No, I'm not claiming that the poor are genetically inferior. I am claiming that being born poor puts you at a serious disadvantage compared to those born rich, even assuming identical genes.
For instance, poor kids are less likely to get proper medical care or dental care because their parents can't afford it. They're less likely to be taught to read before entering public school because their parents are too busy working overtime to take the time to teach them. Once they enter school, school personnel will tend to direct them towards lower tracks and will be much more likely to punish them for disciplinary infractions. In the later years of high school, if they haven't dropped out in order to support their families, they tend to be pushed into voc tech programs.
Basically, in an environment where every decision (and I mean every decision) is based on how to make ends meet financially right now, it's extremely difficult for a parent to get away from those necessities enough to be able to invest in their child.
To be clear, I myself am doing extremely well professionally compared to others my age. I'm not any of the people I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not sorry for myself in the least: I'm raking it in and worrying more about how to properly invest the savings than how to make ends meet.
How poor were you born? Seriously. Did your family ever survive via government assistance? Did you ever move frequently because your parent/guardian couldn't pay the rent? Was there a time when largest meal of the day was your government-supported school lunch? Believe me, I know what poor looks like: I never lived it, but I spent a lot of time with kids in all of these circumstances.
I'm not saying people can't overcome their circumstances. I'm saying they're the exception, not the rule, and that the answer of "they're stupid and lazy" seems to me to be a massive oversimplification.
No, I'm not saying they have the skills. I'm saying that the guys who work there could have learned the skills to be a developer or admin had they been born into circumstances where their parents could encourage their interest in computer hardware and software (with computers to work with in the home when they were 10, software development tools and classes when they were 12, and so on).
You pretty much decided to be poor. You decided not to be educated. You decided not to try to better yourself.
This is the great conservative myth, born in the 1970's under the auspices of Barry Goldwater and popularized by Ronald Reagan.
People don't decide to be poor. No one wakes up in the morning and says "I want to lose all my money and become broke". But the statistics don't lie: Either the vast majority of children of poor people are lazy, stupid, and unmotivated while the vast majority of children of wealthier people are smart, hardworking, and motivated, or there's some other factor at work.
For instance, in private colleges and universities it is not uncommon to find children from wealthy families who have a hard time writing at a 6th grade level. Explain that via personal decision-making. In your typical Best Buy you can and will find people who with a bit of training could have become darn good developers and admins, but the best they can manage is working overtime for the Geek Squad to make ends meet. Explain that via personal decision-making. Or for that matter, explain someone who works at my company answering customer service calls while earning a 2-year degree in web development, got that degree, and still is answering the phones for a living.
Even in Horatio Adler stories, being smart and motivated wasn't enough. The hero usually needed quite a bit of luck, and a benefactor of some kind.
But yes, one of the many causes of Hurricane Katrina was short-termism and a "cut government spending" ideology that led to underfunding of essential maintenance of levees, bridges and other not-so-glamorous infrastructure in many parts of the country.
A government-run organization that works as well as a private one: US Postal Service.
Seriously. Those guys move tons of stuff around the US every day, and significant portions of daily business would grind to a halt if they stopped. Think about it: for around 50 cents, you can send something from Maine to California and expect it to arrive within a few days. They make extensive use of OCR, have an extremely sophisticated sorting and routing system, and are in many ways more efficient than FedEx or UPS (for instance, FedEx will route packages through Memphis while USPS will send them more directly).
I am the very model of a Pirate Finder General I've information that makes me extrem-ely tyrranical For studios and patent trolls I infringe upon the people's rights And make sure that these practices will never really come to light. Creative use of copyrights and patents and all trademark laws Ensures that all will pay to watch another re-release of Jaws. To plug all analog holes is the highest honor I can reach So stop whistling that music in Phil Glass's Einstein on the Beach.
[I'm done for the moment, but feel free to add your own verses]
As a polytheist myself, I have to say that does give you a fair amount of freedom that monotheism doesn't.
First off, when different polytheistic cultures met up with each other, they frequently exchanged religious ideas, even if they were fighting each other. They recognized that it was quite possible that different cultures were either worshipping the same gods in a different way, or maybe had encountered different gods. The conversation might involve a Greek guy explaining Hermes to a Roman, and the Roman saying "Oh, we know about that god, but we call him Mercury". Julius Caesar tried to describe the faith of the Gauls as well, despite trying to kill them. The fighting was almost invariably for political ends rather than religious.
Secondly, polytheism allows for interests to compete with each other without one of them being evil. For instance, let's say one faction wants a city to focus on creating a better irrigation system so the harvest can be larger, while another faction wants to focus on building strong defenses in case a neighboring city attacks. Which side is evil? Probably neither. In a polytheistic environment, an agricultural god is motivating the first group, and a warfare god is motivating the second group, and they're competing interests, but both motivated by decent people. In a monotheistic environment, what's more likely to happen is that the chief priest of the city will say "God says to work on building strong defenses" and all of a sudden that becomes dogma for the faith, and anyone who doesn't agree with it is evil and subject to being repressed or at the very least looked down upon.
Here's the fundamental difference between Scientology (and a lot of dangerous cults) and real religions (established or otherwise): Walk up to a member of the clergy or lay leader, and ask them the fundamental tenants of what they believe. Any real religion will rattle off a few tenants, point you to some literature and/or holy books, explain the nature of their rituals and public services, and so forth. The point is to spread the ideas as much as possible, and they'll welcome the opportunity to do so. This is true whether you're talking to a Christian minister, a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, a Voudoun priest, a Wiccan priestess, or Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius.
With a cult, if you walk up to the clergy and lay leader, they'll change the discussion from an evaluation of their faith to an evaluation of you. For Scientologists, that's what the initial auditing process is about. Instead of giving you the information you need to decide whether the faith is worthy of your support, they collect information to decide whether you are worthy of the faith. And since people don't like to see themselves as failures (as a general rule), many folks will react to this by trying to prove themselves worthy. And in the often complex process of proving themselves worthy, they will commit themselves more and more fully to the cult, without really knowing what they're getting into.
Well, that for sure makes things a lot more sensible, and it demonstrates a difference between law as practiced in the UK versus the US, where that sort of loophole would probably get upheld.
the theory being that it's easy to know when the Prince of Wales carks it
Of course, in practice, it would be really challenging to know when the Prince of Wales carks it, because periodically the Prince of Wales becomes the King of England, and one of his sons becomes Prince of Wales. There are in fact only 4 Princes of Wales that died while holding that title (Edward the Black Prince, Arthur Tudor, Henry Stuart, Frederick Louis). In other words, those trusts could be around a lot longer than intended, unless they were listed as basing the timing off of when the current Prince of Wales carks it.
See, I've always looked at meetings primarily as a way for project managers who have no technical work to do on the project to feel like they're doing something.
In fact, this purpose explains the following relationship: Number of meetings per week = Stress level of project manager / Time remaining before project deadline
So early on, you can expect a kickoff and a couple of weekly status meetings. As the deadline begins to loom, suddenly you're looking at 2-3 meetings per day per developer, with many meetings getting called at the last minute. It makes the PM feel like they're doing what they can to make things happen quickly (even if it doesn't), and keeps them from having to face the reality that the project will be late, they can't do anything to prevent that, and they will be held responsible.
Often better than including the full explanation inline is: "Proof that this works can be found...". Yes, it's one more reference to look up, but some of the algorithms in, say, Knuth, are long and complex proofs that really will interrupt your code reading if included inline.
A lot of good comments answer one of these questions:
- Why couldn't this be simplified?
- What special case is this trying to handle?
- This looks weird. Why is it right?
- What expectations are we demanding from elsewhere in the code?
A situation where I find myself asking any of those questions and no comment is present can be nightmarish.
At a time when the public hasn't gotten anything added to the public domain since the 1920's, the first thing they need is for valuable copyrights from the 50's, 60's, and 70's, much of which is still loved by music fans of all ages. Thankfully, the wheels are already in motion.... The Eagles plan to file grant termination notices by the end of the year.... 'It's going to happen,' said [an industry lawyer]. 'Just think of what the Eagles are doing when they get back their whole catalog. They don't need a record company now... You'll be able to go to Eagles.com (currently under construction) and get all their songs. They're going to do it; it's coming up.'...If the musicians' best strategy to make use copyright grants or renegotiating them at an extreme advantage, they're in for a quite lucrative ride.
Seriously, the summary would suggest that this is bad news. It's in fact good news for everyone but record companies.
There are some people, some of them in Congress even, that don't belong to the money party. The problem is that they are usually ignored and/or ridiculed. And by ridiculed, I mean getting questions about UFOs rather than health care plans.
First off, be aware that many graduates of 4-year colleges are also treated pretty badly due to the economy, possibilities of outsourcing, and so on. Because software developers actually produce new stuff, they are often seen as an annoyingly overpaid and slow set of bricklayers by areas of the business that focus on sales and statistical analysis. Admins of various stripes are often in the same place on the corporate hierarchy as janitors, regardless of what they're paid, and it shows.
What 4-year graduates often have that 2-year vocational graduates often don't: - Theory. They tend to know not only how to use a data structure, but how to make one from scratch, and why they are better under certain circumstances. They can build effective parsers and interpreters, know what data formats and algorithms will make things faster and easier, and can see and remove bottlenecks easily. - Exposure to lots of different styles of language and design ideas. A lot of 2-year schools will focus solely on one language (typically Java or C#), whereas a graduate of a good 4-year program has worked in those languages, but also in C, C++, a LISP variant or two, some scripting languages such as Perl or Python, and a few other things. - Database design. They're typically trained in E-R diagrams, normalization, indexing, and so on in a way that a lot of the 2-year schools skim over. - Strong English writing and speaking skills. Yes, those matter for developers, because a developer who can communicate well can explain their work to other developers, users, managers, and anyone else. That's a big part of why they get the perks: their bosses understand what they do.
It's not universal, there are exceptions, but that's the norm. And frankly, a good number of the 2-year private institutions are a bit disingenuous about what they're really selling you, trying to convince you that once you graduate you will be able to hold your own with MIT grads, which simply is untrue.
That's easy: when there is evidence that they committed a crime.
Goldman Sachs's behavior is probably completely legal (that doesn't mean it's morally right, just legal). Also, it's extremely unlikely that programmers working in the bowels of the big investment banks (GS, MS, BoA) are in on any lawbreaking that does occur.
It seems like these guys made several stupid mistakes: - Being loyal to Madoff et al once they knew what was going on. - Being willing to lie to the FBI and/or SEC. - Taking big bonuses to keep their mouth shut. - Staying in the country after the house of cards fell apart.
Slashdot Mirror
I call BS on your call of BS.
No, I'm not claiming that the poor are genetically inferior. I am claiming that being born poor puts you at a serious disadvantage compared to those born rich, even assuming identical genes.
For instance, poor kids are less likely to get proper medical care or dental care because their parents can't afford it. They're less likely to be taught to read before entering public school because their parents are too busy working overtime to take the time to teach them. Once they enter school, school personnel will tend to direct them towards lower tracks and will be much more likely to punish them for disciplinary infractions. In the later years of high school, if they haven't dropped out in order to support their families, they tend to be pushed into voc tech programs.
Basically, in an environment where every decision (and I mean every decision) is based on how to make ends meet financially right now, it's extremely difficult for a parent to get away from those necessities enough to be able to invest in their child.
To be clear, I myself am doing extremely well professionally compared to others my age. I'm not any of the people I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not sorry for myself in the least: I'm raking it in and worrying more about how to properly invest the savings than how to make ends meet.
How poor were you born? Seriously. Did your family ever survive via government assistance? Did you ever move frequently because your parent/guardian couldn't pay the rent? Was there a time when largest meal of the day was your government-supported school lunch? Believe me, I know what poor looks like: I never lived it, but I spent a lot of time with kids in all of these circumstances.
I'm not saying people can't overcome their circumstances. I'm saying they're the exception, not the rule, and that the answer of "they're stupid and lazy" seems to me to be a massive oversimplification.
No, I'm not saying they have the skills. I'm saying that the guys who work there could have learned the skills to be a developer or admin had they been born into circumstances where their parents could encourage their interest in computer hardware and software (with computers to work with in the home when they were 10, software development tools and classes when they were 12, and so on).
You pretty much decided to be poor. You decided not to be educated. You decided not to try to better yourself.
This is the great conservative myth, born in the 1970's under the auspices of Barry Goldwater and popularized by Ronald Reagan.
People don't decide to be poor. No one wakes up in the morning and says "I want to lose all my money and become broke". But the statistics don't lie: Either the vast majority of children of poor people are lazy, stupid, and unmotivated while the vast majority of children of wealthier people are smart, hardworking, and motivated, or there's some other factor at work.
For instance, in private colleges and universities it is not uncommon to find children from wealthy families who have a hard time writing at a 6th grade level. Explain that via personal decision-making. In your typical Best Buy you can and will find people who with a bit of training could have become darn good developers and admins, but the best they can manage is working overtime for the Geek Squad to make ends meet. Explain that via personal decision-making. Or for that matter, explain someone who works at my company answering customer service calls while earning a 2-year degree in web development, got that degree, and still is answering the phones for a living.
Even in Horatio Adler stories, being smart and motivated wasn't enough. The hero usually needed quite a bit of luck, and a benefactor of some kind.
funding for the flood control project essentially dried up
I think that one deserves a rim shot.
But yes, one of the many causes of Hurricane Katrina was short-termism and a "cut government spending" ideology that led to underfunding of essential maintenance of levees, bridges and other not-so-glamorous infrastructure in many parts of the country.
A government-run organization that works as well as a private one: US Postal Service.
Seriously. Those guys move tons of stuff around the US every day, and significant portions of daily business would grind to a halt if they stopped. Think about it: for around 50 cents, you can send something from Maine to California and expect it to arrive within a few days. They make extensive use of OCR, have an extremely sophisticated sorting and routing system, and are in many ways more efficient than FedEx or UPS (for instance, FedEx will route packages through Memphis while USPS will send them more directly).
I am the very model of a Pirate Finder General
I've information that makes me extrem-ely tyrranical
For studios and patent trolls I infringe upon the people's rights
And make sure that these practices will never really come to light.
Creative use of copyrights and patents and all trademark laws
Ensures that all will pay to watch another re-release of Jaws.
To plug all analog holes is the highest honor I can reach
So stop whistling that music in Phil Glass's Einstein on the Beach.
[I'm done for the moment, but feel free to add your own verses]
"That's it, you're all grounded!"
All of us "consumers". Notice how we aren't represented in the courtroom.
I think you're making a mistake there. These things aren't exactly medium-sized.
As a polytheist myself, I have to say that does give you a fair amount of freedom that monotheism doesn't.
First off, when different polytheistic cultures met up with each other, they frequently exchanged religious ideas, even if they were fighting each other. They recognized that it was quite possible that different cultures were either worshipping the same gods in a different way, or maybe had encountered different gods. The conversation might involve a Greek guy explaining Hermes to a Roman, and the Roman saying "Oh, we know about that god, but we call him Mercury". Julius Caesar tried to describe the faith of the Gauls as well, despite trying to kill them. The fighting was almost invariably for political ends rather than religious.
Secondly, polytheism allows for interests to compete with each other without one of them being evil. For instance, let's say one faction wants a city to focus on creating a better irrigation system so the harvest can be larger, while another faction wants to focus on building strong defenses in case a neighboring city attacks. Which side is evil? Probably neither. In a polytheistic environment, an agricultural god is motivating the first group, and a warfare god is motivating the second group, and they're competing interests, but both motivated by decent people. In a monotheistic environment, what's more likely to happen is that the chief priest of the city will say "God says to work on building strong defenses" and all of a sudden that becomes dogma for the faith, and anyone who doesn't agree with it is evil and subject to being repressed or at the very least looked down upon.
Here's the fundamental difference between Scientology (and a lot of dangerous cults) and real religions (established or otherwise): Walk up to a member of the clergy or lay leader, and ask them the fundamental tenants of what they believe. Any real religion will rattle off a few tenants, point you to some literature and/or holy books, explain the nature of their rituals and public services, and so forth. The point is to spread the ideas as much as possible, and they'll welcome the opportunity to do so. This is true whether you're talking to a Christian minister, a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, a Voudoun priest, a Wiccan priestess, or Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius.
With a cult, if you walk up to the clergy and lay leader, they'll change the discussion from an evaluation of their faith to an evaluation of you. For Scientologists, that's what the initial auditing process is about. Instead of giving you the information you need to decide whether the faith is worthy of your support, they collect information to decide whether you are worthy of the faith. And since people don't like to see themselves as failures (as a general rule), many folks will react to this by trying to prove themselves worthy. And in the often complex process of proving themselves worthy, they will commit themselves more and more fully to the cult, without really knowing what they're getting into.
Well, that for sure makes things a lot more sensible, and it demonstrates a difference between law as practiced in the UK versus the US, where that sort of loophole would probably get upheld.
In other words, the Internet is seeing copyright enforcement as damage and automatically routing around it.
the theory being that it's easy to know when the Prince of Wales carks it
Of course, in practice, it would be really challenging to know when the Prince of Wales carks it, because periodically the Prince of Wales becomes the King of England, and one of his sons becomes Prince of Wales. There are in fact only 4 Princes of Wales that died while holding that title (Edward the Black Prince, Arthur Tudor, Henry Stuart, Frederick Louis). In other words, those trusts could be around a lot longer than intended, unless they were listed as basing the timing off of when the current Prince of Wales carks it.
See, I've always looked at meetings primarily as a way for project managers who have no technical work to do on the project to feel like they're doing something.
In fact, this purpose explains the following relationship:
Number of meetings per week = Stress level of project manager / Time remaining before project deadline
So early on, you can expect a kickoff and a couple of weekly status meetings. As the deadline begins to loom, suddenly you're looking at 2-3 meetings per day per developer, with many meetings getting called at the last minute. It makes the PM feel like they're doing what they can to make things happen quickly (even if it doesn't), and keeps them from having to face the reality that the project will be late, they can't do anything to prevent that, and they will be held responsible.
Often better than including the full explanation inline is: "Proof that this works can be found ...". Yes, it's one more reference to look up, but some of the algorithms in, say, Knuth, are long and complex proofs that really will interrupt your code reading if included inline.
A lot of good comments answer one of these questions:
- Why couldn't this be simplified?
- What special case is this trying to handle?
- This looks weird. Why is it right?
- What expectations are we demanding from elsewhere in the code?
A situation where I find myself asking any of those questions and no comment is present can be nightmarish.
At a time when the public hasn't gotten anything added to the public domain since the 1920's, the first thing they need is for valuable copyrights from the 50's, 60's, and 70's, much of which is still loved by music fans of all ages. Thankfully, the wheels are already in motion. ... The Eagles plan to file grant termination notices by the end of the year.... 'It's going to happen,' said [an industry lawyer]. 'Just think of what the Eagles are doing when they get back their whole catalog. They don't need a record company now... You'll be able to go to Eagles.com (currently under construction) and get all their songs. They're going to do it; it's coming up.' ...If the musicians' best strategy to make use copyright grants or renegotiating them at an extreme advantage, they're in for a quite lucrative ride.
Seriously, the summary would suggest that this is bad news. It's in fact good news for everyone but record companies.
I'm confused. Which "good ole days" were you talking about? The ones in 1980, 1992, 2000, or 2008?
Wow, I didn't know Sarah Palin posted on /. Although I have to say, I'd want to see her in a Nascar outfit.
There are some people, some of them in Congress even, that don't belong to the money party. The problem is that they are usually ignored and/or ridiculed. And by ridiculed, I mean getting questions about UFOs rather than health care plans.
First off, be aware that many graduates of 4-year colleges are also treated pretty badly due to the economy, possibilities of outsourcing, and so on. Because software developers actually produce new stuff, they are often seen as an annoyingly overpaid and slow set of bricklayers by areas of the business that focus on sales and statistical analysis. Admins of various stripes are often in the same place on the corporate hierarchy as janitors, regardless of what they're paid, and it shows.
What 4-year graduates often have that 2-year vocational graduates often don't:
- Theory. They tend to know not only how to use a data structure, but how to make one from scratch, and why they are better under certain circumstances. They can build effective parsers and interpreters, know what data formats and algorithms will make things faster and easier, and can see and remove bottlenecks easily.
- Exposure to lots of different styles of language and design ideas. A lot of 2-year schools will focus solely on one language (typically Java or C#), whereas a graduate of a good 4-year program has worked in those languages, but also in C, C++, a LISP variant or two, some scripting languages such as Perl or Python, and a few other things.
- Database design. They're typically trained in E-R diagrams, normalization, indexing, and so on in a way that a lot of the 2-year schools skim over.
- Strong English writing and speaking skills. Yes, those matter for developers, because a developer who can communicate well can explain their work to other developers, users, managers, and anyone else. That's a big part of why they get the perks: their bosses understand what they do.
It's not universal, there are exceptions, but that's the norm. And frankly, a good number of the 2-year private institutions are a bit disingenuous about what they're really selling you, trying to convince you that once you graduate you will be able to hold your own with MIT grads, which simply is untrue.
I beg to differ: Micronesia is a collection of nice islands in the south Pacific. Think Hawaii, only without the American sense of modesty.
The one in my sig was an original when I put it in my sig, but honestly I haven't changed it in a long time.
That's easy: when there is evidence that they committed a crime.
Goldman Sachs's behavior is probably completely legal (that doesn't mean it's morally right, just legal). Also, it's extremely unlikely that programmers working in the bowels of the big investment banks (GS, MS, BoA) are in on any lawbreaking that does occur.
It seems like these guys made several stupid mistakes:
- Being loyal to Madoff et al once they knew what was going on.
- Being willing to lie to the FBI and/or SEC.
- Taking big bonuses to keep their mouth shut.
- Staying in the country after the house of cards fell apart.