Most people, even the so called religions right are NOT anti-science.
Actually, The religious right (at least christianity, which is what is commonly
referred to as "religious right") have a 1600 year history of
being SPECIFICALLY anti-science. Beginning around the rise of emperor Constantine,
Anti-science and blind faith in divinity was the rule and entire underpinnings of
christian belief and led to the abysmal 1100-ish year period known
as the dark ages. The greek philosopher Hypatia was brutally murdered by a
christian mob for her steadfast belief in scientific principals. I'd say that,
in addition to centuries of equally brutal acts in the name of god, is a
convincing argument that religion has had (and still has) a strong anti-science
agenda.
You are ignorant to belive that religion has nothing to do with this.
Don't mix your religion with my politics or science. (actually, I'd rather you
not mix either your religion OR politics with my science.)
I weep to think what this world could be at this point in time if the scientific
and intellectual principals held by the greek philosophers, such as Galen, Aristotle
and Hypatia, had been allowed to continue uninterrupted instead of being crushed
by religious ignorance.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a professor (CS). Others have already commented on
the truth that engineering is hard. period. Fields of engineering and
science have clearly right and wrong answers; implementing the wrong
answers kills people. Other fields might be able to get away with
intellectually fuzziness but engineers have devastating consequences.
Beyond what the other posters have commented about the rigor of
engineering there is another truth... K-12 should be looked at as a
possible cause of Mr. Kern's failure. He's a classic example of
"But I always excelled at school! it must be somebody else's fault I'm
failing now!" K-12 is dumbed down to the point of uselessness. A grand
13 year social party for parents to drop their kids off at and give
up responsibility for them. Nobody can be held back a year for failing
to master content (I know; I have a friend who is a k-12 teacher and
eventually gave up because principals and administrators kept preventing
her from doing so.) The result is that I see a lot of students who,
once they take the math placement test, wind up in remedial math before
they can take calc1 and calc2. Do you know what remedial math is?
Algebra! ninth grade algebra. You've got A(B+C)=AB+AC type stuff!
This is a total failure of k-12. Many college students cannot handle
basic math when they finish k-12. Many students cannot even write
properly. We have students who can't point to Mexico on a map.
I have students who use "are" and "our" interchangeably!!
It's really sad to me. I want to teach my students good programming
skills and problem solving and prepare them for reasonably high paying
careers with good job stability but I'm hobbled by having to correct
all the "self-esteem" mistakes made in k-12.
Utter crap such as "standardised
testing is bad or inaccurate", "the emotional damage a student suffers
from failing is more important than honest evaluation." or "There are no
truly right or wrong answers", etc... This is all the same crap promoted by
intellectually weak individuals under the reign of Constantine et al.
that led to the dark ages and halted nearly all of our progress for one
thousand four hundred years.
To all of my art and music teachers, none of which I remember telling
me I was good at either: Thank you! I like art and music; but the truth
is I suck at making either and I know that because of their honest
evaluations. But give me a computer, some paper, a pencil and tools
and I can build the world.
(besides, I like the artistic beauty intrinsic to a well written program
or an elegant bridge just as much, or maybe more than, any painting. It's
just not something that most people can recognize.)
Disclaimer: I am a university professor in CS. So, clearly, I believe in the value of a university education. But I'll try to explain why...
"I didn't learn C# in Comp Science but I could learn it in an afternoon.." I'm a young guy (22) and I've been programing professionally for nearly four years and I can tell you that this is simply false. Make no mistake about it, I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another ten years.
I think your statement here sums everything up nicely in favor of university degrees. You don't have such a degree, you can't learn new languages fast, can't recognize that ability in others and after four years you're still not an expert at the one language you do know and use daily.
Aside from the exaggeration of "[one] afternoon" which I agree is insufficient. You believe it's impossible because you yourself are unable to accomplish it due to your limited
vocational training. Then you falsely project your own
limitations on to others. As other posters have replied: yes. with a well grounded backround in theory and fundamentals it is possible to pick up yet another language in a very compressed period of time. (Though some of us benefit from an advantage in age over you.)
I have been proficient in the past with Fortran, Pascal, Modula-2, LISP and various assembly languages. I am currently proficient in Perl and shell and an expert in C, C++ and Java. (not trying to brag, a lot of/.ers have similar, or larger, skill sets and will relate to the rapid shifts in technologies that result in such sets.) The last job I took
up required teaching advanced data structures in Java; a language I hadn't touched before the first day of class. Within one week I was productive in the language, within two proficient and within a month I was expert and using most of the advanced features of the language. I can't count the number of times my employment positions have put me in such a position where the programming requirements of the job have changed abruptly. I have always been ready to adapt to the challenge in a very, very short time frame and I believe this is due to my university-based education. I'm not afraid to change jobs or be fired because I know I can adapt and be valuable and productive in any new environment.
Here's two more examples:
Never during my education in CS did I expect to become a programmer and systems administrator for a Nortel phone system. But it did happen. I was ready for it and saved my company a lot of money in consulting fees because a dedicated technician didn't have to be called in to fix little issues.
Second example: One of my students obtained a job with an aerospace company and it was my responsibility to monitor them for a year to make sure everybody was happy with the arrangement. I asked what they were working on and they replied "debugging HPL programs. I've never even heard of HPL! How am I suppose to know this?". I said "neither have I. How are you doing at it". They said "Fine."
They were "fine" because they had the necessary theory fundamentals squared away. I would trust this student to pick up anything new and previously unknown in a short time period. In general, I would trust university educated people to have this adaptability more than vocationally trained peopl.
I'm really sorry for all the excellent, creative problem solvers you turned away because of your bias towards a single answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer (in any context) and doesn't, in itself, indicate an unworthy candidate. "I don't know; but I can learn it real fast" can indicate a truly flexible, useful person. Your loss; not the candidates.
Are you nuts?!? The real challenge is *true*
competition. I live in the middle of San Fernando
Valley in Los Angeles. It's one of the most
densly populated urban areas in the nation.
Housing as far as the eye can see and lots of
well established businesses. It's about as far
from "rural" as you can get.
Yet I can't get cheap broadband. DSL doesn't
work because my copper pairs are pure garbage
and can't hold a signal. Cable costs $45/mo
without a static ip. If I pay $80/mo then I
can get a static but I also get only 1/5
(yes, that's right 20%) of the speed of the
DHCP service.
"rural" is not an issue with broadband. However,
the fact that the government paid to build the copper pair and cable infrastructure and then was stupid enough to "sell" the public infrastructure
to private industries was the dumbest move anybody ever made.
Now the Bells (+verizon) and the cable companies are monopolies that have absolutely no incentive what so ever to provide a decent service at a decent price. There is no competition at all. Yeah, yeah Cox, Adelphia and Time Warner all sell the same product. But there is no competition because they all agreed not to compete. So you get a choice of one and even if you hate them you can't turn to anybody and say "hey, I hate Adelphia; I'd
like to purchase my service from Cox". Just can't be done. Same thing with the Bells.
The closest thing to competition was the
introduction of DSL. But even there the phone companies were forced by regulation to lease central office space and access to copper pairs but nobody said anything about regulating the price. So the bells all said: "yea, we'll rent you our infrastructure" (but for so much of the DSL companies' profits that the bells *knew* the DSL companies wouldn't be able to turn a profit and would eventually go under. Then the bells could all go: "Hey, we noticed you're bankrupt and you have all that useless equipment in our telco closets; mind if we buy it from you for next to nothing?" And bam: now only the bells and verizon *really* sell DSL service. The other DSL providers are third party resellers now.
And now even that will get squeezed out with the new FCC ruling that states that the bells don't have to share their equipment with DSL providers. So bye, bye third party DSL.
If you think being "rural" is what is holding back this country's domination of national information infrastructures then you're insane. It's all bad politics and legislation being made by idiots who are completely ignorant of the technology they are regulating.
We did the interstate roads right. You can drive from one end of the nation to the other for free (Or close enough to it) and that infrastructure provides nearly all the in nation shipping bandwidth to enable our gross national product. The current need for cheap, nationwide broadband is analgous to the need for cheap, reliable nationawide transportation at the turn of last century. But none of the politicians realize this and so you will be getting your X-rays, programming and information processing being done overseas.
Personally, I welcome our new overseas overlords because they are obviously smarter than we are. (we being our politicians making the rules; and our non-politicians who elected them.)
About 80% of what my TiVo records is animated.
Of course others view this as a sign of
immaturity but there is one simple fact about Futurama, Simpsons, Venture Bros.,
Family Guy, etc.:
None of them have (or need) a laugh track.
They are so well written and acted that they stand on their own.
All of the other weekly, live comedy shows require a
laughtrack because, honestly and simply, they aren't funny. Because of this, I find them insulting and completely non-entertaining. I stopped watching them all years and years ago.
The workplace doesn't need to regulate itself.
Nor do we need unions or government to regulate
it for us.
All we have to do is start choosing to regulate
our own environment. You don't like it? Fine,
quit; find another environment, create your own
enivronment. You'll probably be more successfull
in either case.
A girl I know keeps working in bad jobs for
unfair bosses doing project management for the construction trade. She provides exceptional
customer satisfaction and competency. She just
switched jobs again; what she should have done
was started her own contracting company and
buried the competition.
Again, I'm now stupified as to why we persist
in maintaining bad relationships. Are we that
desperate to obtain our validation and self worth
from external sources? (And yes, I used to in
a variety of relationship types. At least I
fixed the career.)
Regulate yourself; don't count on anybody else
to do it for you because no one else (Except maybe your
mother) has *your* best interests as their
agenda; nor do they accurately know what you need. (And I would argue that your monther
doesn't either.)
I haven't bothered to read the other posts
because I think the solution to your situation
is simple:
You don't want to burn any bridges. But you
can't control other people and your boss has
already burnt the bridge.
Since there is no bridge left; simply leave.
Tell him that because of his recent unreasonable
behavior that you have decided not to
complete working for the remaining time
period that you agreed to under other circumstances. Your boss has solved your bridge
issue for you.
You are afraid of impending consequences as
described by your boss (lack of being provided
final pay). I think the legal system solves
this problem for you...
IANAL:
Extortion is a threat given by another party
to divest you of money or property unless
some [undesirable] action is taken.
If he theatened not to pay you your final check
that is extortion. You already
own that money since it is pay due for time you
already worked (unless he pays you ahead of
time; which I highly doubt). When he threatens
you again to withold pay tell him that you, as
of that moment, are suing him for extortion and
that your lawyer will contact his. Thank him
for providing you with the opportunity to own
his company.
He will back down, you will get your final check
because he legal owes that to you. (If you
agreed to work another two weeks and don't
complete that period then of course he doesn't
owe you the wages for the period you didn't
work.)
What you say? "He doesn't back down and you
go to court." Let's see how that goes...
You: Your honor I'm suing my ex-employer for
extortion because he threatened to
withhold my money if I didn't continue
to work for him.
Judge: Is this true?
Boss: I never said such a thing!
You: Then why haven't I been paid the money
you owe me?
Judge: Have you paid him the money you
owe him?
Boss: Umm.... no.
Judge: Why not?
Boss: Umm.... Because he won't work for me anymore?
Judge: I think we're done here.
Legal problem solved because either he now works
for you or the court orders him to pay you what
he owes you (plus court expenses, probably).
So simple:
He burned the bridge
He continues to add gasoline
He has attempted extortion.
He is crazy at times (by your definition)
You don't need any of that
You already have a replacement position.
Move on immediately.
My guess is that your boss has always been this
way (I doubt he all of the sudden turned into
this person unless he's had a stroke recently.)
I also would wager, that if you sat and thought
about it a bit, you always knew this and didn't
like it. So I'm surprised you remained for
seven years. Again, I'd say good job for
persevering; move on now.
Side note: I often wonder why employees become
attached emotionally to companies. Are we
projecting some sort of parent/child dependency
onto this non-personal relationship? The fact
is that companies don't become attached to you; there
is no reason for employees to become attached to
the company. Become attached to your girlfriend
(or boyfriend) and hobbies. Work is just something
you do to make money to make the other things
possible. It is possible to make your work and
hobbies the same; but this is rather rare.
I found being a technician (Sys/Security Admin)
to be devoid of any real respect.
Oh sure. People keep you around and rely on you because they need your magic but they don't "respect" you any more than they respect a wrench, screwdriver, or any other tool.
In fact, if they could, they would get rid of you. But they can't.
Real respect would be if they realized and acknowleged the amount of time it took for you to achieve your level expertise and the number of different systems, languages, applications and technologies that you had to master in order to be even marginally competent. But they think computers are just glorified calculators and that it's "easy" to do what you do; they just don't have the time or it's beneath them. It's got to be easy... how else could you have fixed the problem in less than 15 minutes?
Don't confuse "tolerate" with "respect". They're not the same; even when "tolerate" is masked in a smile of dependence. But from your recent experience it sounds like you are coming to learn this for yourself.
I was going to reply to the original parent but
all the replies were so good. I eventually caught
this one and I completely agree.
The idea of taxing somebody based on their income
is absolutely rediculous and insane. I have no
idea how it started because I sure as hell
wouldn't have let it happen.
I understand the need for taxes. I need a
military to protect my borders and I need certain
civil services such as police. These items cost
money and have to be funded some how.
But I think there are two realities completely
overlooked in our current tax code
There is a minimum amount of income that is required for a single person to survive. I
guess we generally call this the poverty level.
I think it must cost a fixed amount per
person to provide military, police water and
other civil services
Both of these items are based on the idea that
all men are created equal. As such they should
pay (and play) an equal share in their governance.
Why can't the tax code just simply be:
(income < x)?$0.00:$y.yy?
The idea that rich people should pay more is
a total load of crap. And this poster is right
in that the cost does eventually get paid by the
little guys.
But rich people also shouldn't be able to
influence votes and legislation any more than
those who have less.
If you also get a graduate degree in psyciatry
then you can provide yourself therapy to help
cope with all the idiots out there that don't
have aclue about the level of expertise or value
of the skills you learned for your first
degree.
Because as we all know... The military has always
had first access to all technology (especially
the dangerous kinds). We've actually already been
extinct as a result of this for centuries.
Give me a break. Like this poster, anybody that
believes that the goal of a military is to wipe
out humanity is an idiot with exceptionally
poor analytical skills and an even worse
understanding of human psychology and security.
Simple people driven by nothing more than their
unfounded fears.
any motorcycle pretty much kicks the crap out of any
automobile for gas milage. (also on insurance, purchase and maintenance costs.)
Of course the downside is the rather harsh, negative
statistical impact it has on one's life
expectancy.
But then you also get to go 0-60 in less than 2
seconds on a pretty low-end cycle; so when you
die you had that going for you! (AND... you get
to feel good about yourself for checking the
donor box on your license!)
Here is a basic problem with companies: They view
programmers as a tool. A tool to produce a
product with which they can make money. A tool
that they can abuse and has no value beyond what that tool can produce as a
marketable product.
But what they fail to understand is that programmers
are artists. I believe that good programming expresses as much, or more, creativity, complexity and subtleties than any master
work. The majority of the value in what
programmers do is not in the payback it receives
but rather in the creativity that it expresses.
That is why free software exists. For the same
reason that their are lots of struggling artists
who perform their art for the purpose of self
fulfillment.
Programmers may suffer from the nature of their
art which renders itself invisible to the
common eye yet they gain from another aspect of
their art form which lends itself toward the
benefit of society by providing a practicle use
as well as self fulfillment.
I think that sums up what I believe to be the
"value" of free software.
Being from a family with a large density of "geeks"
I think I can give you some real advice about the sex related comments that have been bounced around here in a half joking/100% truth fashion.
There are reasons that geeks get their own
stereotype. We are overwhelmingly male and we
were generally not very popular growing up. (If
we had been we would not have had the time between
parties to read so many books and acquire a career's worth of knowledge before the age of
21. This means we appreciate women! They're
like gold (or maybe cocaine? anyways, something
addictive) to us.
That being said there are some realities to being
a geek that you should be aware of if you are
going to keep him and yourself happy.
When it comes to anything materialistic or
manufactured we generally know *exactly* what we
want. Make, model number, version number, size,
color, power rating; I mean we know *exactly*. Anything else is
what we DIDN'T want.
We also know exactly where to get it at
the best price.
We generally make a crap load of money and
have been doing so since college or earlier.
Since we know what we want and we have
mon-nay we always buy what we want when we want
it. Forget the waiting around for a holiday or
loved one to acquire what we want crap.
If something exists and we don't already
have it that's because either A) we don't want it. (period.) or B) We really can't afford it (and neither can you; remember: you and your geek are
a team).
You are losing if you buy us something and
it's not what we wanted. You will generally
have an impossible time guessing the reasons as
to why we do or do not want something. It just
results in something that we didn't really want, bought at the wrong place for too much money. And then we have the guilt over having to be nice to
you for something we didn't want and then going
and buying what we wanted anyways.
We generally have had, and continue to have,
a rough time obtaining NON-materialistic items
such as sex or Bjs. I mean we *are* still geeks; we are not at the top of lists for strippers, prom queens or pornstars to date.
So the result of this: Don't bother buying us
anything materialistic; you'll just miss the
mark. (with the exception of
something provacative that you're going to
wear).
But NEVER forget the following gifts:
Birthday sex (yours and ours)
Valentine's Sex.
Christmas Sex.
Anniversary Sex.
Any other sex (you don't have to wait
for an official holiday; you can make up crazy
holidays as well. Trust me. He won't mind. In
fact, beware, he will probably keep track of the holidays you created and publish a new professional, glossy, full sized annual calendar and hang it on the wall every year and expect gift giving again. We have the technology.)
Play to his needs; don't try to compete with
the materialistic. If he's a geek he probably
doesn't need or want anything else that you can
buy him. He will, however, love sex. Its the
perfect gift for a geek. Don't ignore the jokes
on this topic regarding sex; they're really
sensitive truths couched in humor to protect us.
The original poster's, or affected student's, argument of... "The student
doesn't make any money from the use of his intellectual property" (paraphrased) is crap.
Too bad!! There is no law that says just because you
created something and gave it away you must get money for it. Unless there exists an original contract between the parties that promised such payment. Which there wasn't such a contract in this case. Just a whiney student's immature wishes and subsequent tantrum.
First off: The professor CAN do what he did and make
it a requirement that all student's work be submitted to anywhere and in any manner he wishes. If the students fail to adhere to the rules (as arbitrary as they might be) then zeros CAN be given. If the student finds the instructor's policies unacceptable then they can always take the class with a different instructor, take a different class entirely or even switch major or institution.
But actually the reality is that the student does sort of get a payment for his work. Its called a grade. If he accumulates enough decent grades we award them a bonus called a degree and that is one very, very valuable asset for younger people these days.
This is not about "fairness" to provide students with only policies they like. Come on... All of us had more than one professor in our academic career that we found to be unfair, biased or just a plain jerk with stupid policies. Just because we didn't like the policies didn't mean they got repealed or changed. There is no law mandating student's approval every policy that they are subject to. Besides what jobs do you know that enforce only policies that the employees like? If they did then every company would go bankrupt in two weeks. (See Dilbert's "flextime" fiasco).
And if you want to talk about "fair" is it fair to hobble instructor's ability to catch cheaters? (And let me tell you, they exist in large quantities). No, because there are students that actually make the effort to do the work and they are not being treated fairly if other lazy, unethical students who cheat and cannot be caught are awarded the same privileges. This fairness is of far, far more importance.
Yes. I am a university faculty member. Cheating is a big problem. maybe because degrees are so essential to success these days and effort seems to be on a decline. The Internet and modern technology has provided cheaters with resources and methods that are nearly impossible for instructors to thwart. There is nothing wrong with what the
instructor in the news item did. The student, if they don't like it, can cry all they want. Or they could mature a little bit. I would suggest the latter as being the more productive and successful solution.
However, I will backup the argument in favor of
the student if the instructor failed to: 1) explain in the course syllabus that submitted works will be filed with the anti-plagiarism service or that other, non-specific anti-cheating methods would apply to submitted works; or 2) The instuctor verbally explained, clearly during lecture that this policy was being enacted and why. (And then I would even allow that this explanation should have been given prior to the last day allowed to students to withdraw from the course without receiving a grade a "F").
Pick on my grammar all you want; I'm not an English professor.;-)
If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over
Now I'm not real old but I do remember using the internet in the late eighties. It was free AND I didn't have to see stupid banner ads on anything.
My mail got to where I sent it free. I got all the news I could handle for free. I could download all
files I wanted for free (yes you could even get pr0n for free.) You could even play multiplayer, online games for free.
So what makes you think that the absence of banner ads will kill the "Free Internet"? It was around before banner ads were and it was free and alive then. It will be in the future as well.
I said that *publishers* think themselves God; not authors. I'll be the first to say that I believe in author's rights. Publishers are leeches that in the past provided the service of printing, binding and distributing ideas. These tasks were all too difficult and expensive for authors of ideas to bear the burden and cost of doing it themselves.
What publishers fail to recognize is that their entire industry is totally obsolete now and that they no longer provide a service worth charging the outrageous fees that they do while stealing credit for ideas. What use to take hundreds of people and millions of dollars of equipment to distribute a copyright material can now be done by any single person with a small amount of knowledge.
I support authors like Mr. Elison who actually drag the publishers on the carpet when they violate his rights. Unfortunately not enough people do this. We, as a society, need to basically abandon the outdated concept of centralized publishers and take back control and rights to our own ideas.
Summary: Authors=good; Publishers=bad. Just as in the original post.
As for your ideas falling from the sky for free: This has nothing to do with publishers at all. Its up to us to develop a de-centralized method for securely distributing content. I'm not a Microsoft fan at all but they're on the right track with Windows XP. With their "activation" requirements for new products they could pretty much simply give the CDs away for free or publish them via BitTorrent.
I'm not suggesting that everybody think they can simply copy and use everything without paying for it. I just think we need to start paying the authors who had the idea and stop paying the publishers who simply act as though they came up with it on their own while lining their pockets with cash and building up war chests to protect intellectual property rights that I don't think they should be entitled to but that they have duped most of the world into believing they should have (for now at least.)
The author's guild may *think* the publishers don't have the right to do this but...
As far as publishers are concerned they think they are God.
Here's how the publishing world works: Publishers don't actually create anything. Due to today's technology they don't even provide a needed service. But publishers think they own, and created, every piece of thought in the world and that without them we would all be in the dark ages still. They also put on a good show pretending that they are out to protect the rights and income of the material's real creators.
But its all bullsh*t. Just look at our favorite publishers the RIAA and MPAA.
What is the author's guild going to do? Litigation? Publishers have all the money and until we change society enough so that we no longer tley on third party publishers they will continue to win all of the court battles brought against them.
It looks like everyone uses NavTech data for all of these in car navigation systems.
I was wondering if the data on the CDs you buy from NavTech is actually available in a handy electronic form for free?
It just seems like linux is missing a really cool opportunity to cash in on the embedded navigation market but doesn't seem to be doing so and I was wondering if this is because we can't get any access to decent electronic roadmap data without significant cost or NDAs.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it does seem soo.
Actually, The religious right (at least christianity, which is what is commonly referred to as "religious right") have a 1600 year history of being SPECIFICALLY anti-science. Beginning around the rise of emperor Constantine, Anti-science and blind faith in divinity was the rule and entire underpinnings of christian belief and led to the abysmal 1100-ish year period known as the dark ages. The greek philosopher Hypatia was brutally murdered by a christian mob for her steadfast belief in scientific principals. I'd say that, in addition to centuries of equally brutal acts in the name of god, is a convincing argument that religion has had (and still has) a strong anti-science agenda.
You are ignorant to belive that religion has nothing to do with this. Don't mix your religion with my politics or science. (actually, I'd rather you not mix either your religion OR politics with my science.)
I weep to think what this world could be at this point in time if the scientific and intellectual principals held by the greek philosophers, such as Galen, Aristotle and Hypatia, had been allowed to continue uninterrupted instead of being crushed by religious ignorance.
I think Hypatia would disagree with you.
Please don't mix your religion with my science or polictics.
Beyond what the other posters have commented about the rigor of engineering there is another truth... K-12 should be looked at as a possible cause of Mr. Kern's failure. He's a classic example of "But I always excelled at school! it must be somebody else's fault I'm failing now!" K-12 is dumbed down to the point of uselessness. A grand 13 year social party for parents to drop their kids off at and give up responsibility for them. Nobody can be held back a year for failing to master content (I know; I have a friend who is a k-12 teacher and eventually gave up because principals and administrators kept preventing her from doing so.) The result is that I see a lot of students who, once they take the math placement test, wind up in remedial math before they can take calc1 and calc2. Do you know what remedial math is? Algebra! ninth grade algebra. You've got A(B+C)=AB+AC type stuff!
This is a total failure of k-12. Many college students cannot handle basic math when they finish k-12. Many students cannot even write properly. We have students who can't point to Mexico on a map. I have students who use "are" and "our" interchangeably!! It's really sad to me. I want to teach my students good programming skills and problem solving and prepare them for reasonably high paying careers with good job stability but I'm hobbled by having to correct all the "self-esteem" mistakes made in k-12.
Utter crap such as "standardised testing is bad or inaccurate", "the emotional damage a student suffers from failing is more important than honest evaluation." or "There are no truly right or wrong answers", etc... This is all the same crap promoted by intellectually weak individuals under the reign of Constantine et al. that led to the dark ages and halted nearly all of our progress for one thousand four hundred years.
To all of my art and music teachers, none of which I remember telling me I was good at either: Thank you! I like art and music; but the truth is I suck at making either and I know that because of their honest evaluations. But give me a computer, some paper, a pencil and tools and I can build the world.
(besides, I like the artistic beauty intrinsic to a well written program or an elegant bridge just as much, or maybe more than, any painting. It's just not something that most people can recognize.)
"I didn't learn C# in Comp Science but I could learn it in an afternoon.." I'm a young guy (22) and I've been programing professionally for nearly four years and I can tell you that this is simply false. Make no mistake about it, I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another ten years.
I think your statement here sums everything up nicely in favor of university degrees. You don't have such a degree, you can't learn new languages fast, can't recognize that ability in others and after four years you're still not an expert at the one language you do know and use daily.
Aside from the exaggeration of "[one] afternoon" which I agree is insufficient. You believe it's impossible because you yourself are unable to accomplish it due to your limited vocational training. Then you falsely project your own limitations on to others. As other posters have replied: yes. with a well grounded backround in theory and fundamentals it is possible to pick up yet another language in a very compressed period of time. (Though some of us benefit from an advantage in age over you.)
I have been proficient in the past with Fortran, Pascal, Modula-2, LISP and various assembly languages. I am currently proficient in Perl and shell and an expert in C, C++ and Java. (not trying to brag, a lot of /.ers have similar, or larger, skill sets and will relate to the rapid shifts in technologies that result in such sets.) The last job I took
up required teaching advanced data structures in Java; a language I hadn't touched before the first day of class. Within one week I was productive in the language, within two proficient and within a month I was expert and using most of the advanced features of the language. I can't count the number of times my employment positions have put me in such a position where the programming requirements of the job have changed abruptly. I have always been ready to adapt to the challenge in a very, very short time frame and I believe this is due to my university-based education. I'm not afraid to change jobs or be fired because I know I can adapt and be valuable and productive in any new environment.
Here's two more examples:
- Never during my education in CS did I expect to become a programmer and systems administrator for a Nortel phone system. But it did happen. I was ready for it and saved my company a lot of money in consulting fees because a dedicated technician didn't have to be called in to fix little issues.
- Second example: One of my students obtained a job with an aerospace company and it was my responsibility to monitor them for a year to make sure everybody was happy with the arrangement. I asked what they were working on and they replied "debugging HPL programs. I've never even heard of HPL! How am I suppose to know this?". I said "neither have I. How are you doing at it". They said "Fine."
They were "fine" because they had the necessary theory fundamentals squared away. I would trust this student to pick up anything new and previously unknown in a short time period. In general, I would trust university educated people to have this adaptability more than vocationally trained peopl.I'm really sorry for all the excellent, creative problem solvers you turned away because of your bias towards a single answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer (in any context) and doesn't, in itself, indicate an unworthy candidate. "I don't know; but I can learn it real fast" can indicate a truly flexible, useful person. Your loss; not the candidates.
Are you nuts?!? The real challenge is *true* competition. I live in the middle of San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. It's one of the most densly populated urban areas in the nation. Housing as far as the eye can see and lots of well established businesses. It's about as far from "rural" as you can get.
Yet I can't get cheap broadband. DSL doesn't work because my copper pairs are pure garbage and can't hold a signal. Cable costs $45/mo without a static ip. If I pay $80/mo then I can get a static but I also get only 1/5 (yes, that's right 20%) of the speed of the DHCP service.
"rural" is not an issue with broadband. However, the fact that the government paid to build the copper pair and cable infrastructure and then was stupid enough to "sell" the public infrastructure to private industries was the dumbest move anybody ever made.
Now the Bells (+verizon) and the cable companies are monopolies that have absolutely no incentive what so ever to provide a decent service at a decent price. There is no competition at all. Yeah, yeah Cox, Adelphia and Time Warner all sell the same product. But there is no competition because they all agreed not to compete. So you get a choice of one and even if you hate them you can't turn to anybody and say "hey, I hate Adelphia; I'd like to purchase my service from Cox". Just can't be done. Same thing with the Bells. The closest thing to competition was the introduction of DSL. But even there the phone companies were forced by regulation to lease central office space and access to copper pairs but nobody said anything about regulating the price. So the bells all said: "yea, we'll rent you our infrastructure" (but for so much of the DSL companies' profits that the bells *knew* the DSL companies wouldn't be able to turn a profit and would eventually go under. Then the bells could all go: "Hey, we noticed you're bankrupt and you have all that useless equipment in our telco closets; mind if we buy it from you for next to nothing?" And bam: now only the bells and verizon *really* sell DSL service. The other DSL providers are third party resellers now.
And now even that will get squeezed out with the new FCC ruling that states that the bells don't have to share their equipment with DSL providers. So bye, bye third party DSL.
If you think being "rural" is what is holding back this country's domination of national information infrastructures then you're insane. It's all bad politics and legislation being made by idiots who are completely ignorant of the technology they are regulating.
We did the interstate roads right. You can drive from one end of the nation to the other for free (Or close enough to it) and that infrastructure provides nearly all the in nation shipping bandwidth to enable our gross national product. The current need for cheap, nationwide broadband is analgous to the need for cheap, reliable nationawide transportation at the turn of last century. But none of the politicians realize this and so you will be getting your X-rays, programming and information processing being done overseas.
Personally, I welcome our new overseas overlords because they are obviously smarter than we are. (we being our politicians making the rules; and our non-politicians who elected them.)
Go read up on "fair use": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Nice.
All of the other weekly, live comedy shows require a laughtrack because, honestly and simply, they aren't funny. Because of this, I find them insulting and completely non-entertaining. I stopped watching them all years and years ago.
All we have to do is start choosing to regulate our own environment. You don't like it? Fine, quit; find another environment, create your own enivronment. You'll probably be more successfull in either case.
A girl I know keeps working in bad jobs for unfair bosses doing project management for the construction trade. She provides exceptional customer satisfaction and competency. She just switched jobs again; what she should have done was started her own contracting company and buried the competition.
Again, I'm now stupified as to why we persist in maintaining bad relationships. Are we that desperate to obtain our validation and self worth from external sources? (And yes, I used to in a variety of relationship types. At least I fixed the career.)
Regulate yourself; don't count on anybody else to do it for you because no one else (Except maybe your mother) has *your* best interests as their agenda; nor do they accurately know what you need. (And I would argue that your monther doesn't either.)
You don't want to burn any bridges. But you can't control other people and your boss has already burnt the bridge.
Since there is no bridge left; simply leave. Tell him that because of his recent unreasonable behavior that you have decided not to complete working for the remaining time period that you agreed to under other circumstances. Your boss has solved your bridge issue for you.
You are afraid of impending consequences as described by your boss (lack of being provided final pay). I think the legal system solves this problem for you...
IANAL: Extortion is a threat given by another party to divest you of money or property unless some [undesirable] action is taken.
If he theatened not to pay you your final check that is extortion. You already own that money since it is pay due for time you already worked (unless he pays you ahead of time; which I highly doubt). When he threatens you again to withold pay tell him that you, as of that moment, are suing him for extortion and that your lawyer will contact his. Thank him for providing you with the opportunity to own his company.
He will back down, you will get your final check because he legal owes that to you. (If you agreed to work another two weeks and don't complete that period then of course he doesn't owe you the wages for the period you didn't work.)
What you say? "He doesn't back down and you go to court." Let's see how that goes...
- You: Your honor I'm suing my ex-employer for
extortion because he threatened to
withhold my money if I didn't continue
to work for him.
- Judge: Is this true?
- Boss: I never said such a thing!
- You: Then why haven't I been paid the money
you owe me?
- Judge: Have you paid him the money you
owe him?
- Boss: Umm.... no.
- Judge: Why not?
- Boss: Umm.... Because he won't work for me anymore?
- Judge: I think we're done here.
Legal problem solved because either he now works for you or the court orders him to pay you what he owes you (plus court expenses, probably).So simple:
- He burned the bridge
- He continues to add gasoline
- He has attempted extortion.
- He is crazy at times (by your definition)
- You don't need any of that
- You already have a replacement position.
- Move on immediately.
My guess is that your boss has always been this way (I doubt he all of the sudden turned into this person unless he's had a stroke recently.) I also would wager, that if you sat and thought about it a bit, you always knew this and didn't like it. So I'm surprised you remained for seven years. Again, I'd say good job for persevering; move on now.Side note: I often wonder why employees become attached emotionally to companies. Are we projecting some sort of parent/child dependency onto this non-personal relationship? The fact is that companies don't become attached to you; there is no reason for employees to become attached to the company. Become attached to your girlfriend (or boyfriend) and hobbies. Work is just something you do to make money to make the other things possible. It is possible to make your work and hobbies the same; but this is rather rare.
Oh sure. People keep you around and rely on you because they need your magic but they don't "respect" you any more than they respect a wrench, screwdriver, or any other tool.
In fact, if they could, they would get rid of you. But they can't.
Real respect would be if they realized and acknowleged the amount of time it took for you to achieve your level expertise and the number of different systems, languages, applications and technologies that you had to master in order to be even marginally competent. But they think computers are just glorified calculators and that it's "easy" to do what you do; they just don't have the time or it's beneath them. It's got to be easy... how else could you have fixed the problem in less than 15 minutes?
Don't confuse "tolerate" with "respect". They're not the same; even when "tolerate" is masked in a smile of dependence. But from your recent experience it sounds like you are coming to learn this for yourself.
The idea of taxing somebody based on their income is absolutely rediculous and insane. I have no idea how it started because I sure as hell wouldn't have let it happen.
I understand the need for taxes. I need a military to protect my borders and I need certain civil services such as police. These items cost money and have to be funded some how.
But I think there are two realities completely overlooked in our current tax code
- There is a minimum amount of income that is required for a single person to survive. I
guess we generally call this the poverty level.
- I think it must cost a fixed amount per
person to provide military, police water and
other civil services
Both of these items are based on the idea that all men are created equal. As such they should pay (and play) an equal share in their governance.Why can't the tax code just simply be: (income < x)?$0.00:$y.yy?
The idea that rich people should pay more is a total load of crap. And this poster is right in that the cost does eventually get paid by the little guys. But rich people also shouldn't be able to influence votes and legislation any more than those who have less.
If you also get a graduate degree in psyciatry then you can provide yourself therapy to help cope with all the idiots out there that don't have aclue about the level of expertise or value of the skills you learned for your first degree.
Give me a break. Like this poster, anybody that believes that the goal of a military is to wipe out humanity is an idiot with exceptionally poor analytical skills and an even worse understanding of human psychology and security. Simple people driven by nothing more than their unfounded fears.
Of course the downside is the rather harsh, negative statistical impact it has on one's life expectancy.
But then you also get to go 0-60 in less than 2 seconds on a pretty low-end cycle; so when you die you had that going for you! (AND... you get to feel good about yourself for checking the donor box on your license!)
ima wa nihongo o nara ni iku n da.
I mean its got a handle and looks like a purse. A printer for women = another purse.
Actually, I can't say that I'm surprised by this.
But what they fail to understand is that programmers are artists. I believe that good programming expresses as much, or more, creativity, complexity and subtleties than any master work. The majority of the value in what programmers do is not in the payback it receives but rather in the creativity that it expresses.
That is why free software exists. For the same reason that their are lots of struggling artists who perform their art for the purpose of self fulfillment.
Programmers may suffer from the nature of their art which renders itself invisible to the common eye yet they gain from another aspect of their art form which lends itself toward the benefit of society by providing a practicle use as well as self fulfillment.
I think that sums up what I believe to be the "value" of free software.
There are reasons that geeks get their own stereotype. We are overwhelmingly male and we were generally not very popular growing up. (If we had been we would not have had the time between parties to read so many books and acquire a career's worth of knowledge before the age of 21. This means we appreciate women! They're like gold (or maybe cocaine? anyways, something addictive) to us.
That being said there are some realities to being a geek that you should be aware of if you are going to keep him and yourself happy.
When it comes to anything materialistic or manufactured we generally know *exactly* what we want. Make, model number, version number, size, color, power rating; I mean we know *exactly*. Anything else is what we DIDN'T want.
We also know exactly where to get it at the best price.
We generally make a crap load of money and have been doing so since college or earlier.
Since we know what we want and we have mon-nay we always buy what we want when we want it. Forget the waiting around for a holiday or loved one to acquire what we want crap.
If something exists and we don't already have it that's because either A) we don't want it. (period.) or B) We really can't afford it (and neither can you; remember: you and your geek are a team).
You are losing if you buy us something and it's not what we wanted. You will generally have an impossible time guessing the reasons as to why we do or do not want something. It just results in something that we didn't really want, bought at the wrong place for too much money. And then we have the guilt over having to be nice to you for something we didn't want and then going and buying what we wanted anyways.
We generally have had, and continue to have, a rough time obtaining NON-materialistic items such as sex or Bjs. I mean we *are* still geeks; we are not at the top of lists for strippers, prom queens or pornstars to date.
So the result of this: Don't bother buying us anything materialistic; you'll just miss the mark. (with the exception of something provacative that you're going to wear).But NEVER forget the following gifts:
Birthday sex (yours and ours)
Valentine's Sex.
Christmas Sex.
Anniversary Sex.
Any other sex (you don't have to wait for an official holiday; you can make up crazy holidays as well. Trust me. He won't mind. In fact, beware, he will probably keep track of the holidays you created and publish a new professional, glossy, full sized annual calendar and hang it on the wall every year and expect gift giving again. We have the technology.)
Play to his needs; don't try to compete with the materialistic. If he's a geek he probably doesn't need or want anything else that you can buy him. He will, however, love sex. Its the perfect gift for a geek. Don't ignore the jokes on this topic regarding sex; they're really sensitive truths couched in humor to protect us.Too bad!! There is no law that says just because you created something and gave it away you must get money for it. Unless there exists an original contract between the parties that promised such payment. Which there wasn't such a contract in this case. Just a whiney student's immature wishes and subsequent tantrum.
First off: The professor CAN do what he did and make it a requirement that all student's work be submitted to anywhere and in any manner he wishes. If the students fail to adhere to the rules (as arbitrary as they might be) then zeros CAN be given. If the student finds the instructor's policies unacceptable then they can always take the class with a different instructor, take a different class entirely or even switch major or institution.
But actually the reality is that the student does sort of get a payment for his work. Its called a grade. If he accumulates enough decent grades we award them a bonus called a degree and that is one very, very valuable asset for younger people these days.
This is not about "fairness" to provide students with only policies they like. Come on... All of us had more than one professor in our academic career that we found to be unfair, biased or just a plain jerk with stupid policies. Just because we didn't like the policies didn't mean they got repealed or changed. There is no law mandating student's approval every policy that they are subject to. Besides what jobs do you know that enforce only policies that the employees like? If they did then every company would go bankrupt in two weeks. (See Dilbert's "flextime" fiasco).
And if you want to talk about "fair" is it fair to hobble instructor's ability to catch cheaters? (And let me tell you, they exist in large quantities). No, because there are students that actually make the effort to do the work and they are not being treated fairly if other lazy, unethical students who cheat and cannot be caught are awarded the same privileges. This fairness is of far, far more importance.
Yes. I am a university faculty member. Cheating is a big problem. maybe because degrees are so essential to success these days and effort seems to be on a decline. The Internet and modern technology has provided cheaters with resources and methods that are nearly impossible for instructors to thwart. There is nothing wrong with what the instructor in the news item did. The student, if they don't like it, can cry all they want. Or they could mature a little bit. I would suggest the latter as being the more productive and successful solution.
However, I will backup the argument in favor of the student if the instructor failed to: 1) explain in the course syllabus that submitted works will be filed with the anti-plagiarism service or that other, non-specific anti-cheating methods would apply to submitted works; or 2) The instuctor verbally explained, clearly during lecture that this policy was being enacted and why. (And then I would even allow that this explanation should have been given prior to the last day allowed to students to withdraw from the course without receiving a grade a "F").
Pick on my grammar all you want; I'm not an English professor. ;-)
Now I'm not real old but I do remember using the internet in the late eighties. It was free AND I didn't have to see stupid banner ads on anything.
My mail got to where I sent it free. I got all the news I could handle for free. I could download all files I wanted for free (yes you could even get pr0n for free.) You could even play multiplayer, online games for free.
So what makes you think that the absence of banner ads will kill the "Free Internet"? It was around before banner ads were and it was free and alive then. It will be in the future as well.
I said that *publishers* think themselves God; not authors. I'll be the first to say that I believe in author's rights. Publishers are leeches that in the past provided the service of printing, binding and distributing ideas. These tasks were all too difficult and expensive for authors of ideas to bear the burden and cost of doing it themselves.
What publishers fail to recognize is that their entire industry is totally obsolete now and that they no longer provide a service worth charging the outrageous fees that they do while stealing credit for ideas. What use to take hundreds of people and millions of dollars of equipment to distribute a copyright material can now be done by any single person with a small amount of knowledge.
I support authors like Mr. Elison who actually drag the publishers on the carpet when they violate his rights. Unfortunately not enough people do this. We, as a society, need to basically abandon the outdated concept of centralized publishers and take back control and rights to our own ideas.
Summary: Authors=good; Publishers=bad. Just as in the original post.
As for your ideas falling from the sky for free: This has nothing to do with publishers at all. Its up to us to develop a de-centralized method for securely distributing content. I'm not a Microsoft fan at all but they're on the right track with Windows XP. With their "activation" requirements for new products they could pretty much simply give the CDs away for free or publish them via BitTorrent.
I'm not suggesting that everybody think they can simply copy and use everything without paying for it. I just think we need to start paying the authors who had the idea and stop paying the publishers who simply act as though they came up with it on their own while lining their pockets with cash and building up war chests to protect intellectual property rights that I don't think they should be entitled to but that they have duped most of the world into believing they should have (for now at least.)
As far as publishers are concerned they think they are God.
Here's how the publishing world works: Publishers don't actually create anything. Due to today's technology they don't even provide a needed service. But publishers think they own, and created, every piece of thought in the world and that without them we would all be in the dark ages still. They also put on a good show pretending that they are out to protect the rights and income of the material's real creators.
But its all bullsh*t. Just look at our favorite publishers the RIAA and MPAA. What is the author's guild going to do? Litigation? Publishers have all the money and until we change society enough so that we no longer tley on third party publishers they will continue to win all of the court battles brought against them.
I was wondering if the data on the CDs you buy from NavTech is actually available in a handy electronic form for free?
It just seems like linux is missing a really cool opportunity to cash in on the embedded navigation market but doesn't seem to be doing so and I was wondering if this is because we can't get any access to decent electronic roadmap data without significant cost or NDAs.