I might even go so far as to advocate that IT needs to unionize!
It'll never happen. Why? No, not because IT has some special political position. No, not because IT is someone some special talent pool that's immune to corporate scum-baggery. It's because IT is by and large a large amount of small shops who's power would be very weak. The UAW is a great and powerful union because there's only 3 major U.S. based automakers. Teachers unions are powerful because school districts are large. But IT? So spread out and diverse it'd be impossible to control.
The option most used for labor that's felt pressured from unskilled workers competing is required certification. Examples would include Doctors, CPAs, electricians, plumbers, etc. Plumbers and electricians have unions, but they still largely exist because of the laws for certifications. I wouldn't rule this out.. but the IT world is so incredibly diverse and changing, how would you have any kind of certification for it (even if you made 10 different certs for instance).
But is the crap job listing a devious attempt to prove that nobody with US work rights already is suitable, thereby making it OK to bring in someone on a visa - and totally ignoring the fact that the visa guy won't be suitable either?
Given your description? Yes. Absolutely. There's really no question about that. This kind of thing happens all the time. I also completely agree with you that it's both unethical, and very likely illegal.
It doesn't take long for shit code to get exposed.
If only. If you actually have sane people without any conflict of interest looking at the code, you're right. If you only expose the shittyness after the product is delivered and "working", that can take years and tens of millions of dollars. Especially if the project in managed by a consulting firm who's billed out at an hourly rate.
In the last 10 years, Microsoft has had huge amounts of cash in the bank. It would have been easy to simply offer each of the 100 top Google engineers literally double their salary each, just to come work for MS.
Well, number one it's a huge obvious anti-trust issue. Microsoft is already a convicted monopolist. Google isn't without its own political influences. You do the math.
The other issue would simply be starting a "employee grab" war. You think Google couldn't try the same thing with Microsoft's employees? The only end result would be both companies would be paying more for employees, with a stalemate as far as talent goes. Neither company employs stupid management, and the moves are obvious enough to see.
Also you have to understand that money isn't everything, especially above a certain level. Work environment, influence, location, benefits, and rising stock prices all effect people's decisions on where to work.
Kids who were normally making C's and D's suddenly began getting A's and taking the $5. The kids which normally got A's didn't do as well.
Interesting. Assuming your results are accurate (no control, single experiment) I wonder if the kids who normally got A's felt the money cheapened their motivation? I was accused of being a Communist.
heh. The funny thing is it's the exact opposite of communism. These days you'd be called a "socialist" or "radical". Whatever the popular name calling term of the day is people choose to rail at people that threatens their world view.
What does that teach them? Don't do anything regardless of what it is unless you're "bribed".
Right on brother!
We should also stop bribing people to work, and just expect them to show up and do something with just the incentive of work. Otherwise we'll just get people that show up and do things for the money. What we REALLY want is workers who work because they love the work. These people who just "do it for the money" aren't good workers, citizens, or human beings.
The reality is that people are different from one another, and have different expectations and motivations. Believing that all education "should" be about learning is merely a way to inject your own set of values on others and ignore the realities that not everyone is the same and conforms to what "should" be.
The thing I love about this is someone actually did science in education. That's extremely cool. Normally education comes down to one person arguing with another with little to no evidence, and the whole things just winds up being an argument that's really about values, political opinions, or personal opinions, but purports to be about outcomes. "Thing Y won't work because thing Y is "bad" or "Thing X won't work because it conflicts with my religion and/or political viewpoint" or "Thing Z will work because I think it will". From a scientific viewpoint these could all be viewed as untested theories. That's not necessarily bad.. but continuing to argue about them and not doing the experiment is... well stupid.
Richard Feynman talked about this 25 some years ago in one of his books. IIRC his main point was how teaching is ruled by "method of the day" as if it's just fashion, but very rarely does anything bother to find out what actually works.
So, now we have a good reason to suspect that some form of rewards for learning actually do seem to work. That doesn't mean the values argument is invalid, but it certainly does show the values argument for what it is and not a hidden attempt to discredit the validity of the outcome.
I guess I don't understand your perspective in the least. You go through each of his points as if to be critical and use a critical tone, but for each one you wind up agreeing with him.
what happens if you are a beta tester who has to sign a NDA to get something which includes GPL code. What takes precedence?
The GPL doesn't allow further restrictions to be placed on it. If a company tried such a tactic they'd be in violation of the GPL and the copyright owner could sue. Remember that the GPL also protects the rights of the copyright holder.
What, you don't think Google Go, a language even Google doesn't use in production is just a hair less popular than PL/SQL, the programming language used in an Oracle DB for the last 18 years?
So please explain to me how a brain that is flat line on the monitor is producing, and i quote you "intense hallucinations"
You didn't provide any actual documented references to these incidents, so it's rather difficult to do anything more than speculate. Since you're speculating that this was some sort of supernatural event, I might as well speculate that it wasn't.
A. The EEG wasn't working properly. B. The EEG WAS working properly, but EEGs don't pick up all brain activity. C. The EEG was working properly, picked up brain activity, but the report was exaggerated and miss-interpreted by those who reported it. D. There was no EEG, this never actually happened, and someone is making the whole thing up.
Since you're making the claim, I'll leave it to you to provide something more that we can actually analyze and try to understand what actually happened. That's what science is about, and in the absence of any information the whole story is nothing more than a story.
If a tool (or effective policing) pushes crime out of an area, you don't need as many police officers in that area, do you?
That wouldn't be my guess as to why the police oppose it.
Think about it this way. If a tool makes more police have to respond more often and more quickly to shooting incidents with still armed suspects.. do you really think the police would favor that?
Religion is nothing more than a reality distortion field and the sooner we clear it away from the mind of man, the sooner we can become more than we are today and stop holding ourselves back.
Religion is a HELL of a lot more than that. The aspect of religion you're talking about is the explanations business that religion has gotten itself into. It's been pathetically horrible at that, as evidenced by the last 500 years of scientific knowledge you've rightfully brought up. Religion has a lot more roles in the world than simply explanations though. Religion is a system to regulate behavior. It hasn't always been perfect at that either, but really what's the competition that's proven better? Religion is a social and communal system to bind people together. Religion is an economic force that can "redistribute wealth" between rich and poor. Religion is a way to ensure a set of healthy behaviors across time. (avoiding trichinosis by not eating pork, avoiding disease by having trained people slaughter animals in a cleanly way, etc).
A lot of the problem with getting out of the explanations business is that the explanations business has been used to justify and build up all the other parts. For instance: a common creation story binds people together, especially if there's some threat from the non-believers. An all-powerful God who can punish you even after you die is a pretty good motivator for people to follow the suggested rules of behavior.
If you really think science has all the answers that'll replace religion, you haven't thought about it much. Science is never going to give you an answer if you should bomb country A because they're stealing your cheese.
I guess I'd take a few steps back, and question whether we can really scientifically answer the question "why someone believes something". We might be able to answer the question "what's the stated reason someone believes something", but the more general concept of "why" in reference to belief is just poorly defined. The whole argument is waaaaay to close to philosophy than science.
I think real scientists should stay well away from this kinda crap, if you got to research what happens when people die, don't link it to heaven.
I think it's mostly the journalists who linked it to heaven. Still, most people have ALREADY linked the NDE to heaven, so the association is really impossible to avoid. It is like "scientist" trying to explain Bible myths. How could Moses have parted the seas, what could have caused the plagues etc.
A terrible analogy. We can't reproduce the parting of the red sea, plagues, etc. Studying it is foolish since we can't even verify it actually happened.
If you want a good analogy, I'd go with Darwin and Evolution. 150 years ago many people felt about evolution as you do now about NDE. Unlike the nonsense "science of the bible" crap you see on the "History" channel, NDE can be studied scientifically instead of the stupid pontificating that exists on those TV specials.
Re:If you can't handle calculus, science isnt for
on
Help Me Get My Math Back?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
When someone suggested my skills were due to a magical innate ability, I'd get ticked off and tell them no, everybody has the innate ability. My skills, in fact, came from many hours of tedious practice, doing the same thing over and over until I got it right.
I don't think it has to be one or the other. I've never been able to draw worth shit. I probably could learn if I really wanted to, but even as a kid my skills were mediocre at best. Rational thinking and separating out bullshit from what's real I've always been very good at, even as a kid.
I think there most certainly are innate talents. The idea that "anyone can do it" might be true if we all had infinite patience, time, and motivation. We don't of course, so we gravitate towards things which we develop at with less effort. If you work at subject A and get half as far as the average person, but work at subject B and get twice as far.. which one do you think most people will pick?
It's not magic, it's just how our brains are wired.
Re:If you can't handle calculus, science isnt for
on
Help Me Get My Math Back?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
No matter what kind of scientist you plan to be, your knowledge of calculus will be essential. You'll never use statistics
This has to be about the worst piece of advice about a science education I've ever seen. Like anything, it depends. Calculus is extraordinarily useful to someone in physics, but less so in biology. Statistics is insanely important in an experimental science (actually it's insanely important in just about any science I can think of). Hell, statistics should be a mandatory class taught in High School. It's far more applicable to everyday life than trig is.
Uhh.. do you realize you can't just "move everything to India" for certain businesses? You think Microsoft can just easily pack up and movie to India without an enormous risk of going under? Do you think Walmart can just move all its stores to India?
Not all business is manufacturing where it's cheaper to operate elsewhere. Not even all manufacturing is cheaper to do elsewhere. Your argument fails because business isn't generic.
Our rates are nearly the highest in the world, second only to Japan.
If you only consider income tax, I'll bet you're right. There's more to taxing business than income tax however. Ever heard of the value added tax? The US doesn't have one, but most EU countries do. Picking the income tax and ignoring VAT when comparing how we tax corporations is extraordinarily misleading.
I'd gladly confess so that my brother could go free, even knowing (as only I would) that he was the guilty one. I'd be a two thousand years too late to claim that it's my original idea, though.
In that kind of a "justice" system, the goal isn't justice but retribution and a show of power. As long as someone gets hung for the crime it doesn't much matter if it was the right person or not. The state "got it's guy", so everyone is safe again.
We're not entirely immune to that today. This guy was the 3rd person FBI tried to finger for the 2001 Anthrax attacks, despite the evidence all being circumstantial. He committed suicide before he could be charged, but the FBI has closed the case essentially saying this was the guy. If you read through the evidence it's very weak. Before Irvins the focus was one another scientist Steven Hatfil, who they eventually abandoned as a suspect. The fact that they seriously investigated Hatfill for so long only shows how poor of an idea the FBI has of who actually committed these crimes.
It's no longer language constructs, data structures, or algorithms that are cutting edge. Innovation has moved on to more fertile pastures. Yes, those who build software tools, libraries, IDEs, and compilers will continue to innovate.
Hmm.. language conststructs, data structures, or even algorithms are simply much harder to innovate in since they're so basic to software.. but I just don't agree there's no innovation happening in these areas. It just happens with less frequency because it's harder. The payoffs are likely of much higher impact though than anything of what you listed.
The rest of your post I think I agree with. The idea of the article seems to be something to to with trendiness or "cool". That's great and all, but I rather agree with your approach that it's about the interesting problems, not the technology.
I doubt that he remembers using Java or things written in it fifteen years ago when kids with mohawks routinely brought computers to a halt with their buggy AWT GUIs and applets.
I've seen buggy code come from well dress nice looking people who just didn't know what the hell they're doing. I've seen great code come from long haired weirdo's who are thoughtful and would be extremely offended if you called them an "engineer".
The point being, trying to find some set of outward properties for good software developers doesn't really work. You have to be smart, but even smart doesn't make a good developer. You have to be smart enough to know you're dumb (an exceedingly important quality).
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I might even go so far as to advocate that IT needs to unionize!
It'll never happen. Why? No, not because IT has some special political position. No, not because IT is someone some special talent pool that's immune to corporate scum-baggery. It's because IT is by and large a large amount of small shops who's power would be very weak. The UAW is a great and powerful union because there's only 3 major U.S. based automakers. Teachers unions are powerful because school districts are large. But IT? So spread out and diverse it'd be impossible to control.
The option most used for labor that's felt pressured from unskilled workers competing is required certification. Examples would include Doctors, CPAs, electricians, plumbers, etc. Plumbers and electricians have unions, but they still largely exist because of the laws for certifications. I wouldn't rule this out.. but the IT world is so incredibly diverse and changing, how would you have any kind of certification for it (even if you made 10 different certs for instance).
But is the crap job listing a devious attempt to prove that nobody with US work rights already is suitable, thereby making it OK to bring in someone on a visa - and totally ignoring the fact that the visa guy won't be suitable either?
Given your description? Yes. Absolutely. There's really no question about that. This kind of thing happens all the time. I also completely agree with you that it's both unethical, and very likely illegal.
It doesn't take long for shit code to get exposed.
If only. If you actually have sane people without any conflict of interest looking at the code, you're right. If you only expose the shittyness after the product is delivered and "working", that can take years and tens of millions of dollars. Especially if the project in managed by a consulting firm who's billed out at an hourly rate.
In the last 10 years, Microsoft has had huge amounts of cash in the bank. It would have been easy to simply offer each of the 100 top Google engineers literally double their salary each, just to come work for MS.
Well, number one it's a huge obvious anti-trust issue. Microsoft is already a convicted monopolist. Google isn't without its own political influences. You do the math.
The other issue would simply be starting a "employee grab" war. You think Google couldn't try the same thing with Microsoft's employees? The only end result would be both companies would be paying more for employees, with a stalemate as far as talent goes. Neither company employs stupid management, and the moves are obvious enough to see.
Also you have to understand that money isn't everything, especially above a certain level. Work environment, influence, location, benefits, and rising stock prices all effect people's decisions on where to work.
Kids who were normally making C's and D's suddenly began getting A's and taking the $5. The kids which normally got A's didn't do as well.
Interesting. Assuming your results are accurate (no control, single experiment) I wonder if the kids who normally got A's felt the money cheapened their motivation?
I was accused of being a Communist.
heh. The funny thing is it's the exact opposite of communism. These days you'd be called a "socialist" or "radical". Whatever the popular name calling term of the day is people choose to rail at people that threatens their world view.
I wonder if paying you to read the article might have gotten a better result for reading comprehension.
What does that teach them? Don't do anything regardless of what it is unless you're "bribed".
Right on brother!
We should also stop bribing people to work, and just expect them to show up and do something with just the incentive of work. Otherwise we'll just get people that show up and do things for the money. What we REALLY want is workers who work because they love the work. These people who just "do it for the money" aren't good workers, citizens, or human beings.
The reality is that people are different from one another, and have different expectations and motivations. Believing that all education "should" be about learning is merely a way to inject your own set of values on others and ignore the realities that not everyone is the same and conforms to what "should" be.
The thing I love about this is someone actually did science in education. That's extremely cool. Normally education comes down to one person arguing with another with little to no evidence, and the whole things just winds up being an argument that's really about values, political opinions, or personal opinions, but purports to be about outcomes. "Thing Y won't work because thing Y is "bad" or "Thing X won't work because it conflicts with my religion and/or political viewpoint" or "Thing Z will work because I think it will". From a scientific viewpoint these could all be viewed as untested theories. That's not necessarily bad.. but continuing to argue about them and not doing the experiment is... well stupid.
Richard Feynman talked about this 25 some years ago in one of his books. IIRC his main point was how teaching is ruled by "method of the day" as if it's just fashion, but very rarely does anything bother to find out what actually works.
So, now we have a good reason to suspect that some form of rewards for learning actually do seem to work. That doesn't mean the values argument is invalid, but it certainly does show the values argument for what it is and not a hidden attempt to discredit the validity of the outcome.
I guess I don't understand your perspective in the least. You go through each of his points as if to be critical and use a critical tone, but for each one you wind up agreeing with him.
what happens if you are a beta tester who has to sign a NDA to get something which includes GPL code. What takes precedence?
The GPL doesn't allow further restrictions to be placed on it. If a company tried such a tactic they'd be in violation of the GPL and the copyright owner could sue. Remember that the GPL also protects the rights of the copyright holder.
What, you don't think Google Go, a language even Google doesn't use in production is just a hair less popular than PL/SQL, the programming language used in an Oracle DB for the last 18 years?
Shocking!
Looks like the new season finally starts on April 17 at 9 eastern here in the States.
So please explain to me how a brain that is flat line on the monitor is producing, and i quote you "intense hallucinations"
You didn't provide any actual documented references to these incidents, so it's rather difficult to do anything more than speculate. Since you're speculating that this was some sort of supernatural event, I might as well speculate that it wasn't.
A. The EEG wasn't working properly.
B. The EEG WAS working properly, but EEGs don't pick up all brain activity.
C. The EEG was working properly, picked up brain activity, but the report was exaggerated and miss-interpreted by those who reported it.
D. There was no EEG, this never actually happened, and someone is making the whole thing up.
Since you're making the claim, I'll leave it to you to provide something more that we can actually analyze and try to understand what actually happened. That's what science is about, and in the absence of any information the whole story is nothing more than a story.
If a tool (or effective policing) pushes crime out of an area, you don't need as many police officers in that area, do you?
That wouldn't be my guess as to why the police oppose it.
Think about it this way. If a tool makes more police have to respond more often and more quickly to shooting incidents with still armed suspects.. do you really think the police would favor that?
Religion is nothing more than a reality distortion field and the sooner we clear it away from the mind of man, the sooner we can become more than we are today and stop holding ourselves back.
Religion is a HELL of a lot more than that. The aspect of religion you're talking about is the explanations business that religion has gotten itself into. It's been pathetically horrible at that, as evidenced by the last 500 years of scientific knowledge you've rightfully brought up. Religion has a lot more roles in the world than simply explanations though. Religion is a system to regulate behavior. It hasn't always been perfect at that either, but really what's the competition that's proven better? Religion is a social and communal system to bind people together. Religion is an economic force that can "redistribute wealth" between rich and poor. Religion is a way to ensure a set of healthy behaviors across time. (avoiding trichinosis by not eating pork, avoiding disease by having trained people slaughter animals in a cleanly way, etc).
A lot of the problem with getting out of the explanations business is that the explanations business has been used to justify and build up all the other parts. For instance: a common creation story binds people together, especially if there's some threat from the non-believers. An all-powerful God who can punish you even after you die is a pretty good motivator for people to follow the suggested rules of behavior.
If you really think science has all the answers that'll replace religion, you haven't thought about it much. Science is never going to give you an answer if you should bomb country A because they're stealing your cheese.
I guess I'd take a few steps back, and question whether we can really scientifically answer the question "why someone believes something". We might be able to answer the question "what's the stated reason someone believes something", but the more general concept of "why" in reference to belief is just poorly defined. The whole argument is waaaaay to close to philosophy than science.
perceive a state of nonexistence
It's got nothing to do with the ego. You can't perceive non-existence because if you could, it wouldn't be non-existence.
I think real scientists should stay well away from this kinda crap, if you got to research what happens when people die, don't link it to heaven.
I think it's mostly the journalists who linked it to heaven. Still, most people have ALREADY linked the NDE to heaven, so the association is really impossible to avoid.
It is like "scientist" trying to explain Bible myths. How could Moses have parted the seas, what could have caused the plagues etc.
A terrible analogy. We can't reproduce the parting of the red sea, plagues, etc. Studying it is foolish since we can't even verify it actually happened.
If you want a good analogy, I'd go with Darwin and Evolution. 150 years ago many people felt about evolution as you do now about NDE. Unlike the nonsense "science of the bible" crap you see on the "History" channel, NDE can be studied scientifically instead of the stupid pontificating that exists on those TV specials.
When someone suggested my skills were due to a magical innate ability, I'd get ticked off and tell them no, everybody has the innate ability. My skills, in fact, came from many hours of tedious practice, doing the same thing over and over until I got it right.
I don't think it has to be one or the other. I've never been able to draw worth shit. I probably could learn if I really wanted to, but even as a kid my skills were mediocre at best. Rational thinking and separating out bullshit from what's real I've always been very good at, even as a kid.
I think there most certainly are innate talents. The idea that "anyone can do it" might be true if we all had infinite patience, time, and motivation. We don't of course, so we gravitate towards things which we develop at with less effort. If you work at subject A and get half as far as the average person, but work at subject B and get twice as far.. which one do you think most people will pick?
It's not magic, it's just how our brains are wired.
No matter what kind of scientist you plan to be, your knowledge of calculus will be essential. You'll never use statistics
This has to be about the worst piece of advice about a science education I've ever seen. Like anything, it depends. Calculus is extraordinarily useful to someone in physics, but less so in biology. Statistics is insanely important in an experimental science (actually it's insanely important in just about any science I can think of). Hell, statistics should be a mandatory class taught in High School. It's far more applicable to everyday life than trig is.
If you tax them, they move to India.
Uhh.. do you realize you can't just "move everything to India" for certain businesses? You think Microsoft can just easily pack up and movie to India without an enormous risk of going under? Do you think Walmart can just move all its stores to India?
Not all business is manufacturing where it's cheaper to operate elsewhere. Not even all manufacturing is cheaper to do elsewhere. Your argument fails because business isn't generic.
Our rates are nearly the highest in the world, second only to Japan.
If you only consider income tax, I'll bet you're right. There's more to taxing business than income tax however. Ever heard of the value added tax? The US doesn't have one, but most EU countries do. Picking the income tax and ignoring VAT when comparing how we tax corporations is extraordinarily misleading.
I'd gladly confess so that my brother could go free, even knowing (as only I would) that he was the guilty one. I'd be a two thousand years too late to claim that it's my original idea, though.
In that kind of a "justice" system, the goal isn't justice but retribution and a show of power. As long as someone gets hung for the crime it doesn't much matter if it was the right person or not. The state "got it's guy", so everyone is safe again.
We're not entirely immune to that today. This guy was the 3rd person FBI tried to finger for the 2001 Anthrax attacks, despite the evidence all being circumstantial. He committed suicide before he could be charged, but the FBI has closed the case essentially saying this was the guy. If you read through the evidence it's very weak. Before Irvins the focus was one another scientist Steven Hatfil, who they eventually abandoned as a suspect. The fact that they seriously investigated Hatfill for so long only shows how poor of an idea the FBI has of who actually committed these crimes.
It's no longer language constructs, data structures, or algorithms that are cutting edge. Innovation has moved on to more fertile pastures. Yes, those who build software tools, libraries, IDEs, and compilers will continue to innovate.
Hmm.. language conststructs, data structures, or even algorithms are simply much harder to innovate in since they're so basic to software.. but I just don't agree there's no innovation happening in these areas. It just happens with less frequency because it's harder. The payoffs are likely of much higher impact though than anything of what you listed.
The rest of your post I think I agree with. The idea of the article seems to be something to to with trendiness or "cool". That's great and all, but I rather agree with your approach that it's about the interesting problems, not the technology.
I doubt that he remembers using Java or things written in it fifteen years ago when kids with mohawks routinely brought computers to a halt with their buggy AWT GUIs and applets.
I've seen buggy code come from well dress nice looking people who just didn't know what the hell they're doing. I've seen great code come from long haired weirdo's who are thoughtful and would be extremely offended if you called them an "engineer".
The point being, trying to find some set of outward properties for good software developers doesn't really work. You have to be smart, but even smart doesn't make a good developer. You have to be smart enough to know you're dumb (an exceedingly important quality).