly, you'll vote to have everyone else cover your ass(ets)."
Now the same entitlement/no responsibility crowd wants nationalized health care and think they deserve it. Great.
What about after that? What else can I pay for for your dumb asses?
Those of us who didn't overspend and managed our money correctly and purchased mortgages within our means... get to pay for these idiots and also put up with their politics this fall?
Frightening stuff, really -- a world with no personal consequences and no personal gain. Sign the bad mortgage, housing prices go in the shitter and interest rates go up, you lose. Go directly to bankruptcy, do not pass go.
What kind of idiot signed for a variable rate mortgage when they were down at 3% and thought that it WOULDN'T GO UP?! Christ, I'm only in my mid-30's and remember 12% mortgages my parents were paying in the 80's. No one "rescued" them with tax money.
Those voting Obama are voting for no responsibility and no accountability of individuals... sadly.
They'll probably get it too, unless the McCain folks have a plan that will shake the "Change for change's sake" crowds back to fiscal reality.
The only thing voting Obama guarantees is higher taxes, the rest of the stuff in his speech is wishing for a pony. Grow up, folks.
Ted Kennedy and gang own Obama's balls the second he hits office and have a majority in the Congress. Tax and spend, here we come... thanks a lot, CHILDREN.
Want a health plan that works? Remove limits on tax-free health-only healthcare savings accounts, tell companies to release everyone from group plans, and put the money (compete) into their HSA. Allow individuals to also contribute to their HSA if they like.
This will get the medical BILLS into the hands of the people getting "serviced" by the medical industry. And people will start showing hospitals where they can shove those $40 Tylenol pills.
Additionally the account would be owned by the EMPLOYEE and STAY WITH THEM in-between companies or as they switched or stopped employment altogether.
The problem with today's system is that the costs are HIDDEN from the end-user. Would the mom who has coverage under today's system (employer chosen, mostly paid for by employer with a "co-pay" only for services rendered) panic and run the baby with a sniffle to the emergency room every month? Hell no... not if she had to PAY for it out of her HSA.
Her company could put thousands of dollars into it, and she could AFFORD to go at any time, but knowing what it really COSTS and wanting to SAVE that money in the account for a medical "rainy day" would stop most of that crap...
Smaller companies that can't afford today to get full medical for their employees could compete by saying they could give $1000, or $2000 year into the employee's self-directed HSA account versus ZERO today.
Make the system COMPETITIVE and it'll work. Give it to government to run and it'll cost FAR MORE than it does today, with lower quality.
Ask anyone who actually uses it if Medicare or Medicaid ar
In the real world, the number of computer user versus the ones the FBI are actually interested in is a HUGE ratio.
All these geeks with "protected" hard drives, and no FBI stomping in the door to stop them drooling Cheeto juice while watching pirated copies of the Matrix.
They must be bummed that no one cares.
Re:Protected from Competition
on
Should IT Unionize?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Easily fixed by going to a "loser pays" court system.
Well, just to play devil's advocate here, the "software industry" with it's "competition" isn't exactly cranking out work that is of a quality level worth telling anyone about.
Quality is not a department, it's an attitude about how to do your work. More coders should learn that.
Outsourcing has proven that the end-customer doesn't care, however. The customers are so used to bugs, they pre-build whole bureaucracies and test labs and hire staff to find them pre-production.
It's a sad state of affairs, and also a dangerous time now to start caring about quality because someone else can do any task cheaper and sloppier, and the customers have forgotten what a software project that worked right the first time out, and never had to be modified until new features were needed -- is even like.
I won't say ANY system was ever THAT good, but there's been a slow treacherous decline into "we'll just fix it in the next release" across the board.
Incredibly smart posting. Linux at our company has had similar problems in deployment (and at previous employers) on servers because of "packaging wackiness" by [insert favorite distro of the day here].
It's like this... you either buy a commercial OS and live with its problems, or you "buy" something open-source and live with its problems.
Those that say *most* companies have the time to crack open the source on open-source things and fix them, are smoking something. We don't. We have a a business to run.
The real hard-core underlying issue here is that software written to work right the first time is exceedingly rare. It's a quality thing. Problem is, if you write it that way to start with, people buy it ONCE and it's over.
Software as a business will always have this inherent problem. Software as part of a bigger solution, doesn't. But it's hard to move to the latter model.
Ask any Muslim what happened to the 9/11 terrorists and get back to us on that, okay?
They'll ALL say they went to heaven, I promise. Even the "moderate" ones who "don't believe in violence".
If you think there's such a thing as a "non-radical" Muslim, please find one who'll post here and say the 9/11 terrorists went to hell. Good luck with that.
Lock the door until they take hostages. Then what? Knowing what we know now, leave it closed. Back then? Tough to say.
Before anyone knew they'd be bold enough to fly planes into buildings, that door had no reason to be seriously bolted. Let's not make up a utopia where people knew it was coming, okay?
Otherwise you trivialize the decisions that would (and did) have to be made that day. Those on board Flight 93 figured it out and paid dearly -- of their own choice.
All you've pointed out is that hindsight is 20/20. Big fat duh, to you sir. Congrats. It's not a good argument for the current thread you're replying to. Try again.
/me likes all the hand-waving to let Obama and his cronies off the hook when they had a MAJORITY in the Senate and could have stopped the Bush administration's antics.
Guess who's in big telco's pocketses? Ohh... yeah... everyone.
Nice try. Obama and his friends are JUST as sleazy as McCain in this regard.
Slashdot Mirror
"I am not saying that better education makes for better people" - that was a direct quote, you DID type that, go back and check.
As far as fiscal policy, I'd like to ask those people who think Obama's plan is good only one question, "How much credit card debt are you carrying, and have you taken personal responsibility for getting rid of it at least two years ago now?"
If not, the person simply isn't qualified to judge "fiscal policy" because they don't even have one of their own. (Or if they do have a policy of carrying high balances of unsecured debt, it's so far against my own personal views on finance and most experts too, that I am shocked.)
"But don't decide that Obama is less of a human being because he's well educated." Fine. In the same regard, don't give him too much credit for it. That was all I was saying.
As far as the complexity of policies... the reason many of them are complex is that NEITHER party actually has a WRITTEN one. Find me a document called "U.S. Foreign Policy" that doesn't change every year. We do not have a consistent foreign policy.
Neither Obama nor McCain are bad people, it's the policies behind both of them -- and moreso with Obama -- that must be judged. As for VP's, I'll take Palin over Biden any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Biden is the anchor chain around Obama's neck, weighing Obama down to the old-school (multi-millionaire) Democrats who are out of touch with the new Democrats (people who feel guilty about making money in their 30's and want to save everyone, even people living in our country illegally). They're dying for an pseudo-intellectual icon to follow right now... smart 30-something people who were kept under the thumb of the baby-boomers, now find competition in general to be "uncivilized" and call for things like "level playing fields" and what-not, instead of stepping up and creating the capital and the world they want to have.
It's a very gutless move, voting for Obama to take their money and hand it to everyone... go build capital and hand it out yourself, wimps! They think there's no risk in making everyone pay, instead of putting their own money where their mouths are. Want to fight medical bills being too high? Pay someone else's.
Don't play games with 18th Century failed economic systems. We had enough of Lenin's ghost this week with the government bailouts, brought on 100% by people taking out loans -- that they simply COULD NOT AFFORD.
Being stupid with finance, leads to asking the government to take it from you and take care of you.
ANY American who can come up with $4000 a year can still be a millionaire, if they start young. But young people leave 12-18 years of "education" without a clue about how compound interest works, the rule of 72's, anything financial.
The day is coming where the tax burden won't allow it, if Obama is elected with a Democratic Congress in place.
Teach people EARLY how to manage their money, even if they have none. That should be the mantra of BOTH parties RIGHT NOW.
If 50% or more of the people (disregarding the electoral college for a minute) really are so enthralled with other's futures more than their own, that's just odd. And if they believe their "tax refund" under Obama won't be eaten alive three-fold... they're nuts.
The people that control the Party are going to slam as many taxes through in as many creative ways possible as they can think of, as soon as a Democrat hits the White House. Then they'll point at the clockwork-like 10 year economic cycle climbing back up, and claim it was all their doing -- think those people want the average Joe to REALLY learn how markets work? Nah... it keeps them in power over them.
Come to us little children, we will save you. All we ask is just a LITTLE more in taxes.
I think I've heard similar offers on Sunday afternoon pseudo-talk-shows that want to sell me things. None of which are good purchases or long-term investments.
Ask any Obama fan:
D
On the blanket statement: Okay, fine. I've never met anyone with a pedigree who wasn't a schumuck who thought their you-know-what didn't stink, and that colors my judgement of the whole group. I have no problems "owning" that.
On your next point, harder classes do not mean "better people". People are more than their education. Some of the worst people in the world as far as compassion, "common sense", or any other of the myriad of buckets we try to put people into, are highly educated. Your argument still doesn't hold true to what I'm talking about. Let's try a simplistic analogy to get the point across: "Would you want the guy in a foxhole with you during battle?" That particular analogy isn't broad enough for the concept I'm trying to convey here, but your narrow viewpoint of education=qualification doesn't hold water when looking at the bigger picture of a person's VALUE a human being. You dismiss Palin because of education, you'd be making a mistake. Lots of normal people "out here" won't do that. You give Obama more "credit" as a human because of education, you'd also be making a mistake. Lots of people "out here" won't miss that one either. Many people's instincts will be to trust a hard-working mother of five over a schmuck that never once wrote a SINGLE article for the Law Review he headed up, and can't seem to figure out which career he wanted -- to be a radical religious leader in a racist church, or a "everyman's" politician. Her career is pretty straight-forward -- his is an utter mess. And this from a "better educated" person who knew better the risks of getting involved with wackos, and how it can mess with your social standing.
As far as impressions on schools. They're my own. I own them, and I haven't wavered from them. You don't LIKE them, but that doesn't mean you can belittle my OPINON on them. You can hand-wave it away, but a lot of people out there agree with me. Ask someone who's NOT an intellectual how much they trust Harvard graduates. Or MIT graduates. Or -- if they even know who they are, RPI graduates. Or add in Princeton, and Yale and all the rest. Yale gave Bush (who's obviously a complete idiot with a multitude of connections and a lot of money) a lot of passing grades (even if they were "C"'s), and they guy can barely speak the English language. I dread to think of whether or not he can WRITE above a 9th grade level. That in and of itself is a damning piece of evidence for your continual repetition that Ivy League schools pump out "more qualified" and/or "better people". They don't. There's still a bell curve, and it still applies to Ivy League schools. And they still offer classes designed to allow idiots to pass -- not to stereotype, but we all know the football players aren't GENERALLY taking advanced physics or engineering regimens.
So your argument STILL holds no water that education at a top notch school means that you're somehow better "qualified" to lead people. Leaders need to really relate to the people they're serving, and Obama and I aren't ever going to "relate". Same thing with Biden. They'll never live anything like my life. Palin on the other hand, appeals to a lot of people who still believe that ANYONE can be President, Vice-President, whatever... without the need for an expensive piece of sheepskin, family or other political ties, etc. Given the right circumstances, the American people want to believe that ANYONE can be called upon to serve, and I think they'll vote to make sure that dream happens. That same vote is also a veiled threat, or "back in your face" or however you want to look at it, at the overly-intellectual who believe intelligence/education is the ONLY end to a means. Have you ever talked to a farmer who can accurately predict weather by looking at the sky without any formal meteorology training, and who consistently beats the local meteorologists? I have. And there's millions of that type of folk in our country. They get tired of being talked down to by the meritocracy.
Warren Buffett is an
No I didn't say the ALL are that way, I said I've never MET anyone with a pedigree who didn't act utterly arrogant.
There probably are SOME, but the MAJORITY... are arrogant as hell, and pretty bad PEOPLE at their core. They may be "qualified" but they're assholes who look down their noses at the average person, and assholes with arrogance aren't who I want running the country.
Hey, there's a good slogan for the Obama/Biden campaign: "Intellectual Assholes with Arrogance"
As far as non-arrogant pedigreed people, I bet the non-arrogant ones are the ones who worked damn hard to even pay to go to the schools. Obama had a scholarship, right?
Comparatively, and to be fair, there ARE some pedigrees worth paying for, and Harvard is one of them if you're out to be "qualified" and make money... or run for President. Because people THINK the pedigree means something qualitative. It doesn't. It's all about class and status, first -- education second, once you hit the Ivy League.
On the contrary, there are some good PEOPLE in some DIFFERENT schools that are pedigree mills, too.
MIT grads tend to run about 50/50. Either they're pompous asses who believe they're here to save the world with technology, or they're highly intelligent inquisitive folks who bring a lot to the table.
Also, comparatively I've met more than my fair share of RPI grads over the years, and they have both the mega-arrogance AND the skillset, so you put up with it. (THAT is a school that cranks out some brilliant real-world engineers, year after year after year.)
So again, I point out -- I'm going off of personal experience with grads here. Beyond Harvard, MIT, and RPI... haven't seen too many other "pedigreed" folks hanging around out here in the West. (Colorado) We're boring to them, and the few that make it here are division heads wishing they could move back to the East coast. A few want to go West, they usually work in Tech and miss Silicon Valley.
Only the cream of the crop move here for OTHER reasons, like being avid every-weekend skiiers, or similar. Otherwise, they just buy overly-expensive vacation homes in places like Aspen, Vail and "Breck" (everyone here calls it Breckenridge) and dump money into the mountain town economy, while making it impossible for locals to afford second homes up there. Whatever. That's just what happens when "Money Gone Wild" shows up in Western states.
Judging by your reply, you probably are one of these pedigreed people? Or are you one of those who truly believes that the pedigree means someone is worth -- at their core -- being President, more than someone else?
If not - why do you think "better schools really do turn out more qualified people"? That's discrimination right there, bud.
Maybe you're right... since "qualified" isn't objective in virtually any job role these days.
Any idiot from Harvard can run a company into the ground just as fast as an idiot from a State no-name school. None of these people in leadership positions really end up held accountable at the end of the day. Not Democrats, not Republicans.
It's just that the Harvard guy has better contacts, can get the job in the first place, and the job comes with the perk of a golden parachute, and can get another one. Run any old corporation through the bankruptcy carwash, bud... they'll give you another one to run, and say you are a "great leader" who had to have a "learning experience".
Wheee... no wonder they end up thinking the rest of the world works at their whim.
Anyway... Palin "driving out" people and being arrogant... were the people EFFECTIVE at their jobs that she drove out? I don't care their background, their whatever... did they do their jobs?
Plus, any Party and any leader does that... it's just the usual changing of the guard in politics.
Palin ended up their leader somehow, and I doubt the "great" folks working there prior OR AFTER she did the personnel swaps would pay a single bit of attention to what she wanted to
Unfortunately, not at my company. They've not implemented anything that intelligent yet, sadly.
I use client-side sorting techniques to address the problem, but it's not perfect.
Plan ahead for important items -- most of which are about things that won't happen for more than 24 hours, and put them on an internal company website.
The only "time sensitive" things are often IT announcements about outages, etc... and even most of those go in the bit-bucket.
I typically don't give a crap if e-mail isn't working in Timbuktu. Only IT and the users there do. I usually DO care if the outage is going to take an extended period of time, like into the next day.
Since that's rare... I'm running out of things that might be "time sensitive" enough to even warrant e-mail notification.
Generally most "company-wide" announcements really don't need to be, anyway.
If your inbox is somehow associated with direct customer support requests, you do have to respond when it arrives.
Thus, you're "watching" the alert boxes and/or the client all the time, and then the usual "noise" e-mails from co-workers and of course, the boss, get more "attention" than they should.
Yeah, and interestingly the "rate limiting" Comcast was doing was ultimately a lot more fair than the caps they're now forced to impose on residential customers.
But the whiners pushed it.
Thankfully, I have a commercial account with them. No caps. Works for me.
I have a similar contract (business service at a residential location).
The SLA is basically worthless, you're in the same pool as the others.
But the bandwidth and the static IP addresses are fine.
When I see a University "pedigree" I instantly know it also comes with an incredible level of arrogance. "Pedigreed" students have access to not only top-notch learning, but also start building connections via networking, and other "intangible" benefits from going to good schools, and one of the inevitable things that happens is they start to feel "anointed" or perhaps "entitled".
Never met a "pedigreed" person who wasn't also at least an order of magnitude more arrogant than someone who didn't have the "pedigree", even the humblest ones.
I'll pass on putting "good college background" up as a good reason to vote for someone. As someone who's attended "state schools" (which you apparently look down your nose at), I'm regularly offended by the arrogance of supposedly smarter people who I've watched make as many mistakes as others, including Harvard MBAs running businesses into the ground, etc etc etc...
You can keep the "pedigree" if you think it's worth something. Seeing someone "make it" from a humble State school background and a Communications degree, makes me feel better about all the times I've watched "pedigreed" people hurt others with their arrogance and greed.
Most people have made up their minds before the mud slinging starts. The mud slinging is just a way to both handle "just in case" investigations about background, and "how will my candidate handle adversity", in most people's minds.
Very few people change their minds because of mud-slinging. Unless of course, you have (as the previous replier pointed out) something big like Swift Boats that quickly and deeply emotionally moves a very LARGE group of voters.
Ahh.. you were doing good right up until that "oil being stolen" part. The oil is being purchased -- whether it's at fair market value, is debatable -- but money is changing hands.
Also, multiple countries are protecting ABOT, the offshore terminal that 95% of Iraq's oil passes through. Iraq has three small boats (I wouldn't call them warships) that assist, but they're not in a position to defend the terminal themselves. Some type of payment for this protection is needed or more than 90% of the country's income goes poof.
"Discounted" oil seems reasonable.
Sure would be nice if all these whiners who want the "American Dream" back -- hadn't spent more money than they MADE and signed contracts on the dotted line for these mortgages...
They've apparently decided that the American Dream included safety nets to save your ass if you screw up, financially. Not sure where that came in, but certainly it wasn't the original American Dream.
Now I'll admit that a FEW people were duped into signing things they didn't understand, but the majority of these people (almost 1 in 10 Americans!) already behind on their mortgages certainly weren't that stupid, were they?
Maybe they were. Who the fuck didn't understand, "Spend less than you make"?! And why is the public sentiment now to spread this pain they caused themselves around to EVERYONE? Fuck the investors. They took a risk.
Every damn prospectus says, "You might not get your money back." It doesn't say, "If we fuck this up really badly, you'll vote to have everyone else cover your ass(ets)."
Now the same entitlement/no responsibility crowd wants nationalized health care and think they deserve it. Great.
What about after that? What else can I pay for for your dumb asses?
Those of us who didn't overspend and managed our money correctly and purchased mortgages within our means... get to pay for these idiots and also put up with their politics this fall?
Frightening stuff, really -- a world with no personal consequences and no personal gain. Sign the bad mortgage, housing prices go in the shitter and interest rates go up, you lose. Go directly to bankruptcy, do not pass go.
What kind of idiot signed for a variable rate mortgage when they were down at 3% and thought that it WOULDN'T GO UP?! Christ, I'm only in my mid-30's and remember 12% mortgages my parents were paying in the 80's. No one "rescued" them with tax money.
Those voting Obama are voting for no responsibility and no accountability of individuals... sadly.
They'll probably get it too, unless the McCain folks have a plan that will shake the "Change for change's sake" crowds back to fiscal reality.
The only thing voting Obama guarantees is higher taxes, the rest of the stuff in his speech is wishing for a pony. Grow up, folks.
Ted Kennedy and gang own Obama's balls the second he hits office and have a majority in the Congress. Tax and spend, here we come... thanks a lot, CHILDREN.
Want a health plan that works? Remove limits on tax-free health-only healthcare savings accounts, tell companies to release everyone from group plans, and put the money (compete) into their HSA. Allow individuals to also contribute to their HSA if they like.
This will get the medical BILLS into the hands of the people getting "serviced" by the medical industry. And people will start showing hospitals where they can shove those $40 Tylenol pills.
Additionally the account would be owned by the EMPLOYEE and STAY WITH THEM in-between companies or as they switched or stopped employment altogether.
The problem with today's system is that the costs are HIDDEN from the end-user. Would the mom who has coverage under today's system (employer chosen, mostly paid for by employer with a "co-pay" only for services rendered) panic and run the baby with a sniffle to the emergency room every month? Hell no... not if she had to PAY for it out of her HSA.
Her company could put thousands of dollars into it, and she could AFFORD to go at any time, but knowing what it really COSTS and wanting to SAVE that money in the account for a medical "rainy day" would stop most of that crap...
Smaller companies that can't afford today to get full medical for their employees could compete by saying they could give $1000, or $2000 year into the employee's self-directed HSA account versus ZERO today.
Make the system COMPETITIVE and it'll work. Give it to government to run and it'll cost FAR MORE than it does today, with lower quality.
Ask anyone who actually uses it if Medicare or Medicaid ar
Good thing you said you were a Liberal, because if any non-Liberal had posted the truth like that, they'd have been flamed off of Slashdot, I'm sure.
I love when people outside of Aviation try to make sense of it. Aviation business makes no sense most of the time...
Or as the old joke goes...
How do you make a small fortune in Aviation? Start with a large one!
That Westwind is a dog... plenty of newer tech aircraft that perform better in the same role -- another reason to dump it.
In the real world, the number of computer user versus the ones the FBI are actually interested in is a HUGE ratio.
All these geeks with "protected" hard drives, and no FBI stomping in the door to stop them drooling Cheeto juice while watching pirated copies of the Matrix.
They must be bummed that no one cares.
Easily fixed by going to a "loser pays" court system.
"Arrived" in the title, and "Due in October" in the text.
One of these things is not like the other... one of these things is not the same...
And their revenues are falling. Matches up nicely, doesn't it?
No, we need more browsers.
Just like we needed the Commodore 64, the Tandy Color Computer, the TI-994A, the Apple II+, and the IBM PC, and all the rest back then.
"Choice" both means that you have options, but also that you have to choose wisely.
Well, just to play devil's advocate here, the "software industry" with it's "competition" isn't exactly cranking out work that is of a quality level worth telling anyone about.
Quality is not a department, it's an attitude about how to do your work. More coders should learn that.
Outsourcing has proven that the end-customer doesn't care, however. The customers are so used to bugs, they pre-build whole bureaucracies and test labs and hire staff to find them pre-production.
It's a sad state of affairs, and also a dangerous time now to start caring about quality because someone else can do any task cheaper and sloppier, and the customers have forgotten what a software project that worked right the first time out, and never had to be modified until new features were needed -- is even like.
I won't say ANY system was ever THAT good, but there's been a slow treacherous decline into "we'll just fix it in the next release" across the board.
You're missing the HUGE point here. Half of the people you're defending don't deserve it. That HALF were 100% wrong, and you still shill for them?
I don't. I don't defend any slimebag, no matter what party they're from.
Feel free to stop defending them if they're sleaze. Doesn't matter what party they're in.
Incredibly smart posting. Linux at our company has had similar problems in deployment (and at previous employers) on servers because of "packaging wackiness" by [insert favorite distro of the day here].
It's like this... you either buy a commercial OS and live with its problems, or you "buy" something open-source and live with its problems.
Those that say *most* companies have the time to crack open the source on open-source things and fix them, are smoking something. We don't. We have a a business to run.
The real hard-core underlying issue here is that software written to work right the first time is exceedingly rare. It's a quality thing. Problem is, if you write it that way to start with, people buy it ONCE and it's over.
Software as a business will always have this inherent problem. Software as part of a bigger solution, doesn't. But it's hard to move to the latter model.
So let's recap...
"Yes, half the Democrats voted for immunity".
Including Obama, may I add?
Got it. Thanks for the oh so powerful "clarification".
Ask any Muslim what happened to the 9/11 terrorists and get back to us on that, okay?
They'll ALL say they went to heaven, I promise. Even the "moderate" ones who "don't believe in violence".
If you think there's such a thing as a "non-radical" Muslim, please find one who'll post here and say the 9/11 terrorists went to hell. Good luck with that.
Lock the door until they take hostages. Then what? Knowing what we know now, leave it closed. Back then? Tough to say.
Before anyone knew they'd be bold enough to fly planes into buildings, that door had no reason to be seriously bolted. Let's not make up a utopia where people knew it was coming, okay?
Otherwise you trivialize the decisions that would (and did) have to be made that day. Those on board Flight 93 figured it out and paid dearly -- of their own choice.
All you've pointed out is that hindsight is 20/20. Big fat duh, to you sir. Congrats. It's not a good argument for the current thread you're replying to. Try again.
/me likes all the hand-waving to let Obama and his cronies off the hook when they had a MAJORITY in the Senate and could have stopped the Bush administration's antics.
Guess who's in big telco's pocketses? Ohh... yeah... everyone.
Nice try. Obama and his friends are JUST as sleazy as McCain in this regard.