No, you haven't. The answer to the first question is FDIC. The answer to your second and third questions is the FDA. There's no such regulatory agency for IT.
To quote a wonderfully silly film, The Gods Must Be Crazy:
Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But he didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier the more complicated he made it. Now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then, you have to look busy again. Your day is chopped into pieces. In each segment of time you adapt to new circumstances.... No wonder some people go off the rails a bit.
I'm not disagreeing with your main point: that the company's conduct was dishonest, illegal, etc. My point is that it would be incorrect to blame workers for being more-or-less forced by economic circumstances to work for a company who engages in that sort of behavior. My target is the libertarian argument that the workers are free to look elsewhere if they don't like it, by pointing out that the freedom to look elsewhere is very constrained by the survival needs of the candidate.
Look, people make mistakes. It happens. Especially when those people are gathered into large groups.
FTFY.
There are a bunch of reasons for that: mob mentality, political considerations, and being able to duck any responsibility for screwing up are definitely a part of that story though.
I think you guys have the wrong dystopia here: This isn't an Orwellian future that this sort of thing leads to, it's more of a Brave New World with perfectly customized soma for you.
Just about everybody here has been concentrating on how dishonest employees might be if they have a bad credit report, but where is the discussion about whether you would want to work for a company that, without question, broke the law in order to intrusively delve into your personal and legally protected information?
See, the question of whether you want to work for a particular company is often based on the question of whether you want to remain in your home and have food to eat. One of the basic problems with with employment negotiations is that there's a vast difference in negotiating power between an employee and a typical business (anything with more than about 3 employees): If the business can't reach an acceptable agreement with the potential employee, then they can just make everyone else work harder, or hire somebody else. If the candidate can't reach an agreement with the potential employer, for many people the options are moving themselves and their family to a new area, underemployment, or unemployment. Hence the fairly large body of federal and state law governing how employers can treat potential and current employees - it's an attempt to level the playing field a bit.
Actually, it would be incorrect to describe the bank bailouts as "socialism". If it had been socialism, the government would have taken over management of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, etc and/or turned them into giant credit unions instead of just giving them big piles of cash to pay out bonuses^H^H^H lend. A much better name for it would be "corporatism", which you can read all about in a biography of Mussolini. Or, as you correctly pointed out, "robbery".
A few weeks ago I unplugged my cable box as an experiment. You know, just to get an idea of what that would actually do to my life.
I did notice a difference. The difference was that I spent more of my time doing things that were actually rewarding, like reading the book I'd wanted to get to, learning to play a few pieces of music I'd been wanting to work on, and writing down my thoughts on life the universe and everything. In short, it's a lot better for me, for my eyes, for my health, and my sleep schedule.
So with the use of cable boxes to spy on me, it's time for me to get on the phone, get through arguing with the poor call center rep, and get rid of the problem for good.
(yes, I know it was used to discriminate in the past, but it would be VERY easy to ensure that did not happen in the future).
I beg to differ on your last point about how easy it would be to ensure non-discriminatory practices. Any politician who got elected with this system being used for discrimination would be motivated to sabotage or block any attempt to curb said discrimination, or appoint friends who will do likewise. If it were that easy, we wouldn't have had Strom Thurmond's 24 hour filibuster on civil rights legislation. And no, racism is far from dead: for instance, the vast majority of the so-called 'Birthers' (who believe Barack Obama was really born in Kenya) are from the South.
I wholeheartedly agree that votes for Lizard People should be legal. But some folks were saying that the recount process was too ridiculous and therefor must have been flawed because Lizard People and Flying Spaghetti Monster got votes. It was a silly argument, but it's definitely put out there (mostly by Coleman supporters).
Actually, the voting method you describe is more-or-less what optical-scan ballots are all about. While they aren't exactly "the old ways", they work extremely well, and give you an auditable vote in case of recount.
For instance, in the Franken-Coleman senatorial race, we had pieces of paper that could be gone through and understood. Yes, it took a really long time, yes, it produced votes for Lizard People, but the end result was something that independent observers could see as a correct reflection of the will of the people. With an electronic ballot, we wouldn't have had anything to recount, just a computer telling us a number.
One of the major massive flaw in Federalist #10 is that Madison didn't (and couldn't have) envisioned instantaneous communication across the country, so his entire argument that a majority faction couldn't succeed in organizing itself fell apart with the invention of the telegraph. Damn you, Samuel Morse!
People make up arguments like this to discredit sources who they disagree with but have the annoying habit of being right.
The thinking that tends to lead to making up this sort of thing is: 1. I believe $BELIEF. 2. $SOURCE demonstrates using all sorts of incontrovertible facts and logic that $BELIEF is completely wrong. 3. If $BELIEF is so obviously completely wrong, than I'm an idiot.
Here's where the thought process starts to go wrong, thanks to cognitive dissonance: 4. Since I'm not an idiot, $BELIEF is actually right. 5. Since $BELIEF is right, $SOURCE demonstrating that it was wrong is either stupid or lying. 6. Since I can't prove $SOURCE is stupid and/or lying, I'll make stuff up to make it look like $BELIEF is stupid and/or lying, which will convince people that I'm not an idiot.
In this particular case, substitute "Liberal economists can't predict anything useful" for $BELIEF, and "Paul Krugman - liberal economist" (he would describe himself as such) for $SOURCE.
@twitopera: Full of fail. It is a pile of excrement and it stinketh to high heaven.
From a promotional press release: "@twitopera says new opera promotes growth and awakens the senses."
And if you don't believe that they'd do that, consider how movie reviewers' words are frequently twisted in advertising (e.g. "Pretty good if you like getting kicked in the head" becomes "Pretty good")
See, you don't understand: the people of the United States aren't "citizens" anymore, they're "consumers", "homeowners", "taxpayers", and "workers". They only matter insofar as they engage in economic transactions that benefit the wealthy and powerful.
that idea got pretty hammered in a recent administration
Which recent administration are you referring to, given that every administration since 1981 has been guilty on this score? Granted, Clinton's was slightly better than the 3 Republican administrations, but that was more than counterbalanced by its advocacy of free trade agreements which wrecked a bunch of competitive markets both in the US and Latin America. Obama's major industry link is obviously to the financial industry.
You want your question to demonstrate your ability to do the job as well as allow you to assess your future bosses and coworkers. So technical questions like "What version control system do you use?" or "What kind of backup system would I be expected to maintain?" are good for talking to technically-oriented managers. For non-technical managers, some good questions might be "How does my work get tested before getting sent out to the users?" and "How are project schedules determined, and what approaches are typically used to keep projects on schedule?".
Man, don't be dissing Lisp. Lisp is the foundation of a lot of the niftier concepts in lots of languages today, and is considered by most computer scientists to be one of the most perfect languages ever invented. Yeah, all those parentheses are a pain, but they consistently push you to do the Right Thing, and for me one of the highest complements I can place on non-Lisp code is "that looks almost Lisp-ish".
And if you don't believe me, believe these guys: "The greatest single programming language ever designed." - Alan Kay "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." - ESR "LISP being the most powerful and cleanest of languages, that's the language that's the GNU project always prefers." - RMS "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." - Philip Greenspun "These are your father's parentheses. Elegant weapons, for a more... civilized age." - Randal Munroe
Furthermore, the only standards you should be judging your relationship by are: 1. Is she happy with it and fulfilled by it? 2. Are you happy with it and fulfilled by it? 3. If you have kids, are they getting the care and attention they need?
Everything other than that is simply noise. Don't try to hold your relationship to anything your parents tell you, your friends tell you, and especially what some author who doesn't know either of you told you.
Also, when were these books written? They sound like manuals for marriages back in 1947 or so. Thanks to beatniks, boomers, hippies, and feminists, we've moved away from the "husband is dominant and pays the bills, wife is submissive and cleans the house" mentality. And I'm sure Betty Friedan in particular would have been happy to explain to you exactly why this is an improvement for everybody.
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Religion too often gives us the like of seven days, 6000 years and a wet ball of mud to live on, with harps and clouds if you've been good afterward.
Of course religion doesn't give you a wet ball of mud. It gives you a wet flat plane of mud, with water above it (read Genesis).
No, you haven't. The answer to the first question is FDIC. The answer to your second and third questions is the FDA. There's no such regulatory agency for IT.
Not precisely true. As Monty Python put it in "The Meaning of Life":
"We have two children, and we've had sexual intercourse twice."
Yes, it may not be respectable, but everyone slips up once in a while.
To quote a wonderfully silly film, The Gods Must Be Crazy:
Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But he didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier the more complicated he made it. Now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then, you have to look busy again. Your day is chopped into pieces. In each segment of time you adapt to new circumstances. ... No wonder some people go off the rails a bit.
I'm not disagreeing with your main point: that the company's conduct was dishonest, illegal, etc. My point is that it would be incorrect to blame workers for being more-or-less forced by economic circumstances to work for a company who engages in that sort of behavior. My target is the libertarian argument that the workers are free to look elsewhere if they don't like it, by pointing out that the freedom to look elsewhere is very constrained by the survival needs of the candidate.
Look, people make mistakes. It happens. Especially when those people are gathered into large groups.
FTFY.
There are a bunch of reasons for that: mob mentality, political considerations, and being able to duck any responsibility for screwing up are definitely a part of that story though.
I think you guys have the wrong dystopia here: This isn't an Orwellian future that this sort of thing leads to, it's more of a Brave New World with perfectly customized soma for you.
Just about everybody here has been concentrating on how dishonest employees might be if they have a bad credit report, but where is the discussion about whether you would want to work for a company that, without question, broke the law in order to intrusively delve into your personal and legally protected information?
See, the question of whether you want to work for a particular company is often based on the question of whether you want to remain in your home and have food to eat. One of the basic problems with with employment negotiations is that there's a vast difference in negotiating power between an employee and a typical business (anything with more than about 3 employees): If the business can't reach an acceptable agreement with the potential employee, then they can just make everyone else work harder, or hire somebody else. If the candidate can't reach an agreement with the potential employer, for many people the options are moving themselves and their family to a new area, underemployment, or unemployment. Hence the fairly large body of federal and state law governing how employers can treat potential and current employees - it's an attempt to level the playing field a bit.
Actually, it would be incorrect to describe the bank bailouts as "socialism". If it had been socialism, the government would have taken over management of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, etc and/or turned them into giant credit unions instead of just giving them big piles of cash to pay out bonuses^H^H^H lend. A much better name for it would be "corporatism", which you can read all about in a biography of Mussolini. Or, as you correctly pointed out, "robbery".
A few weeks ago I unplugged my cable box as an experiment. You know, just to get an idea of what that would actually do to my life.
I did notice a difference. The difference was that I spent more of my time doing things that were actually rewarding, like reading the book I'd wanted to get to, learning to play a few pieces of music I'd been wanting to work on, and writing down my thoughts on life the universe and everything. In short, it's a lot better for me, for my eyes, for my health, and my sleep schedule.
So with the use of cable boxes to spy on me, it's time for me to get on the phone, get through arguing with the poor call center rep, and get rid of the problem for good.
(yes, I know it was used to discriminate in the past, but it would be VERY easy to ensure that did not happen in the future).
I beg to differ on your last point about how easy it would be to ensure non-discriminatory practices. Any politician who got elected with this system being used for discrimination would be motivated to sabotage or block any attempt to curb said discrimination, or appoint friends who will do likewise. If it were that easy, we wouldn't have had Strom Thurmond's 24 hour filibuster on civil rights legislation. And no, racism is far from dead: for instance, the vast majority of the so-called 'Birthers' (who believe Barack Obama was really born in Kenya) are from the South.
I wholeheartedly agree that votes for Lizard People should be legal. But some folks were saying that the recount process was too ridiculous and therefor must have been flawed because Lizard People and Flying Spaghetti Monster got votes. It was a silly argument, but it's definitely put out there (mostly by Coleman supporters).
Actually, the voting method you describe is more-or-less what optical-scan ballots are all about. While they aren't exactly "the old ways", they work extremely well, and give you an auditable vote in case of recount.
For instance, in the Franken-Coleman senatorial race, we had pieces of paper that could be gone through and understood. Yes, it took a really long time, yes, it produced votes for Lizard People, but the end result was something that independent observers could see as a correct reflection of the will of the people. With an electronic ballot, we wouldn't have had anything to recount, just a computer telling us a number.
One of the major massive flaw in Federalist #10 is that Madison didn't (and couldn't have) envisioned instantaneous communication across the country, so his entire argument that a majority faction couldn't succeed in organizing itself fell apart with the invention of the telegraph. Damn you, Samuel Morse!
People make up arguments like this to discredit sources who they disagree with but have the annoying habit of being right.
The thinking that tends to lead to making up this sort of thing is:
1. I believe $BELIEF.
2. $SOURCE demonstrates using all sorts of incontrovertible facts and logic that $BELIEF is completely wrong.
3. If $BELIEF is so obviously completely wrong, than I'm an idiot.
Here's where the thought process starts to go wrong, thanks to cognitive dissonance:
4. Since I'm not an idiot, $BELIEF is actually right.
5. Since $BELIEF is right, $SOURCE demonstrating that it was wrong is either stupid or lying.
6. Since I can't prove $SOURCE is stupid and/or lying, I'll make stuff up to make it look like $BELIEF is stupid and/or lying, which will convince people that I'm not an idiot.
In this particular case, substitute "Liberal economists can't predict anything useful" for $BELIEF, and "Paul Krugman - liberal economist" (he would describe himself as such) for $SOURCE.
@twitopera: Full of fail. It is a pile of excrement and it stinketh to high heaven.
From a promotional press release: "@twitopera says new opera promotes growth and awakens the senses."
And if you don't believe that they'd do that, consider how movie reviewers' words are frequently twisted in advertising (e.g. "Pretty good if you like getting kicked in the head" becomes "Pretty good")
See, you don't understand: the people of the United States aren't "citizens" anymore, they're "consumers", "homeowners", "taxpayers", and "workers". They only matter insofar as they engage in economic transactions that benefit the wealthy and powerful.
that idea got pretty hammered in a recent administration
Which recent administration are you referring to, given that every administration since 1981 has been guilty on this score? Granted, Clinton's was slightly better than the 3 Republican administrations, but that was more than counterbalanced by its advocacy of free trade agreements which wrecked a bunch of competitive markets both in the US and Latin America. Obama's major industry link is obviously to the financial industry.
You want your question to demonstrate your ability to do the job as well as allow you to assess your future bosses and coworkers. So technical questions like "What version control system do you use?" or "What kind of backup system would I be expected to maintain?" are good for talking to technically-oriented managers. For non-technical managers, some good questions might be "How does my work get tested before getting sent out to the users?" and "How are project schedules determined, and what approaches are typically used to keep projects on schedule?".
You left out "Is it on?", which thankfully is still a requirement as well.
Man, don't be dissing Lisp. Lisp is the foundation of a lot of the niftier concepts in lots of languages today, and is considered by most computer scientists to be one of the most perfect languages ever invented. Yeah, all those parentheses are a pain, but they consistently push you to do the Right Thing, and for me one of the highest complements I can place on non-Lisp code is "that looks almost Lisp-ish".
And if you don't believe me, believe these guys:
"The greatest single programming language ever designed." - Alan Kay
"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." - ESR
"LISP being the most powerful and cleanest of languages, that's the language that's the GNU project always prefers." - RMS
"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." - Philip Greenspun
"These are your father's parentheses. Elegant weapons, for a more... civilized age." - Randal Munroe
Perhaps the gas plume is why a hrung chose to collapse on Betelguese 7?
Of course, the real advantage of having only 4 fingers on each hand is that it makes it far easier to count in octal.
Furthermore, the only standards you should be judging your relationship by are:
1. Is she happy with it and fulfilled by it?
2. Are you happy with it and fulfilled by it?
3. If you have kids, are they getting the care and attention they need?
Everything other than that is simply noise. Don't try to hold your relationship to anything your parents tell you, your friends tell you, and especially what some author who doesn't know either of you told you.
Also, when were these books written? They sound like manuals for marriages back in 1947 or so. Thanks to beatniks, boomers, hippies, and feminists, we've moved away from the "husband is dominant and pays the bills, wife is submissive and cleans the house" mentality. And I'm sure Betty Friedan in particular would have been happy to explain to you exactly why this is an improvement for everybody.
Like the differance if I smoked a join before hoping into the car
Dude, that left outer join yesterday totally freaked me out. And the right outer join the day before that.