Well, like us, they are all individuals. My greys were superb fliers and definitely prefered flying to walking. They only walked when the distances were very short. although sometimes they just seem to feel like walking instead of flying. I never saw them get into any trouble due to their flying everywhere instead of walking. We hurt ourselves too when we first learn to walk, but our parents don't restrict us to wheelchairs or ask us to crawl everywhere instead of walking upright. Of course I'm sure parrots do injure themselves from time to time when they fly inside a house. It is certainly more difficult and dangerous than flying outside. Well except that there are no predators inside. Well not usually.
I believe the justification for clipping a parrot's flight feathers is to prevent him from escaping not from flying into things. Greys at least are pretty damn smart and fly into things about as often as most of us walk into walls. Just don't let him fly when he's drunk.
Why do you say greys are more destructive than other parrots? I would think macaws would be much more destructive. I have owned greys and also a blue and gold macaw and they seemed about equally destructive to me. You just have to parrot proof your house as much as possible. From what I have seen I think a Kea is much more destructive than most parrots. And they are omnivorous too! They used to be killed for killing sheep!
Is that really your dog in the video? I keep parrots (although not at the moment) and they are my favorite pets, but I actually think a dog driving a car tops the parrot driving a cart. It would be hilarious if dogs could get driver licenses and drive around everywhere.
Actually greys have no problem at all flying in the average house. I have had greys in 400-600 sqft apartments and they can fly just fine through all the different rooms. Also a grey can walk nearly as fast as that cart can move. In addition to wings they do have perfectly good legs and can cross an average sized bedroom in seconds on foot. After having kept clipped birds and birds with full flight feathers I would never keep them clipped ever again. I love when a bird can fly to my shoulder whenever he wants and it's such a wonderful ability that they were born with. Even if they can only fly indoors I still think it's better than nothing.
Why? Because your income is in one of those ranges? It seems like an obscene amount to me. Pretty much anything above $30/hr is so much money that I cannot even imagine what I would do with it all. I'm sure I'd think of something. I guess I could sleep on a bed made entirely of $100 bills or something.
The problem is treating corporations as if they are people with rights. They are not people. And the purpose of government is not to save companies from having to buy insurance. That really is like a tax on the poor to pay the rich. If you want to limit your liability buy some friggin insurance. Don't make me pay for it. Shielding company decision makers from their bad decisions is in no way a good policy. The simplest solution is simply to abolish Corporations. We don't need them. We will still have companies of course. Just not corporations. The problem with corporations is they have too much power. Such immense concentration of power is not good for society. Large companies will still have a great deal of power but getting rid of limited liability corporations-as-people would be a good first step toward a better society.
The majority of Republicans (and Democrats) don't have an ideology. They are strictly pragmatists and problem solvers. They look at individual problems and they try to solve them. There is no overall view of how things should be. People with views like that are known as extremists, which are nearly synonymous with terrorists nowadays. Extremists have actual ideals. Moderates don't, probably because that would require actual thought and that is way too much work. Especially when your political views are guided solely by your emotions or by your own narrow self-interest. In politics the age of ideas is long over. That ship has sailed and been torpedoed.
Let me explain something to you. People vote Republican because they are hoping that their taxes won't be raised as much as if they vote Democrat. It is absolutely that simple. I have met people who actually want their taxes to go up, but such people are always Democrats. Republicans are motivated by their wallets.
I'll get modded into oblivion (will I make -3?) for saying this on Democrat dominated slashdot but what seems to motivate Democrats is anger and jealousy. They want to make anyone who makes more money than they do make less money. It's not egalitarianism exactly because they don't under any circumstances want to reduce their own pay down to somewhere around minimum wage (where it would probably be if the government just averaged everyone's salary).
As long as I can remember Democrats have been about class warfare, but in the 80s it seemed to be a more minor issue. There were even some idealists who wanted to take from the rich (and everyone else) and give to the poor. Now class warfare is practically the only issue. A political party that is almost entirely based on hate is kind of scary for obvious reasons. Many Democrats used to support ACLU issues and personal freedoms and even constitutional rights (gasp!). Not anymore. Now it's all about soaking the rich as long as the rich category doesn't include yourself.
Idealists are those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for an idea. This would be perfectly fine if they weren't so often willing to take those around them with them for the ride.
You keep using that word.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idealist?s=t Idealist: 1. a person who cherishes or pursues high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc. Synonyms: optimist, perfectionist, reformer, visionary, utopianist. Antonyms: pragmatist, skeptic, cynic. 2. a visionary or impractical person. Synonyms: romantic, romanticist, dreamer, stargazer. Antonyms: realist, materialist. 3. a person who represents things as they might or should be rather than as they are: My friend is an idealist, who somehow thinks that we always agree. 4. a writer or artist who treats subjects imaginatively. 5. a person who accepts the doctrines of philosophical idealism, as by representing things in an ideal form, or as they might or should be rather than as they are.
I do work part time, Sherlock. Gives me more time to post on slashdot. I average about $850 USD/month but it varies somewhat. Once you get used to living on very little money it's really not that hard. To save you the trouble let me do the math for you. That is $212.50 per week or $10,200 USD/year. Of course it is just an average. And if you want to pick nits that is also take home pay. My gross pay would be about $13,260 before federal/state taxes according to my trusty HP48G.
Find me a full time job that pays at least $10/hr and doesn't totally suck and I'll take it. My job may not pay much by slashdot standards, but it doesn't completely suck like most retail jobs etc. and it's at least a few bucks more than minimum wage. I don't have to deal with the public. I get to work with computers and my boss puts up with somewhat flexible hours. I'm not complaining about my job. I'm just complaining about people who make 40k+ per year who are whining about people who make $250k/year. The same way they feel about the people who make $250k I feel about them. These upper middle class folks are not proles by any stretch of the imagination.
All you have done is reinforce my point. If you make more than $30k you are absolutely positively not a prole. No matter how much you may want to be. Sorry.
Of course by world standards I am not a prole either. In many countries I would be considered if not rich, then at least middle class. In Cuba or Laos I would be considered massively super-rich. In Colombia I would be middle class. In Malaysia I think upper middle, although I'm not certain (despite having lived there). In Indonesia or the Philippines I would certainly not be considered poor.
I don't think the Republican ideology is any more about freedom than the Democratic one. Actually idealogy is probably not a good word to describe either party. They don't have ideals or ideas.They are pragmatic. Not philosophical. They don't have philosophical positions. They propose solutions to immediate, specific problems motivated not by philosophical ideas (something they have no interest in), but whatever is in their own self-interest. Both are fascist pro-police state pro-1984. Any differences between them are trivial. The biggest difference is in how they talk. This was once less true than it is now, but that is the reality today. The fact that the vast majority of them are lawyers should tell you all you need to know about their so called "beliefs".
I don't know you personally, but I have found that every single person who makes this statement is not just a liar themselves, but a pathological one. Cops say it and they get paid to lie. They lie every day for the most trivial of reasons. Politicians would say it but they are even less honest than cops if that's even possible.
This is just based on my own personal experience, but veryone I have ever met who has said what you just did is a huge, huge liar and they never feel guilty about it because "everyone does it." You may as well say, "Everyone is a sociopath." You might also say, "Everyone shoplifts." It is true that many people may try it once or twice as a kid. There's a huge difference between that and someone who does it nearly every day for their entire lives (when they are not in prison).
They have never considered the idea that some people only lie when it would be practically insane not to. I think I have lied maybe once in the last year. 99.9999% of the time lying is utterly unnecessary and pointless. I can go for years without having to tell a single lie. It may be true that nearly everyone lies at least once in their life, but there is a huge difference between someone who lies constantly, lies every single day of their life, and someone who might tell a lie once a decade.
Name some Democrats who are for abolishing copyrights and patents or at least idiotic software patents and ridiculously long copyright terms. Those are undeniably corporate interests You say the democrats are anti-corporation.
While we are at it name a single Democrat who supports abolishing Corporate limited liability, perhaps even corporations themselves. No more CEOs. Only owners. Owners who can be held fully responsible for the damage they cause in the world. I support all of these things. Do you think I'm a Republican? A democrat?
You are behind the times my man. The Democratic Party used to support individual/personal liberty/civil rights. Democrats used to actually agree with most ACLU positions. That's pretty funny now. It's simply not true anymore. The Democratic party doesn't support personal liberty any more than the Republican party does. US politicians of both major parties these days only support one kind of liberty: their own.
By "upper caste" you mean anyone who makes more than 30k/year right? There are people on slashdot who seem to believe that you can make 40-80,000 USD per year and still be part of the proletariat. As someone who makes 10k/year and as someone who doesn't even know anyone who makes much more than minimum wage I find this all very amusing and ironic. 1% isn't some magic number that gets you a free pass when you make obscene amounts of money like $25-$45/hr. I've got news for you. That is what rich people make. You say "rich" is always above whatever you happen to make. Time to face facts. You are a rich fat cat. I say soak the rich. You should prepare to get wet. You want egalitarianism? Great. You go first. Lets even out our pay scales. I'll give you some of what I make and you give me some of what you make until we are even. How does that sound? It seems like most people on slashdot (who aren't students) make at least $20/hr. I make 10. Are you still sure you want egalitarianism? I'm totally game. At least in this country.
Thanks. I really appreciate it. This story has gotten me really depressed. My whole life seems like such a waste. It's not just the money: the fact that I am poor by US standards. I think I would have been a much happier person writing code for a living even if I continued to only make 10k/year. A happy code monkey leaning back in the branches and chewing on delicious leaves.
I thought I was being relatively practical studying Electrical Engineering especially compared to some people I knew, but I think I ultimately fell into the same trap as the anthropology major who believes they will be doing something other than waiting tables (or maybe teaching if they are lucky) or whatever when they get out of college.
I guess it really is a whole new world nowadays, even with outsourcing. A system in which people are educated in university and then cannot find real jobs in their field when they graduate does not seem to be a sustainable one. Eventually those experienced developers will retire, but all of those inexperienced college graduates will have been waiting tables for the past decade or two when the industry finally has no choice but to accept people without relevant experience. I guess those companies that used to only take experienced applicants have finally seen the error of their ways. It's too late for me though.
I'm complaining about it because I'm still bitter about my experiences trying to find a job after college and failing badly. Not even coming close. Not even finding a single promising ad. Seeing this news story is a salt in the wounds kind of thing for me. I would love to live in the Puget Sound area. Probably one of the best places to live in the US I think. Although that and SF are both quite expensive. in terms of cost of living. Not that the Boston area is cheap either... I think the first thing I have to do is verify that what you guys are saying is actually true. I haven't been job hunting for a while. How do people do it these days? Is Monster still around or relevant?
Is it really so easy for you guys to get hired that the only thing that matters is your ability? You don't even need a CS degree? Now that I don't believe.
Of course the nice thing about programming is that you can prove yourself to some degree. Rather than going back to college and getting a CS degree maybe all I would need to do is write a large, complex program that I could send to potential employers. Something like a game maybe. Might take me a few years. Maybe longer. But I'd have something that would show what I am capable of. Although it's still difficult for me to picture a realistic scenario where I would even have a chance to show it off. It certainly wouldn't get me past HR or to any kind of an interview. Maybe if it became popular enough that the program and I both were slightly famous so that my name would immediately be recognized by someone.
Obviously I don't know how to earn $40 an hour doing anything or I would be doing it. I don't think I've ever even earned half that much. A good friend of mine is about to get kicked out of his apartment because he can't manage to scrape together $700 each month to pay his rent on time. He can't seem to find any job at all. He's considering suicide as perhaps the only practical solution. And he actually has better social skills than I do and is probably equally intelligent, although he's not a techie/geek like me. I consider myself lucky compared to him and also compared to many of the people I see working retail and making no more than I do. At least I don't have to deal with the public (I'm shy and would hate that).
I guess I was so convinced that the job market was a certain way in the 90s, it is difficult for me to accept that it has changed. Or maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe for everyone else the early to mid 90s were a time when it was dead easy to get a job in programming or electronics design with no experience at all right out of college. Maybe it was just me. That was certainly my reality. After this discussion I think I will at least have to check out Monster or whatever people are currently using for job hunting and try to verify some of the seemingly wild claims people are making here.
If nothing else I don't really feel I'm properly qualified for a professional coding job. I do enjoy programming in c/c++/assembly but I haven't taken the same classes that CS majors took. Compiler design, algorithms... All that stuff. It would seem kind of cheeky of me to even apply for a programming job without having at least taken those same courses.
What's almost funny about this discussion is that I would be considered fabulously wealthy--almost beyond imagination--in some countries. But to most of you guys I'm terribly poor.
Well it's not manual labor at least. Are you just being optimistic or do you know for a fact that it's possible to get hired as a programmer with no experience? It wouldn't help me anyway since I don't have a CS degree, but it is interesting.
It's not really possible for me anymore. That ship has sailed. For many reasons that I don't want to get into here. But I do appreciate the advice, especially if you are not being overly optimistic. I was overly optimistic too when I just assumed that I would be able to find a job in my field after college. Eventually. I mean Electrical Engineering is not like studying anthropology or something. I figured there must be some need for Electrical Engineers right out of college. I had thought it would be at least someone practical. But I was wrong. I don't think I ever made the mistake of being overly optimistic about anything ever again.
Yup. My social skills suck. No question about that. But I never even got an interview to prove how much my social skills sucked. Because I didn't have the experience that was required by 100% of the ads I saw. And yes, after maybe a decade of working in an unrelated field I finally gave up hope of ever getting paid to do something I liked.
Never done any web programming. So I wouldn't know. Web programming bores me. Well except maybe for coding a torrent client that uses some kind of exchange system like fairtorrent. That might be fun. Does anyone code web sites for anything other than the money?
I prefer to code in C/C++ or assembly. I think Lisp and Scheme are kind of cool though. And Smalltalk and Objective-C and some functional languages like Haskell and Erlang and pretty much anything that compiles to tight, efficient machine code. I'm also interested in GPGPU languages especially as a way to run neural networks / connectionist programs.
My original interest in programming was because of my interest in AI. I chose EE instead of CS because back in the 80s I thought that brain emulations were more likely to lead to AI than gigantic commonsense programs like Douglas Lenat's cyc project. And also because one of my EE profs persuaded me that the future of AI was more in hardware than software. He was working on an interesting massively parallel AI project of his own at the time and I respected his judgement.
Then you and your friend either suck, or live in a shithole. It's really that simple.
Either that or you are just overpaid and very, very spoiled.
Where in the hell do you live? Arkansas?
A suburb of Boston.
Which doesn't mean you're any good at it.
Never said I was, but the fact that you make shitloads of money doing it doesn't mean you are good at it either. In fact it doesn't mean shit except that you are one rich motherfucker.
Blah blah blah. Spoken like somebody who hasn't done jack shit in the real world. My projects range from 4 to 12 million lines of high level code. I'll give you complex. Yeah, I was writing my own assemblers and tools (and making good use of them too) back in the day.. but anybody who works with current production level code in anything but the most trivial system knows what a pain in the ass so-called "high level" code can be. And yea, there are times when you can't just throw more hardware at it.
Depending on how you define "jack shit" it is true that I haven't done it. I took the only job I could find outside of college. It wasn't manual labor, but it sucked and only paid $7.50/hr. I was just happy that I didn't have to spend the rest of my life waiting tables or working at a gas station or some shit like that. That I didn't have to clean toilets or deal with the public in some kind of retail job. What have you accomplished in your life besides huge stacks of 20 dollar bills that would reach the ceiling of your fancy house? Sucking corporate dick and doing what you are told working on someone else's project doesn't impress me all that much. Still better than my situation but not all that impressive in the scheme of things.
Care to tell me why they shouldn't? I think it's just that you're such an inbred, lazy, arrogant little fuck that you couldn't do their jobs if your life depended on it.
Actually I have done both plumbing and electrical work. Residential stuff. It's easy. In the sense that it isn't intellectually challenging. So I do know what I'm talking about. $125/hr to glue PVC pipe and solder copper joints is beyond ridiculous. I am lazy, but I think you are the arrogant one. I wasn't lazy when I graduated from college though. I had no problem working 12-16 hours a day and often did, but I wasn't able to work in any field that interested me. All of those jobs had already been taken by people with experience. Apparently a minimum of 2 years, but more typically 3-5.
I'll bet you're fat
Well since I'm an American that can be pretty much assumed. I'm about 30 pounds overweight, but I'm also in my early 40s. I wasn't more than 5-10 pounds overweight until my late 30s. In my 20s I was in very good condition. I ran, cycled and weight trained at the gym.
... that you masturbate quite a bit..
Fuck you. Rich fuck like you whose had everything in life handed to you. You've just been lucky. Nothing more. At one time you also had no experience, but you probably knew someone and got hired that way. Not on the merits of your abiliites.
and that your IQ, though you believe yourself to be brilliant, is within 1 std deviation of the norm.
I never claimed to be some kind of genius. I just wanted to be able to get a job working for someone else after graduating from college doing something that didn't totally suck and ideally something that made use of all that studying I did in college. I took a bunch of IQ tests when I was around 18. IIRC I think I scored something like 137-139. So you're right. Not that great, but not below normal either. What did you score? 170 or something? That would just prove that being smart is unrelated to being a cunt.
You just don't want to admit that luck had anything to do with your success and that you are the only one in the world
That may all be true, but the fact is there are people talking about getting 80k jobs right out of college. I'm still not convinced that they are not aliens from another planet. Or at least another country. But, if true, it cannot just be what you learn from working in the field for years that makes them worth so much.
Keep in mind that intelligent people tend to get better at anything they do every day. So your argument applies to every intellectual pursuit. Not just programming. People with experience are worth more. I don't doubt that. What I doubt is that anyone is really worth $40/hr for anything. Maybe doctors. In some countries people, intelligent people, will work for a whole month for less than $40. Even doctors in some cases.
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Well, like us, they are all individuals. My greys were superb fliers and definitely prefered flying to walking. They only walked when the distances were very short. although sometimes they just seem to feel like walking instead of flying. I never saw them get into any trouble due to their flying everywhere instead of walking. We hurt ourselves too when we first learn to walk, but our parents don't restrict us to wheelchairs or ask us to crawl everywhere instead of walking upright. Of course I'm sure parrots do injure themselves from time to time when they fly inside a house. It is certainly more difficult and dangerous than flying outside. Well except that there are no predators inside. Well not usually.
I believe the justification for clipping a parrot's flight feathers is to prevent him from escaping not from flying into things. Greys at least are pretty damn smart and fly into things about as often as most of us walk into walls. Just don't let him fly when he's drunk.
Why do you say greys are more destructive than other parrots? I would think macaws would be much more destructive. I have owned greys and also a blue and gold macaw and they seemed about equally destructive to me. You just have to parrot proof your house as much as possible. From what I have seen I think a Kea is much more destructive than most parrots. And they are omnivorous too! They used to be killed for killing sheep!
Is that really your dog in the video? I keep parrots (although not at the moment) and they are my favorite pets, but I actually think a dog driving a car tops the parrot driving a cart. It would be hilarious if dogs could get driver licenses and drive around everywhere.
Actually greys have no problem at all flying in the average house. I have had greys in 400-600 sqft apartments and they can fly just fine through all the different rooms. Also a grey can walk nearly as fast as that cart can move. In addition to wings they do have perfectly good legs and can cross an average sized bedroom in seconds on foot. After having kept clipped birds and birds with full flight feathers I would never keep them clipped ever again. I love when a bird can fly to my shoulder whenever he wants and it's such a wonderful ability that they were born with. Even if they can only fly indoors I still think it's better than nothing.
Why? Because your income is in one of those ranges? It seems like an obscene amount to me. Pretty much anything above $30/hr is so much money that I cannot even imagine what I would do with it all. I'm sure I'd think of something. I guess I could sleep on a bed made entirely of $100 bills or something.
The problem is treating corporations as if they are people with rights. They are not people. And the purpose of government is not to save companies from having to buy insurance. That really is like a tax on the poor to pay the rich. If you want to limit your liability buy some friggin insurance. Don't make me pay for it. Shielding company decision makers from their bad decisions is in no way a good policy. The simplest solution is simply to abolish Corporations. We don't need them. We will still have companies of course. Just not corporations. The problem with corporations is they have too much power. Such immense concentration of power is not good for society. Large companies will still have a great deal of power but getting rid of limited liability corporations-as-people would be a good first step toward a better society.
The majority of Republicans (and Democrats) don't have an ideology. They are strictly pragmatists and problem solvers. They look at individual problems and they try to solve them. There is no overall view of how things should be. People with views like that are known as extremists, which are nearly synonymous with terrorists nowadays. Extremists have actual ideals. Moderates don't, probably because that would require actual thought and that is way too much work. Especially when your political views are guided solely by your emotions or by your own narrow self-interest. In politics the age of ideas is long over. That ship has sailed and been torpedoed.
Let me explain something to you. People vote Republican because they are hoping that their taxes won't be raised as much as if they vote Democrat. It is absolutely that simple. I have met people who actually want their taxes to go up, but such people are always Democrats. Republicans are motivated by their wallets.
I'll get modded into oblivion (will I make -3?) for saying this on Democrat dominated slashdot but what seems to motivate Democrats is anger and jealousy. They want to make anyone who makes more money than they do make less money. It's not egalitarianism exactly because they don't under any circumstances want to reduce their own pay down to somewhere around minimum wage (where it would probably be if the government just averaged everyone's salary).
As long as I can remember Democrats have been about class warfare, but in the 80s it seemed to be a more minor issue. There were even some idealists who wanted to take from the rich (and everyone else) and give to the poor. Now class warfare is practically the only issue. A political party that is almost entirely based on hate is kind of scary for obvious reasons. Many Democrats used to support ACLU issues and personal freedoms and even constitutional rights (gasp!). Not anymore. Now it's all about soaking the rich as long as the rich category doesn't include yourself.
Idealists are those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for an idea. This would be perfectly fine if they weren't so often willing to take those around them with them for the ride.
You keep using that word.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idealist?s=t
Idealist:
1. a person who cherishes or pursues high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc. Synonyms: optimist, perfectionist, reformer, visionary, utopianist. Antonyms: pragmatist, skeptic, cynic.
2. a visionary or impractical person. Synonyms: romantic, romanticist, dreamer, stargazer. Antonyms: realist, materialist.
3. a person who represents things as they might or should be rather than as they are: My friend is an idealist, who somehow thinks that we always agree.
4. a writer or artist who treats subjects imaginatively.
5. a person who accepts the doctrines of philosophical idealism, as by representing things in an ideal form, or as they might or should be rather than as they are.
I do work part time, Sherlock. Gives me more time to post on slashdot. I average about $850 USD/month but it varies somewhat. Once you get used to living on very little money it's really not that hard. To save you the trouble let me do the math for you. That is $212.50 per week or $10,200 USD/year. Of course it is just an average. And if you want to pick nits that is also take home pay. My gross pay would be about $13,260 before federal/state taxes according to my trusty HP48G.
Find me a full time job that pays at least $10/hr and doesn't totally suck and I'll take it. My job may not pay much by slashdot standards, but it doesn't completely suck like most retail jobs etc. and it's at least a few bucks more than minimum wage. I don't have to deal with the public. I get to work with computers and my boss puts up with somewhat flexible hours. I'm not complaining about my job. I'm just complaining about people who make 40k+ per year who are whining about people who make $250k/year. The same way they feel about the people who make $250k I feel about them. These upper middle class folks are not proles by any stretch of the imagination.
All you have done is reinforce my point. If you make more than $30k you are absolutely positively not a prole. No matter how much you may want to be. Sorry.
Of course by world standards I am not a prole either. In many countries I would be considered if not rich, then at least middle class. In Cuba or Laos I would be considered massively super-rich. In Colombia I would be middle class. In Malaysia I think upper middle, although I'm not certain (despite having lived there). In Indonesia or the Philippines I would certainly not be considered poor.
I don't think the Republican ideology is any more about freedom than the Democratic one. Actually idealogy is probably not a good word to describe either party. They don't have ideals or ideas.They are pragmatic. Not philosophical. They don't have philosophical positions. They propose solutions to immediate, specific problems motivated not by philosophical ideas (something they have no interest in), but whatever is in their own self-interest. Both are fascist pro-police state pro-1984. Any differences between them are trivial. The biggest difference is in how they talk. This was once less true than it is now, but that is the reality today. The fact that the vast majority of them are lawyers should tell you all you need to know about their so called "beliefs".
Everybody lies. Not just politicians.
I don't know you personally, but I have found that every single person who makes this statement is not just a liar themselves, but a pathological one. Cops say it and they get paid to lie. They lie every day for the most trivial of reasons. Politicians would say it but they are even less honest than cops if that's even possible.
This is just based on my own personal experience, but veryone I have ever met who has said what you just did is a huge, huge liar and they never feel guilty about it because "everyone does it." You may as well say, "Everyone is a sociopath." You might also say, "Everyone shoplifts." It is true that many people may try it once or twice as a kid. There's a huge difference between that and someone who does it nearly every day for their entire lives (when they are not in prison).
They have never considered the idea that some people only lie when it would be practically insane not to. I think I have lied maybe once in the last year. 99.9999% of the time lying is utterly unnecessary and pointless. I can go for years without having to tell a single lie. It may be true that nearly everyone lies at least once in their life, but there is a huge difference between someone who lies constantly, lies every single day of their life, and someone who might tell a lie once a decade.
Name some Democrats who are for abolishing copyrights and patents or at least idiotic software patents and ridiculously long copyright terms. Those are undeniably corporate interests You say the democrats are anti-corporation.
While we are at it name a single Democrat who supports abolishing Corporate limited liability, perhaps even corporations themselves. No more CEOs. Only owners. Owners who can be held fully responsible for the damage they cause in the world. I support all of these things. Do you think I'm a Republican? A democrat?
You are behind the times my man. The Democratic Party used to support individual/personal liberty/civil rights. Democrats used to actually agree with most ACLU positions. That's pretty funny now. It's simply not true anymore. The Democratic party doesn't support personal liberty any more than the Republican party does. US politicians of both major parties these days only support one kind of liberty: their own.
By "upper caste" you mean anyone who makes more than 30k/year right? There are people on slashdot who seem to believe that you can make 40-80,000 USD per year and still be part of the proletariat. As someone who makes 10k/year and as someone who doesn't even know anyone who makes much more than minimum wage I find this all very amusing and ironic. 1% isn't some magic number that gets you a free pass when you make obscene amounts of money like $25-$45/hr. I've got news for you. That is what rich people make. You say "rich" is always above whatever you happen to make. Time to face facts. You are a rich fat cat. I say soak the rich. You should prepare to get wet. You want egalitarianism? Great. You go first. Lets even out our pay scales. I'll give you some of what I make and you give me some of what you make until we are even. How does that sound? It seems like most people on slashdot (who aren't students) make at least $20/hr. I make 10. Are you still sure you want egalitarianism? I'm totally game. At least in this country.
Thanks. I really appreciate it. This story has gotten me really depressed. My whole life seems like such a waste. It's not just the money: the fact that I am poor by US standards. I think I would have been a much happier person writing code for a living even if I continued to only make 10k/year. A happy code monkey leaning back in the branches and chewing on delicious leaves.
I thought I was being relatively practical studying Electrical Engineering especially compared to some people I knew, but I think I ultimately fell into the same trap as the anthropology major who believes they will be doing something other than waiting tables (or maybe teaching if they are lucky) or whatever when they get out of college.
I guess it really is a whole new world nowadays, even with outsourcing. A system in which people are educated in university and then cannot find real jobs in their field when they graduate does not seem to be a sustainable one. Eventually those experienced developers will retire, but all of those inexperienced college graduates will have been waiting tables for the past decade or two when the industry finally has no choice but to accept people without relevant experience. I guess those companies that used to only take experienced applicants have finally seen the error of their ways. It's too late for me though.
I'm complaining about it because I'm still bitter about my experiences trying to find a job after college and failing badly. Not even coming close. Not even finding a single promising ad. Seeing this news story is a salt in the wounds kind of thing for me. I would love to live in the Puget Sound area. Probably one of the best places to live in the US I think. Although that and SF are both quite expensive. in terms of cost of living. Not that the Boston area is cheap either... I think the first thing I have to do is verify that what you guys are saying is actually true. I haven't been job hunting for a while. How do people do it these days? Is Monster still around or relevant?
Is it really so easy for you guys to get hired that the only thing that matters is your ability? You don't even need a CS degree? Now that I don't believe.
Of course the nice thing about programming is that you can prove yourself to some degree. Rather than going back to college and getting a CS degree maybe all I would need to do is write a large, complex program that I could send to potential employers. Something like a game maybe. Might take me a few years. Maybe longer. But I'd have something that would show what I am capable of. Although it's still difficult for me to picture a realistic scenario where I would even have a chance to show it off. It certainly wouldn't get me past HR or to any kind of an interview. Maybe if it became popular enough that the program and I both were slightly famous so that my name would immediately be recognized by someone.
Obviously I don't know how to earn $40 an hour doing anything or I would be doing it. I don't think I've ever even earned half that much. A good friend of mine is about to get kicked out of his apartment because he can't manage to scrape together $700 each month to pay his rent on time. He can't seem to find any job at all. He's considering suicide as perhaps the only practical solution. And he actually has better social skills than I do and is probably equally intelligent, although he's not a techie/geek like me. I consider myself lucky compared to him and also compared to many of the people I see working retail and making no more than I do. At least I don't have to deal with the public (I'm shy and would hate that).
I guess I was so convinced that the job market was a certain way in the 90s, it is difficult for me to accept that it has changed. Or maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe for everyone else the early to mid 90s were a time when it was dead easy to get a job in programming or electronics design with no experience at all right out of college. Maybe it was just me. That was certainly my reality. After this discussion I think I will at least have to check out Monster or whatever people are currently using for job hunting and try to verify some of the seemingly wild claims people are making here.
If nothing else I don't really feel I'm properly qualified for a professional coding job. I do enjoy programming in c/c++/assembly but I haven't taken the same classes that CS majors took. Compiler design, algorithms... All that stuff. It would seem kind of cheeky of me to even apply for a programming job without having at least taken those same courses.
What's almost funny about this discussion is that I would be considered fabulously wealthy--almost beyond imagination--in some countries. But to most of you guys I'm terribly poor.
Well it's not manual labor at least. Are you just being optimistic or do you know for a fact that it's possible to get hired as a programmer with no experience? It wouldn't help me anyway since I don't have a CS degree, but it is interesting.
It's not really possible for me anymore. That ship has sailed. For many reasons that I don't want to get into here. But I do appreciate the advice, especially if you are not being overly optimistic. I was overly optimistic too when I just assumed that I would be able to find a job in my field after college. Eventually. I mean Electrical Engineering is not like studying anthropology or something. I figured there must be some need for Electrical Engineers right out of college. I had thought it would be at least someone practical. But I was wrong. I don't think I ever made the mistake of being overly optimistic about anything ever again.
Yup. My social skills suck. No question about that. But I never even got an interview to prove how much my social skills sucked. Because I didn't have the experience that was required by 100% of the ads I saw. And yes, after maybe a decade of working in an unrelated field I finally gave up hope of ever getting paid to do something I liked.
Never done any web programming. So I wouldn't know. Web programming bores me. Well except maybe for coding a torrent client that uses some kind of exchange system like fairtorrent. That might be fun. Does anyone code web sites for anything other than the money?
I prefer to code in C/C++ or assembly. I think Lisp and Scheme are kind of cool though. And Smalltalk and Objective-C and some functional languages like Haskell and Erlang and pretty much anything that compiles to tight, efficient machine code. I'm also interested in GPGPU languages especially as a way to run neural networks / connectionist programs.
My original interest in programming was because of my interest in AI. I chose EE instead of CS because back in the 80s I thought that brain emulations were more likely to lead to AI than gigantic commonsense programs like Douglas Lenat's cyc project. And also because one of my EE profs persuaded me that the future of AI was more in hardware than software. He was working on an interesting massively parallel AI project of his own at the time and I respected his judgement.
Then you and your friend either suck, or live in a shithole. It's really that simple.
Either that or you are just overpaid and very, very spoiled.
Where in the hell do you live? Arkansas?
A suburb of Boston.
Which doesn't mean you're any good at it.
Never said I was, but the fact that you make shitloads of money doing it doesn't mean you are good at it either. In fact it doesn't mean shit except that you are one rich motherfucker.
Blah blah blah. Spoken like somebody who hasn't done jack shit in the real world. My projects range from 4 to 12 million lines of high level code. I'll give you complex. Yeah, I was writing my own assemblers and tools (and making good use of them too) back in the day.. but anybody who works with current production level code in anything but the most trivial system knows what a pain in the ass so-called "high level" code can be. And yea, there are times when you can't just throw more hardware at it.
Depending on how you define "jack shit" it is true that I haven't done it. I took the only job I could find outside of college. It wasn't manual labor, but it sucked and only paid $7.50/hr. I was just happy that I didn't have to spend the rest of my life waiting tables or working at a gas station or some shit like that. That I didn't have to clean toilets or deal with the public in some kind of retail job. What have you accomplished in your life besides huge stacks of 20 dollar bills that would reach the ceiling of your fancy house? Sucking corporate dick and doing what you are told working on someone else's project doesn't impress me all that much. Still better than my situation but not all that impressive in the scheme of things.
Care to tell me why they shouldn't? I think it's just that you're such an inbred, lazy, arrogant little fuck that you couldn't do their jobs if your life depended on it.
Actually I have done both plumbing and electrical work. Residential stuff. It's easy. In the sense that it isn't intellectually challenging. So I do know what I'm talking about. $125/hr to glue PVC pipe and solder copper joints is beyond ridiculous. I am lazy, but I think you are the arrogant one. I wasn't lazy when I graduated from college though. I had no problem working 12-16 hours a day and often did, but I wasn't able to work in any field that interested me. All of those jobs had already been taken by people with experience. Apparently a minimum of 2 years, but more typically 3-5.
I'll bet you're fat
Well since I'm an American that can be pretty much assumed. I'm about 30 pounds overweight, but I'm also in my early 40s. I wasn't more than 5-10 pounds overweight until my late 30s. In my 20s I was in very good condition. I ran, cycled and weight trained at the gym.
... that you masturbate quite a bit..
Fuck you. Rich fuck like you whose had everything in life handed to you. You've just been lucky. Nothing more. At one time you also had no experience, but you probably knew someone and got hired that way. Not on the merits of your abiliites.
and that your IQ, though you believe yourself to be brilliant, is within 1 std deviation of the norm.
I never claimed to be some kind of genius. I just wanted to be able to get a job working for someone else after graduating from college doing something that didn't totally suck and ideally something that made use of all that studying I did in college. I took a bunch of IQ tests when I was around 18. IIRC I think I scored something like 137-139. So you're right. Not that great, but not below normal either. What did you score? 170 or something? That would just prove that being smart is unrelated to being a cunt.
You just don't want to admit that luck had anything to do with your success and that you are the only one in the world
At our company we will hire anyone who is really good at what they do.
Bullshit. So you'd hire someone with no professional programming experience and no college degree? I don't believe you.
That may all be true, but the fact is there are people talking about getting 80k jobs right out of college. I'm still not convinced that they are not aliens from another planet. Or at least another country. But, if true, it cannot just be what you learn from working in the field for years that makes them worth so much.
Keep in mind that intelligent people tend to get better at anything they do every day. So your argument applies to every intellectual pursuit. Not just programming. People with experience are worth more. I don't doubt that. What I doubt is that anyone is really worth $40/hr for anything. Maybe doctors. In some countries people, intelligent people, will work for a whole month for less than $40. Even doctors in some cases.