8K! 8K? Hah! In my day we had to use 32 nybbles because the Kaiser had stolen the word byte!
But seriously, this is not the first time that I been frustrated that a "history" of handheld computing didn't include the Microvision. I remember when the Gameboy came out in 1989, and I thought, "But, I had one of those 10 years ago."
As for 8K, as recently as 2006 people were designing games to run on modern computers that were entirely under 4K.
Games are still a fledgling media. I have found that meta-ratings systems help, but their is still room for improvement.
For instance, I have found that a movie that is getting more than an 80% rating on rottentomatoes.com is almost always a movie that I will find worthwhile, even if it is in a genre that I don't normally enjoy. However, game ratings like those at rottentomatoes.com or metacritic.com aren't quite as consistent.
There are several reasons for this. First, game review scores tend to be overinflated. The median score for a game rating seems to be about 7.5 which makes it very difficult to distinguish which games are really the "best".
Second, unlike movies games don't always age well. The original "Resident Evil" has a great rating. However, I tried playing it for the first time this year, and it was agony. I just couldn't get in to it with its primitive interface.
Last, games are more personal. The amount of time that can be committed to a game is at least an order of magnitude greater than the amount of time that it takes to watch one movie. Also, games are much more diverse. I have never gotten into FPSs, so no matter how highly rated they are I wouldn't shell out $60 for one. However, I probably will buy Heroes of Might and Magic V despite the fact that it doesn't have a stellar rating.
Either he, or more likely his staff, just did their research, and knew exactly who the audience was going to be.
We absolutely have a lot of work to do but I'm convinced we have the right strategy - and recent announcements like Home and Little Big Planet have resonated very positively with our audiences around the world, including some commentators who had been previously critical of us.
For example: Two months ago our department was paged out for a roof collapse. Supposedly ice build-up on the roof had caused it to cave in over the master bedroom. When we got there the roof was completely intact. The real reason we were paged out? The homeowner was afraid a big chunk of ice was going to fall off the roof and break a basement window.
I was a dispatcher, and I seriously resent this. The homeowner may have told you one story, but is that what he told the dispatcher? People calling 9-1-1 often exaggerate in order to get a faster response, and as you pointed out, even if they have the best of intentions they can get confused.
Where I worked dispatchers had intense training. Just like firemen, certified dispatchers have a specific set of guidelines they are required to follow. If there is any doubt they are supposed to assume the worst. Don't blame them if that is frequently not the case.
I would say that eighty percent of calls that a dispatcher takes are not high-priority calls, no life or property is in danger, and another ten percent are serious. The missing ten percent are the unknowns, and you will be asked to respond to them as if the were high-priority, and most of the time they will not be.
However, if you have trouble with one dispatcher that is constantly misunderstanding situations, exaggerating, or just plain making things up, you need to report it and check the tapes. If it keeps happening that person should be fired. Please do not lump all of us together.
Also, don't assume that your second-guessing is a good idea. One time we had a man holding his family hostage at gunpoint. I was told to have an ambulance respond in case we needed it. I told the ambulance company twice that they should arrive without lights and sirens and stay out of sight. Instead, they roared right up lights flashing, and sirens blaring. Luckily, that didn't set him off, but I think it illustrates my point.
Last, like you, I have no trouble with emergency personnel going through a red light in an emergency. As far as I can tell, the cops in the article are only getting tickets for running lights when they were not on an emergency call, and I support that entirely.
I own this. My biggest problem is that, as a relative beginner, I don't always know which command I want. Here is the relevant part of the table of contents.
... Commands 30 Rules of Precedence 67 ...
That's it. Thirty-six pages of commands, almost half the book, without a list of what those commands are, and no index. For me, this book is pretty much useless. I almost always end up going to the online documentation.
I have to disagree. Active participation in an open source project can get you work. If you reply to questions in the forums, edit the wiki, or contribute source code, people will notice. A user may offer you a bounty to do something they can't. Many of the forums have pages for posting services and jobs. If the project has a foundation or offers commercial services you may be asked to join.
You are right that headhunters probably aren't reading documentation looking for names, but if they are asked to find someone who is good with OpenSourceProjectX, and they know what they are doing, they will probably go to opensourceprojectx.com and ask there.
Um, like, I knew this guy that was fired from his job for stealing, you know, because he had brought in his own pencils, and one day he took a bunch of them home, right, but, um, the company said that he was taking home their property. It's true, my brother's girlfriend's sister knew him.
This stinks of an urban legend: outrageous behavior posted anonymously without identifying any of the parties. Can anyone point to an actual school, that had an actual incident like this?
I used Turnitin when I was a teacher years ago, and I'm pretty sure that you can set up your account so that it doesn't flag work done by the same person. The way I understand your complaint, if 500 students submitted rough drafts and a similar number submitted final drafts then all of them should have been flagged. The fact that there was only 30 suggests that the service didn't recognize the returning student, or that the service identified a plagiarism that wasn't there before, either the student added something or there was something new in the database.
Another example: a streaker runs past a TV camera that's live. Guess what? The streaker gets arrested, but the TV station could be fined by the FCC; the FCC can't say "well, shucks, we can't really stop people from doing that sort of thing, it's live!"; the FCC turns around and says "We don't care, make sure it doesn't happen again"
Actually the FCC is not supposed to fine a station where something like this happens under very specific circumstances
It is live, no tape delay as you mentioned.
It is obviously unexpected, i.e. if they were in New Orleans during Mardi Gras then a flasher might be expected. If they were covering a traffic accident in Minnesota in February, the flasher wouldn't be expected.
It is not a regular occurrence. This is basically the same as the previous point, but it is how the FCC justified threatening fines for stations that broadcast entertainers who swear during their acceptance speeches. The stations said, "Hey, these are entertainers, they should know the rules, we didn't expect them to swear." To which the FCC replied, "It has happened several times before, you should expect it to happen again."
Before you go off with examples to counter this, let me point out that I said the FCC is not supposed to fine a station under these circumstances, that doesn't mean that they won't try.
I'm starting to get a little sick of comments like '"web development" (heh)'. Would you laugh, if he had said "software development" or "game programming"? Dismissing a web developer is like saying, "Oh, he wants to be a carpenter." Sure, he could end up being the day laborer who is putting together pre-fabs with a nail gun, but he could also become the guy that hand-crafts beautiful tiled mahogany tables.
A web developer could easily use any of the mathematics you describe if he is streaming media, load balancing servers, serving secure pages, or optimizing databases. On the other hand, don't dismiss someone who is just creating pretty pages. Graphics can be done badly with "pre-fab" parts, but it is an art form to do them correctly for the web.
Personally, I frequently, and proudly, describe myself as a developer. For me, it simply means that I work with several facets of computers: graphic design, programming, databases, user interfaces, etc. It should not immediately imply that I do not understand computer science.
I both agree and disagree with the parent's opinion. On the one hand, in my personal experience what the school is probably offering isn't university level learning, but on the other hand, I think that the poster may not know what goes into modern "web development".
As for my personal experience, I am one of only a handful of people who graduated from Quinnipiac University with an undergraduate degree in "eMedia", and honestly it was a joke. In the end, I think I only took 3 or 4 classes where I was sitting in front of a computer making interactive or digital media. Everything else was general requirements like Music, mass communications requirements like Journalism, or my minor. The "eMedia" that I was taught could have easily been learned at a technical school.
However, I realized this quickly, and I went out of my way to make the best of it. I had signed up for a CIS minor, and I made sure that I chose only the programming classes. I even did an independent study where I designed an evolutionary neural network.
In my eMedia classes I made sure that I got as much as I could out of it. When the class was asked to cut and paste code over and over again onto objects in Director, I made the code better. I created a class to eliminate the redundancy, and changed nested if statements to a switch/case. I cleaned up the logic so that it handled improper input. Sure, I couldn't get a better grade than the A that other students got for doing the minimum, but I did impress the teachers, and they have gladly helped me in my career since then.
As for a "web development" major, I think the poster may be stereotyping what a "web developer" does. A web developer is no longer somebody hacking together sites alone with Dreamweaver. Nowadays, a developer needs to know graphic design, XHTML, CSS, programming and scripting languages, databases, and server management, just to name a few things. Even if a developer only concentrates on a few of these things there is still enough difficult things to learn to easily fill a university level major. These are the kinds of things that I wish that my education had included and that I have gone out of the way to teach myself.
I know this.parent was modded as funny, and I hope that is how the poster intended it. That said, there are employers who do care.
One time I was laid off by a cafe that was closing. The owner gave me two weeks severance despite the fact that I was working under a normal "at will" contract.
Another time I was "let go" because it had become obvious that my skills didn't match what the employer needed. Again, I was working "at will" and he could have just booted me out the door. Instead he delayed the actual date so that he would pay accumulated vacation time and set up my COBRA eligibility, and also gave me two weeks severance.
I think it made a difference that these were both small companies, where the owner could make that decision. I guess it depends on who you work for.
I think that it will poison your mind to learn DB theory from MySQL.:) But that is just my personal view and I encourage alternate viewpoints.
I don't think starting with MySQL "will poison your mind". However, I think starting with Access, Excel, or FileMaker will.
You apparently are a DBA, however a "many hats" developer, such as myself, often works on things much smaller and less complicated than what you do every day. I think a good developer should know how a relational database works, and understand normalization. As I have gone along, I have made sure that I understood the benefits and costs of different data types, engines, and indices. As far as I know, these things are fairly standard across database software, so I don't think I have been "poisoned" yet.
If my applications grew to the point where I had to start optimizing, and I continued to use MySQL, then maybe, I would be "poisoned" but the day things get that complicated is the day that I hire a DBA. I guess what I am saying is that you can make a mess with any tool. However if you use good design practices, you can go a long way before the differences in database software are noticeable, and if you have done things right, switching may not be that much of a problem.
I'm going to assume you are not familiar with how laws in the United States work. There are federal laws and their are state laws. The federal government can enforce online gambling because of interstate commerce laws, interstate telecommunications laws, etc. However, they can't easily stop gambling that is legal in one state. It would be like the EU telling all its members what the minimum wage should be in their countries. The federal government could only shut down gambling that is legal in a state on two conditions.
1. They would have to get enough congressman to pass the law. This is not going to happen since a lot of states have a gambling monopoly in their lottery, and others get a lot of money from gambling taxes.
2. If this was challenged, and it would be, the law would have to pass constitutional muster showing that it falls into the federal jurisdiction. It probably wouldn't. The federal government has surprisingly limited powers when it comes to legislating what goes on within a state. That is why congressmen complain all the time about things like physician-assisted suicide, and medical marijuana, but in the end they don't do much about it.
Of course the federal government can overstep its bounds, and if it isn't challenged, it can set a precedent in that area. Also, they can coerce states into passing laws. There is no federal law saying that you must be 21 to purchase alcohol, but the federal government just told every state that they must pass such a law or they would lose all of their federal highway funding, i.e. a lot of money.
Therefore the federal government has to choose its battles when legislating, and in-state gambling is a battle they aren't going to take up.
Last year my family and friends pitched in together and got me one gift for my birthday. The restaurant quality, 11 cup Cuisinart. This is not the one you see in most stores. It cost about $400 dollars. I wasn't condescending. I literally hugged it when I got it unwrapped. For some of us the high end stuff is worth it. I bet you wouldn't complain if someone got you a $200 graphics card, or a $600 Playstation.
Doc Savage was a huge influence on modern fiction. I own a few of the original paperbacks, and one of my favorite bits of trivia is the fact that Doc had a "Fortress of Solitude" in the arctic years before the first Superman comic was printed.
I don't know about MA, but my company bid on a small CT Transit site, and their top requirement was accessibility and standards compliance. Their current site did not meet W3C standards and federal accessibility standards, and they were in trouble for it. You can debate all you want about Opera, but if the MA Transit site is not compliant, they are probably breaking law.
Having said that, it takes a big stink before the law is enforced. I would say that the majority of government sites don't actually meet the standards, but nobody is doing anything about it.
Also, even big web development shops are not doing much to make sure they are complying. I took a look at the sites created by the company that won the CT Transit bid, and not one of them met minimum standards, but who is going to check? They will deliver a site, and they will tell the customer that it is compliant. The customer doesn't know enough to check themselves.
I have had training in hiring practices, and one of the first rules for hiring, especially for low-skilled jobs is, "Hire hungry people." Employers don't want deadbeats, but they do want people that come to work every day because they have to. This could have been a factor in their decision not to hire you.
On the other hand, as you move up in the skills required for a job, "Hire hungry people." changes meaning. IBM and Google want people that are passionate about what they do, and hungry for the challenge. They don't want people that are always worried about their debt, or appear to be disorganized.
I don't disagree with all of your points. However, there is a "profit-driven" model for entertainment, and it does produce quite a bit of experimental material. It's called Public Broadcasting. People pay up-front how much they think next year's content will be worth, and then the producer's create that content. Not every donor likes every show, but they like some enough to support the other "experiments".
This is part of the cycle you see all the time in movie production. Budgets get bigger and bigger, quality generally decreases, and everyone cries. Then some college student makes the next "Blair Witch" for basically nothing, and everyone is talking about "independents" and "experiments." Big studios will buy the successful small studios and promise to let them stay the same, or the big studio will create an "independent" division. A few years later, that division will be subsumed by the corporate mono-culture, and the whole cycle will start again. We have already seen this with games like "Alien Homonid".
Before you go off, let me be clear. Not all low-budget games and movies are cool, and there is definitely a place for big budgets. For every "Clerks" there is "The Matrix", and for every "Custer's Last Stand" there is a "Disney Sports: Basketball".
I always lean back while working at the computer. My posterior is close to the front edge of the chair and the bottoms of my shoulder blades are on top of the back of the chair. My shoulders, neck, and head are actually behind the chair, and my legs are out front. This violates every rule that I learned and repeated to my typing classes. My family has a history of back problems, and yet I work 8 hours a day like this and I am perfectly comfortable. I'm glad that someone is looking in to this. Now we just have to convince observers that taking this position doesn't mean you are lazy.
I have mod points, and I was just going to smack you down, but that wouldn't be the best way to respond to you.
First, this is not a space program. The summary is misleading by using the word launched. This is a earthbound telescope.
Next, the reason that they are doing is this is because they are investing in the future. There are thousands of Mexicans who do have the skills and education to use this, and those people can earn more money, pay more taxes, and encourage others to achieve. Hopefully someday this will snowball, and then they will have richer, better educated citizens.
Poverty, crime, and corruption are problems in the U.S. By your logic, we should spend all of our capital only on these problems, and stop all federally funded research and development.
Last, this is not decades behind. This is one of the largest moving telescopes ever built, and the technology is cutting edge. I have been around radio telescopes my whole life, and this one pushes the very limits of current engineering.
Slashdot Mirror
8K! 8K? Hah! In my day we had to use 32 nybbles because the Kaiser had stolen the word byte!
But seriously, this is not the first time that I been frustrated that a "history" of handheld computing didn't include the Microvision. I remember when the Gameboy came out in 1989, and I thought, "But, I had one of those 10 years ago."
As for 8K, as recently as 2006 people were designing games to run on modern computers that were entirely under 4K.Games are still a fledgling media. I have found that meta-ratings systems help, but their is still room for improvement.
For instance, I have found that a movie that is getting more than an 80% rating on rottentomatoes.com is almost always a movie that I will find worthwhile, even if it is in a genre that I don't normally enjoy. However, game ratings like those at rottentomatoes.com or metacritic.com aren't quite as consistent.
There are several reasons for this. First, game review scores tend to be overinflated. The median score for a game rating seems to be about 7.5 which makes it very difficult to distinguish which games are really the "best".
Second, unlike movies games don't always age well. The original "Resident Evil" has a great rating. However, I tried playing it for the first time this year, and it was agony. I just couldn't get in to it with its primitive interface.
Last, games are more personal. The amount of time that can be committed to a game is at least an order of magnitude greater than the amount of time that it takes to watch one movie. Also, games are much more diverse. I have never gotten into FPSs, so no matter how highly rated they are I wouldn't shell out $60 for one. However, I probably will buy Heroes of Might and Magic V despite the fact that it doesn't have a stellar rating.
I was a dispatcher, and I seriously resent this. The homeowner may have told you one story, but is that what he told the dispatcher? People calling 9-1-1 often exaggerate in order to get a faster response, and as you pointed out, even if they have the best of intentions they can get confused.
Where I worked dispatchers had intense training. Just like firemen, certified dispatchers have a specific set of guidelines they are required to follow. If there is any doubt they are supposed to assume the worst. Don't blame them if that is frequently not the case.
I would say that eighty percent of calls that a dispatcher takes are not high-priority calls, no life or property is in danger, and another ten percent are serious. The missing ten percent are the unknowns, and you will be asked to respond to them as if the were high-priority, and most of the time they will not be.
However, if you have trouble with one dispatcher that is constantly misunderstanding situations, exaggerating, or just plain making things up, you need to report it and check the tapes. If it keeps happening that person should be fired. Please do not lump all of us together.
Also, don't assume that your second-guessing is a good idea. One time we had a man holding his family hostage at gunpoint. I was told to have an ambulance respond in case we needed it. I told the ambulance company twice that they should arrive without lights and sirens and stay out of sight. Instead, they roared right up lights flashing, and sirens blaring. Luckily, that didn't set him off, but I think it illustrates my point.
Last, like you, I have no trouble with emergency personnel going through a red light in an emergency. As far as I can tell, the cops in the article are only getting tickets for running lights when they were not on an emergency call, and I support that entirely.
I have to disagree. Active participation in an open source project can get you work. If you reply to questions in the forums, edit the wiki, or contribute source code, people will notice. A user may offer you a bounty to do something they can't. Many of the forums have pages for posting services and jobs. If the project has a foundation or offers commercial services you may be asked to join.
You are right that headhunters probably aren't reading documentation looking for names, but if they are asked to find someone who is good with OpenSourceProjectX, and they know what they are doing, they will probably go to opensourceprojectx.com and ask there.
Why should I believe this?
Um, like, I knew this guy that was fired from his job for stealing, you know, because he had brought in his own pencils, and one day he took a bunch of them home, right, but, um, the company said that he was taking home their property. It's true, my brother's girlfriend's sister knew him.
This stinks of an urban legend: outrageous behavior posted anonymously without identifying any of the parties. Can anyone point to an actual school, that had an actual incident like this?
I used Turnitin when I was a teacher years ago, and I'm pretty sure that you can set up your account so that it doesn't flag work done by the same person. The way I understand your complaint, if 500 students submitted rough drafts and a similar number submitted final drafts then all of them should have been flagged. The fact that there was only 30 suggests that the service didn't recognize the returning student, or that the service identified a plagiarism that wasn't there before, either the student added something or there was something new in the database.
You might want to take a look at these projects:
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
If you look at the region codes, you'll notice that most of these searches came out of Canada. I would guess this was Canadians who don't know how to spell "lice": http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/10/12/bc-s almon-lice.html
Actually the FCC is not supposed to fine a station where something like this happens under very specific circumstances
Before you go off with examples to counter this, let me point out that I said the FCC is not supposed to fine a station under these circumstances, that doesn't mean that they won't try.
I'm starting to get a little sick of comments like '"web development" (heh)'. Would you laugh, if he had said "software development" or "game programming"? Dismissing a web developer is like saying, "Oh, he wants to be a carpenter." Sure, he could end up being the day laborer who is putting together pre-fabs with a nail gun, but he could also become the guy that hand-crafts beautiful tiled mahogany tables.
A web developer could easily use any of the mathematics you describe if he is streaming media, load balancing servers, serving secure pages, or optimizing databases. On the other hand, don't dismiss someone who is just creating pretty pages. Graphics can be done badly with "pre-fab" parts, but it is an art form to do them correctly for the web.
Personally, I frequently, and proudly, describe myself as a developer. For me, it simply means that I work with several facets of computers: graphic design, programming, databases, user interfaces, etc. It should not immediately imply that I do not understand computer science.
I both agree and disagree with the parent's opinion. On the one hand, in my personal experience what the school is probably offering isn't university level learning, but on the other hand, I think that the poster may not know what goes into modern "web development".
As for my personal experience, I am one of only a handful of people who graduated from Quinnipiac University with an undergraduate degree in "eMedia", and honestly it was a joke. In the end, I think I only took 3 or 4 classes where I was sitting in front of a computer making interactive or digital media. Everything else was general requirements like Music, mass communications requirements like Journalism, or my minor. The "eMedia" that I was taught could have easily been learned at a technical school.
However, I realized this quickly, and I went out of my way to make the best of it. I had signed up for a CIS minor, and I made sure that I chose only the programming classes. I even did an independent study where I designed an evolutionary neural network.
In my eMedia classes I made sure that I got as much as I could out of it. When the class was asked to cut and paste code over and over again onto objects in Director, I made the code better. I created a class to eliminate the redundancy, and changed nested if statements to a switch/case. I cleaned up the logic so that it handled improper input. Sure, I couldn't get a better grade than the A that other students got for doing the minimum, but I did impress the teachers, and they have gladly helped me in my career since then.
As for a "web development" major, I think the poster may be stereotyping what a "web developer" does. A web developer is no longer somebody hacking together sites alone with Dreamweaver. Nowadays, a developer needs to know graphic design, XHTML, CSS, programming and scripting languages, databases, and server management, just to name a few things. Even if a developer only concentrates on a few of these things there is still enough difficult things to learn to easily fill a university level major. These are the kinds of things that I wish that my education had included and that I have gone out of the way to teach myself.
I know this.parent was modded as funny, and I hope that is how the poster intended it. That said, there are employers who do care.
One time I was laid off by a cafe that was closing. The owner gave me two weeks severance despite the fact that I was working under a normal "at will" contract.
Another time I was "let go" because it had become obvious that my skills didn't match what the employer needed. Again, I was working "at will" and he could have just booted me out the door. Instead he delayed the actual date so that he would pay accumulated vacation time and set up my COBRA eligibility, and also gave me two weeks severance.
I think it made a difference that these were both small companies, where the owner could make that decision. I guess it depends on who you work for.
I don't think starting with MySQL "will poison your mind". However, I think starting with Access, Excel, or FileMaker will.
You apparently are a DBA, however a "many hats" developer, such as myself, often works on things much smaller and less complicated than what you do every day. I think a good developer should know how a relational database works, and understand normalization. As I have gone along, I have made sure that I understood the benefits and costs of different data types, engines, and indices. As far as I know, these things are fairly standard across database software, so I don't think I have been "poisoned" yet.
If my applications grew to the point where I had to start optimizing, and I continued to use MySQL, then maybe, I would be "poisoned" but the day things get that complicated is the day that I hire a DBA. I guess what I am saying is that you can make a mess with any tool. However if you use good design practices, you can go a long way before the differences in database software are noticeable, and if you have done things right, switching may not be that much of a problem.
I'm going to assume you are not familiar with how laws in the United States work. There are federal laws and their are state laws. The federal government can enforce online gambling because of interstate commerce laws, interstate telecommunications laws, etc. However, they can't easily stop gambling that is legal in one state. It would be like the EU telling all its members what the minimum wage should be in their countries. The federal government could only shut down gambling that is legal in a state on two conditions.
1. They would have to get enough congressman to pass the law. This is not going to happen since a lot of states have a gambling monopoly in their lottery, and others get a lot of money from gambling taxes.
2. If this was challenged, and it would be, the law would have to pass constitutional muster showing that it falls into the federal jurisdiction. It probably wouldn't. The federal government has surprisingly limited powers when it comes to legislating what goes on within a state. That is why congressmen complain all the time about things like physician-assisted suicide, and medical marijuana, but in the end they don't do much about it.
Of course the federal government can overstep its bounds, and if it isn't challenged, it can set a precedent in that area. Also, they can coerce states into passing laws. There is no federal law saying that you must be 21 to purchase alcohol, but the federal government just told every state that they must pass such a law or they would lose all of their federal highway funding, i.e. a lot of money.
Therefore the federal government has to choose its battles when legislating, and in-state gambling is a battle they aren't going to take up.
Last year my family and friends pitched in together and got me one gift for my birthday. The restaurant quality, 11 cup Cuisinart. This is not the one you see in most stores. It cost about $400 dollars. I wasn't condescending. I literally hugged it when I got it unwrapped. For some of us the high end stuff is worth it. I bet you wouldn't complain if someone got you a $200 graphics card, or a $600 Playstation.
Doc Savage was a huge influence on modern fiction. I own a few of the original paperbacks, and one of my favorite bits of trivia is the fact that Doc had a "Fortress of Solitude" in the arctic years before the first Superman comic was printed.
I don't know about MA, but my company bid on a small CT Transit site, and their top requirement was accessibility and standards compliance. Their current site did not meet W3C standards and federal accessibility standards, and they were in trouble for it. You can debate all you want about Opera, but if the MA Transit site is not compliant, they are probably breaking law.
Having said that, it takes a big stink before the law is enforced. I would say that the majority of government sites don't actually meet the standards, but nobody is doing anything about it.
Also, even big web development shops are not doing much to make sure they are complying. I took a look at the sites created by the company that won the CT Transit bid, and not one of them met minimum standards, but who is going to check? They will deliver a site, and they will tell the customer that it is compliant. The customer doesn't know enough to check themselves.
I have had training in hiring practices, and one of the first rules for hiring, especially for low-skilled jobs is, "Hire hungry people." Employers don't want deadbeats, but they do want people that come to work every day because they have to. This could have been a factor in their decision not to hire you. On the other hand, as you move up in the skills required for a job, "Hire hungry people." changes meaning. IBM and Google want people that are passionate about what they do, and hungry for the challenge. They don't want people that are always worried about their debt, or appear to be disorganized.
I don't disagree with all of your points. However, there is a "profit-driven" model for entertainment, and it does produce quite a bit of experimental material. It's called Public Broadcasting. People pay up-front how much they think next year's content will be worth, and then the producer's create that content. Not every donor likes every show, but they like some enough to support the other "experiments".
This is part of the cycle you see all the time in movie production. Budgets get bigger and bigger, quality generally decreases, and everyone cries. Then some college student makes the next "Blair Witch" for basically nothing, and everyone is talking about "independents" and "experiments." Big studios will buy the successful small studios and promise to let them stay the same, or the big studio will create an "independent" division. A few years later, that division will be subsumed by the corporate mono-culture, and the whole cycle will start again. We have already seen this with games like "Alien Homonid".
Before you go off, let me be clear. Not all low-budget games and movies are cool, and there is definitely a place for big budgets. For every "Clerks" there is "The Matrix", and for every "Custer's Last Stand" there is a "Disney Sports: Basketball".
Read at +5 and you will discover that almost every single post points out the problems with this story.
The editors may choose a slanted story, but the "groupthink" actually distills the facts.
I always lean back while working at the computer. My posterior is close to the front edge of the chair and the bottoms of my shoulder blades are on top of the back of the chair. My shoulders, neck, and head are actually behind the chair, and my legs are out front. This violates every rule that I learned and repeated to my typing classes. My family has a history of back problems, and yet I work 8 hours a day like this and I am perfectly comfortable. I'm glad that someone is looking in to this. Now we just have to convince observers that taking this position doesn't mean you are lazy.
I have mod points, and I was just going to smack you down, but that wouldn't be the best way to respond to you.
First, this is not a space program. The summary is misleading by using the word launched. This is a earthbound telescope.
Next, the reason that they are doing is this is because they are investing in the future. There are thousands of Mexicans who do have the skills and education to use this, and those people can earn more money, pay more taxes, and encourage others to achieve. Hopefully someday this will snowball, and then they will have richer, better educated citizens.
Poverty, crime, and corruption are problems in the U.S. By your logic, we should spend all of our capital only on these problems, and stop all federally funded research and development.
Last, this is not decades behind. This is one of the largest moving telescopes ever built, and the technology is cutting edge. I have been around radio telescopes my whole life, and this one pushes the very limits of current engineering.