If he's the kind of spy who is paid by the CIA to create and distribute propaganda material (in this case, video games) to subvert a country's government, that might be exactly the kind of spy who doesn't get much interrogation training.
Is the person stationed at a US Embassy abroad who goes to all the elite social dinners with various parties of state and covertly sends intel reports back to the CIA a spy? Most would say yes.
Is the Iranian former-marine helping develop propaganda for Iranian consumption under contract with the CIA a spy?
I don't think you'd say he's definitely NOT a spy...
Death seems a bit extreme however. Deportation would seem more appropriate. And hopefully this is all just a bunch of diplomatic posturing and deportation in exchange for some other consideration is what this comes out to.
I disagree. Camps are a about a lot more than just learning material - there is a huge social interaction component that goes along with them that you're just not going to get on a summer job. And frankly, the social skills are the more important aspect of the program than the academic material for many of the participants (myself having been one of them.)
Summer Youth Programs at Michigan Tech University. I suppose it's been 16 years since I've been, but they were excellent then and a quick perusal of their site leads me to believe they are excellent now, especially if you're interested in Engineering.
There are just not many opportunities for High School students to get exposure to real engineering, but this program definitely offers them.
Oh, and there are girls there.
Anyway, I went 2 or 3 summers and always had a great time. It's not just tech class stuff, there's a strong social program associated with it as well.
Great for those of you who are in HS, and those of you who now have HS-aged children yourselves. I'm honestly not aware of another program in the US like it.
I also did the Illinois Math and Science Academy program as an incoming freshmen or sophomore (it's been a while), but their program focuses more on straight math/science and not so much on practical engineering application, so I definitely preferred Tech. Then again, I don't remember much from the IMSA camp other than the girls and the pinball machine (much time spent on both, although probably more on the pinball machine) so take that as you will. Depending on your age, you could do both; IMSA as an incoming Freshman and Michigan Tech after that.
One other difference is the IMSA program was loaded with a lot more math/science nerds (I recognized a lot of people at IMSA from math competitions), while Tech had a more well-rounded group of people and programs (a lot of participants are Tech alum who just think it's a good idea to get their kids exposed to engineering), so I also liked Tech as an opportunity to work on social skills with non-nerds in a low-pressure environment (nobody knows you when you start and you're leaving in a week or two, so no permanent damage) - and I needed the practice.
Now called "Exploring Your Options", back in my day it was S.I.T.E., student introduction to engineering. I was pretty sure at that point I was going to Illinois though (summer prior to senior year) so it was double-helpful for me in just learning the engineering department and campus, and a lot of the people I met in the camp ended up attending Illinois as well so it was a leg up on meeting people. I'd say this is a good program if you're a Senior and did the others, but if I was picking ONE, I'd still probably go with Michigan Tech. IMSA vs. UofI will just depend on age. I think the UofI program would have been less interesting if I were not already sure I were goingto UofI.
Caveat: I was in high school 16-20 years ago, so my info is a bit dated.:)
Well, copy and paste for one. Send in homework from anywhere at any time. Get feedback from anywhere/any time. Ask questions anywhere/any time. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Copy and paste WHAT exactly? Papers you downloaded from the internet? It's a tablet, not a computer with a mouse, it's not good for anything education-related that requires copying and pasting.
As for your comment, you could say the same thing about the ball point pen vs quill and ink. "There is virtually nothing a ball point pen is going to do that can't be done with some combination of ink, quill, and a candle."
Except write continuously without needing to dip it in more ink.
I'm not saying the new way is bad because the old way is "good enough", I'm saying the new way is bad because it's worse than the old way.
Just because it's got a microprocessor in it doesn't mean it's necessarily better. Especially not at education.
The school district I grew up in (in yuppieville) has decided that every student should have a tablet computer.
My response was, why?
There is virtually nothing a tablet computer is going to do that can't be done with some combination of pen, paper, and an overhead. And in most cases, the pen/paper/overhead is going to be more effective.
I'm actually surprised the teachers are opposed - in my old district it's the teachers pushing the technology buy. Then again, most of the teachers there kinda stink.
...it sounds like this guy thinks he should be paid for doing nothing.
"and since all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time."
Translation: My company is paying me to sit on my ass and I'm OK with it. But, I want to be paid AGAIN for using all that free time they're paying me for to develop something the company that is paying me needs.
If this guy came into my office, I would fire him. I clearly don't need him anymore since the work is done, and he's apparently not going to do anything else either.
I would suggest that this guy hand over his code ASAP before his managers realize they're paying him to do nothing and terminate his employment.
You're close. Corporations say and do that which will gain them the most money. They exist solely for the purpose of returning value to their shareholders.
Ok, but what if the shareholders themselves don't want the company to just do what will make them the most money?
What if the shareholders instead demand that the company sacrifice some profits to behave in a more ethical manner?
Corporatons reflect the will of their shareholders. It just so happens that the will of most shareholders is more profits.
Probably because the people who try to get the most profits end up with the most money, thus owning more shares.
But the long view doesn't matter if, in the short view, taking the necessary precautions to make sure your paying customers won't die when eating your beef will make your company bankrupt.
Plus, your point assumes it costs money if your beef kills paying customers. If your beef kills paying customers, just change the name of your beef company. Problem solved.
Sometimes, regulation IS necessary.
Unfortunately, sometimes regulation is also completely unnecessary, or unnecessarily burdensome.
But while regulation can be bad, no regulation is almost certainly worse.
An LLC is absolutely NOT an S-Corp... unless you want it to be (and specifically notify the IRS that you want it to be). There are a LOT of restrictions on S-Corps (no foreign owners, only one class of stock, no more than 75 shareholders, etc) so it's highly unlikely that a corporation the size of Valve is an S-Corp..
The vast majority of LLCs are treated as either sole proprietorships or partnerships for tax purposes.
The important part is that the type of company you incorporate as at the state level doesn't one-to-one map to a kind of taxable entity. Incorporation is a creature of state law, and federal taxes are a creature of federal law.
The old value is that no person is more than 6 degrees of separation from ANY OTHER PERSON, period. So, randomly pick any person on the planet, and you should be able to get to that person with no more than 5 intervening people.
An *AVERAGE* of 4.74 doesn't say anything about a 6-person maximum.
...the way you make Groupon work is you offer a deal that gets a customer in the door so you can sell them something else.
For example, a restaurant might offer a $20 food for $10 groupon. The restaurant gets $5 from the groupon, but hope you buy $40 in food and drink, and bring some friends with you, so they might get $80-$100 in full-price sales because of the $15-off groupon.
Another example is spas or photographers - offer a 50% off groupon for a basic service, then when the customer is in, upgrade them to more services.
But, if you've sold so many groupons that your entire operating capacity is eaten up just fulfilling the groupons, then you have no capacity for upsells, and you've killed your ability to upsell and thus make the groupon work for your business.
This business owner should have done a coupon for a half dozen cupcakes, limited it to a reasonable amount of groupons, then always tried to upsell the redeemer to a full dozen or two dozen cupcakes, and they might have made some money.
Not that I would ever do such a thing. I tend to avoid hanging out with people who would assign social consequence to buying the Wal-Mart cupcakes. But lots of people who don't operate that way.
If you are tasked with providing dessert, stopping at wal-mart on the way to whatever occasion it is to pick up a dozen cupcakes for under $10 is tacky.
But if you stop at the "gourmet" Cupcake place and spend $40 on "special" cupcakes, that's OK.
You're really paying for the ability to buy your way out of having to actually bake without the social stigma of being too cheap/lazy.
...I learned many of the fundamentals of good computer science in my high school pascal classes.
Actually, that's not true - I probably learned many of the fundamentals of computer science in my elementary school "gifted learning" class. We learned problem solving.
The difference between infotech and CS is between how to write code and WHY you're writing the code you're writing.
A surgeon has a minimum of 11 years and up to 16 years education training between 4 years undergrad, 4 years grad, 3-8 years residency. And average salaries for surgeons are still only $250-$350k.
So, I get an undergrad degree in a CS/Engineering field, I'm pulling down $50k+ first year out of school. For the next 4 years, the med student is dropping $30-$40k/year on their education, so I'm "ahead" of them by $320k after 4 years. Then residency hits, and I'm probably up to $80k while the resident is $50k, so throw on another $90k-$240k.
So doctors "break-even" with engineers after maybe 5 years out of residency. In the meantime, who do you think was having more fun?
But the reality of the situation is this is a bad question. If you're the kind of person who would do well with engineering/CS as your career, you are almost certainly the kind of person who would be a horrible doctor. The two professions are the antitheses of each other in terms of one key component: Amount of time spent dealing with people. (Exception: Radiologists.)
The worker has the ability to quit whenever they want.
I don't know where you worked, but where I worked, everyone knew who the "good people" and the "not so good people" were (fortunately for me, all the not-so-good people were in a different geography, and were (mostly) the first on the chopping block when people got let go). When one of the good people did decide to go somewhere else, they just added another company any of the other good people could go work for if they wanted. Happened all the time - somebody would move to a different company, and then a couple of the other good guys would get offers, and either up their current compensation or move to the new company. I know I personally at least once got a very dramatic raise that I can only attribute to making sure I wasn't motivated to look for work somewhere else.
Now, the economy is different now, and there may be way more engineers than there are jobs for engineers, which is going to depress wages, but I still suspect that if you can't find a job, it's probably because you're not actually one of the "good people".
But seriously, if you don't like where you are working, GO WORK SOMEWHERE ELSE.
The company I worked for would definitely try and get as much out of you as they could, but you were also compensated appropriately. Extended-hours heroics were always rewarded.
But, the corollary to rewarding for contribution is the apparent age discrimination. The young guys just out of college who were single and were willing (and even enjoyed, I know I did, I got paid to work on some of the most advanced tech out there) working 60 hours a week had something over the 35-55 year old guy who always wanted to leave at 5 PM to get home for dinner with his family.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Those kinds of people certainly brought experience to the equation, so that mitigated the mere difference in hours, but over the long term, only being willing to go 9-5 definitely impacted their growth potential at the company.
And to be fair, the people compensated more as high-level managers were the people who were willing to spend extended time away from family for business travel etc.
Point of the matter is, you can want to be compensated according to contribution, but the consequence of that is when you morph from 60-80-hour-a-week single college grad who loves doing the work to 40-hour-a-week married guy, that's going to have an effect on your compensation.
It's actually one of the reasons I got out of the engineering gig - now I do something that a fresh college kid isn't capable of. Although, even the 40-hour-a-week married with kids engineers, while not moving up like the 60-hour-a-week kids, had been there done that, got good salaries, and had very comfortable living standards.
I have a friend in loss prevention, retail, like macy's, book stores, etc. Started in the trenches and now has done regional loss prevention management at a couple major chains.
Her focus is almost entirely on employees stealing.
A lot of it isn't even making stuff disappear, it's discount scams, markdown scams, return scams, often coordinated with a friend who doesn't work there.
But are more than 1% of Comic Con attendees black?
No.
That was the point of the citation - racial makeup of attendees at comic con shows that blacks are extremely underrepresented in "nerdy" activities for some reason other than the racial preferences of others (it's not like anyone asks you what your race is before selling you a comic con ticket.)
Slashdot Mirror
If he's the kind of spy who is paid by the CIA to create and distribute propaganda material (in this case, video games) to subvert a country's government, that might be exactly the kind of spy who doesn't get much interrogation training.
Is the person stationed at a US Embassy abroad who goes to all the elite social dinners with various parties of state and covertly sends intel reports back to the CIA a spy? Most would say yes.
Is the Iranian former-marine helping develop propaganda for Iranian consumption under contract with the CIA a spy?
I don't think you'd say he's definitely NOT a spy...
Death seems a bit extreme however. Deportation would seem more appropriate. And hopefully this is all just a bunch of diplomatic posturing and deportation in exchange for some other consideration is what this comes out to.
And I meant to move that up one set of posts... ooops. Guess they were not teaching slashdot posting in summer camp.
I disagree. Camps are a about a lot more than just learning material - there is a huge social interaction component that goes along with them that you're just not going to get on a summer job. And frankly, the social skills are the more important aspect of the program than the academic material for many of the participants (myself having been one of them.)
I strongly recommend:
http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/explorations.php
Summer Youth Programs at Michigan Tech University. I suppose it's been 16 years since I've been, but they were excellent then and a quick perusal of their site leads me to believe they are excellent now, especially if you're interested in Engineering.
There are just not many opportunities for High School students to get exposure to real engineering, but this program definitely offers them.
Oh, and there are girls there.
Anyway, I went 2 or 3 summers and always had a great time. It's not just tech class stuff, there's a strong social program associated with it as well.
Great for those of you who are in HS, and those of you who now have HS-aged children yourselves. I'm honestly not aware of another program in the US like it.
I also did the Illinois Math and Science Academy program as an incoming freshmen or sophomore (it's been a while), but their program focuses more on straight math/science and not so much on practical engineering application, so I definitely preferred Tech. Then again, I don't remember much from the IMSA camp other than the girls and the pinball machine (much time spent on both, although probably more on the pinball machine) so take that as you will. Depending on your age, you could do both; IMSA as an incoming Freshman and Michigan Tech after that.
One other difference is the IMSA program was loaded with a lot more math/science nerds (I recognized a lot of people at IMSA from math competitions), while Tech had a more well-rounded group of people and programs (a lot of participants are Tech alum who just think it's a good idea to get their kids exposed to engineering), so I also liked Tech as an opportunity to work on social skills with non-nerds in a low-pressure environment (nobody knows you when you start and you're leaving in a week or two, so no permanent damage) - and I needed the practice.
Oh, one more I did:
http://engage.illinois.edu/entry/5785
Now called "Exploring Your Options", back in my day it was S.I.T.E., student introduction to engineering. I was pretty sure at that point I was going to Illinois though (summer prior to senior year) so it was double-helpful for me in just learning the engineering department and campus, and a lot of the people I met in the camp ended up attending Illinois as well so it was a leg up on meeting people. I'd say this is a good program if you're a Senior and did the others, but if I was picking ONE, I'd still probably go with Michigan Tech. IMSA vs. UofI will just depend on age. I think the UofI program would have been less interesting if I were not already sure I were goingto UofI.
Caveat: I was in high school 16-20 years ago, so my info is a bit dated. :)
Well, copy and paste for one. Send in homework from anywhere at any time. Get feedback from anywhere/any time. Ask questions anywhere/any time. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Copy and paste WHAT exactly? Papers you downloaded from the internet? It's a tablet, not a computer with a mouse, it's not good for anything education-related that requires copying and pasting.
As for your comment, you could say the same thing about the ball point pen vs quill and ink. "There is virtually nothing a ball point pen is going to do that can't be done with some combination of ink, quill, and a candle."
Except write continuously without needing to dip it in more ink.
I'm not saying the new way is bad because the old way is "good enough", I'm saying the new way is bad because it's worse than the old way.
Just because it's got a microprocessor in it doesn't mean it's necessarily better. Especially not at education.
"We need more computers in the classroom!"
OK, what are you going to do with them?
The school district I grew up in (in yuppieville) has decided that every student should have a tablet computer.
My response was, why?
There is virtually nothing a tablet computer is going to do that can't be done with some combination of pen, paper, and an overhead. And in most cases, the pen/paper/overhead is going to be more effective.
I'm actually surprised the teachers are opposed - in my old district it's the teachers pushing the technology buy. Then again, most of the teachers there kinda stink.
Communism depends heavily on the people picking up the slack being within striking distance of the slackers.
...it sounds like this guy thinks he should be paid for doing nothing.
"and since all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time."
Translation: My company is paying me to sit on my ass and I'm OK with it. But, I want to be paid AGAIN for using all that free time they're paying me for to develop something the company that is paying me needs.
If this guy came into my office, I would fire him. I clearly don't need him anymore since the work is done, and he's apparently not going to do anything else either.
I would suggest that this guy hand over his code ASAP before his managers realize they're paying him to do nothing and terminate his employment.
You're close. Corporations say and do that which will gain them the most money. They exist solely for the purpose of returning value to their shareholders.
Ok, but what if the shareholders themselves don't want the company to just do what will make them the most money?
What if the shareholders instead demand that the company sacrifice some profits to behave in a more ethical manner?
Corporatons reflect the will of their shareholders. It just so happens that the will of most shareholders is more profits.
Probably because the people who try to get the most profits end up with the most money, thus owning more shares.
But the long view doesn't matter if, in the short view, taking the necessary precautions to make sure your paying customers won't die when eating your beef will make your company bankrupt.
Plus, your point assumes it costs money if your beef kills paying customers. If your beef kills paying customers, just change the name of your beef company. Problem solved.
Sometimes, regulation IS necessary.
Unfortunately, sometimes regulation is also completely unnecessary, or unnecessarily burdensome.
But while regulation can be bad, no regulation is almost certainly worse.
...if you are considering what should be included in a high school computer lab, the obvious answer is....
Girls.
USPS loses about 3-5% of mail, per an unofficial source.
I find this unlikely. I send a lot of mail. It all gets there.
An LLC is absolutely NOT an S-Corp... unless you want it to be (and specifically notify the IRS that you want it to be). There are a LOT of restrictions on S-Corps (no foreign owners, only one class of stock, no more than 75 shareholders, etc) so it's highly unlikely that a corporation the size of Valve is an S-Corp..
The vast majority of LLCs are treated as either sole proprietorships or partnerships for tax purposes.
The important part is that the type of company you incorporate as at the state level doesn't one-to-one map to a kind of taxable entity. Incorporation is a creature of state law, and federal taxes are a creature of federal law.
I wasn't saying doctors were good at dealing with people, just that doctors were WILLING to deal with people.
I have no problem writing software. I absolutely would not want to deal with patients. Computers don't get upset when you crash them.
The old value is that no person is more than 6 degrees of separation from ANY OTHER PERSON, period. So, randomly pick any person on the planet, and you should be able to get to that person with no more than 5 intervening people.
An *AVERAGE* of 4.74 doesn't say anything about a 6-person maximum.
...the way you make Groupon work is you offer a deal that gets a customer in the door so you can sell them something else.
For example, a restaurant might offer a $20 food for $10 groupon. The restaurant gets $5 from the groupon, but hope you buy $40 in food and drink, and bring some friends with you, so they might get $80-$100 in full-price sales because of the $15-off groupon.
Another example is spas or photographers - offer a 50% off groupon for a basic service, then when the customer is in, upgrade them to more services.
But, if you've sold so many groupons that your entire operating capacity is eaten up just fulfilling the groupons, then you have no capacity for upsells, and you've killed your ability to upsell and thus make the groupon work for your business.
This business owner should have done a coupon for a half dozen cupcakes, limited it to a reasonable amount of groupons, then always tried to upsell the redeemer to a full dozen or two dozen cupcakes, and they might have made some money.
...What's the price of advertising in all the newspapers etc that are covering this story?
Not that I would ever do such a thing. I tend to avoid hanging out with people who would assign social consequence to buying the Wal-Mart cupcakes. But lots of people who don't operate that way.
Because you're buying them for an "occasion".
If you are tasked with providing dessert, stopping at wal-mart on the way to whatever occasion it is to pick up a dozen cupcakes for under $10 is tacky.
But if you stop at the "gourmet" Cupcake place and spend $40 on "special" cupcakes, that's OK.
You're really paying for the ability to buy your way out of having to actually bake without the social stigma of being too cheap/lazy.
...I learned many of the fundamentals of good computer science in my high school pascal classes.
Actually, that's not true - I probably learned many of the fundamentals of computer science in my elementary school "gifted learning" class. We learned problem solving.
The difference between infotech and CS is between how to write code and WHY you're writing the code you're writing.
A surgeon has a minimum of 11 years and up to 16 years education training between 4 years undergrad, 4 years grad, 3-8 years residency. And average salaries for surgeons are still only $250-$350k.
So, I get an undergrad degree in a CS/Engineering field, I'm pulling down $50k+ first year out of school. For the next 4 years, the med student is dropping $30-$40k/year on their education, so I'm "ahead" of them by $320k after 4 years. Then residency hits, and I'm probably up to $80k while the resident is $50k, so throw on another $90k-$240k.
So doctors "break-even" with engineers after maybe 5 years out of residency. In the meantime, who do you think was having more fun?
But the reality of the situation is this is a bad question. If you're the kind of person who would do well with engineering/CS as your career, you are almost certainly the kind of person who would be a horrible doctor. The two professions are the antitheses of each other in terms of one key component: Amount of time spent dealing with people. (Exception: Radiologists.)
The worker has the ability to quit whenever they want.
I don't know where you worked, but where I worked, everyone knew who the "good people" and the "not so good people" were (fortunately for me, all the not-so-good people were in a different geography, and were (mostly) the first on the chopping block when people got let go). When one of the good people did decide to go somewhere else, they just added another company any of the other good people could go work for if they wanted. Happened all the time - somebody would move to a different company, and then a couple of the other good guys would get offers, and either up their current compensation or move to the new company. I know I personally at least once got a very dramatic raise that I can only attribute to making sure I wasn't motivated to look for work somewhere else.
Now, the economy is different now, and there may be way more engineers than there are jobs for engineers, which is going to depress wages, but I still suspect that if you can't find a job, it's probably because you're not actually one of the "good people".
But seriously, if you don't like where you are working, GO WORK SOMEWHERE ELSE.
The company I worked for would definitely try and get as much out of you as they could, but you were also compensated appropriately. Extended-hours heroics were always rewarded.
But, the corollary to rewarding for contribution is the apparent age discrimination. The young guys just out of college who were single and were willing (and even enjoyed, I know I did, I got paid to work on some of the most advanced tech out there) working 60 hours a week had something over the 35-55 year old guy who always wanted to leave at 5 PM to get home for dinner with his family.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Those kinds of people certainly brought experience to the equation, so that mitigated the mere difference in hours, but over the long term, only being willing to go 9-5 definitely impacted their growth potential at the company.
And to be fair, the people compensated more as high-level managers were the people who were willing to spend extended time away from family for business travel etc.
Point of the matter is, you can want to be compensated according to contribution, but the consequence of that is when you morph from 60-80-hour-a-week single college grad who loves doing the work to 40-hour-a-week married guy, that's going to have an effect on your compensation.
It's actually one of the reasons I got out of the engineering gig - now I do something that a fresh college kid isn't capable of. Although, even the 40-hour-a-week married with kids engineers, while not moving up like the 60-hour-a-week kids, had been there done that, got good salaries, and had very comfortable living standards.
I have a friend in loss prevention, retail, like macy's, book stores, etc. Started in the trenches and now has done regional loss prevention management at a couple major chains.
Her focus is almost entirely on employees stealing.
A lot of it isn't even making stuff disappear, it's discount scams, markdown scams, return scams, often coordinated with a friend who doesn't work there.
Yes, there are black people at Comic Con.
But are more than 1% of Comic Con attendees black?
No.
That was the point of the citation - racial makeup of attendees at comic con shows that blacks are extremely underrepresented in "nerdy" activities for some reason other than the racial preferences of others (it's not like anyone asks you what your race is before selling you a comic con ticket.)
You still missed the point.
Kids can't DO ANYTHING to the computer at the library.
It's not merely having one, it's being able to (and choosing) to mess around with it.