Well first, marriage is nothing more than some legal protections for your relationship and some discounts on insurance/etc... It is basically just like the relationship before except that is is harder and more expensive to leave. In the end a wife/husband is nothing more than a friend who you have sex with. If the sex sucks or you find yourself much more friendly with other woman, then there is a serious problem.
On sexual compatibility, there is a lot. Some people just like you to sink the hole, but other people like other actions. If you don't match there, one partner will either cheat or be very depressed.
On the whole friendship thing. If she likes to read and discuss Geoffrey Chaucer all the time and you like to discuss the tty subsystem of the linux kernel, it's going to be hard to be friends. If you have no middle ground so you enjoy talking to that girl who works next to you at work hacking away new device drivers for her crazy devices more than you enjoy talking to your girlfriend/wife then there is a problem. Presumably the two of you must meet on some middle ground to feel connected...
Neglecting with sports can be anything. If you are working 100 hours a week, then the office is your football. If you are going after extra courses, playing games all night and not spending time with her, pursuing advanced degrees, watching movies, etc. then they are your sports.
The other question is do you live together yet? Married or not stuff changes when you live together. Then all the habits come out. If she likes the house spotless and creates a rule about everything and you are lackadaisical about things that will cause friction. If one of you is OCD and the other isn't then that will cause friction too. For some people even what time to go to bed causes friction. Maybe one is a nigh owl and the other one is a morning lark or however they say. Sometimes a partner gets all crazy when the other doesn't go to bed at the same time. It's little things like that which can add up over time.
And of course there is the obvious stuff. You both want kids, if you aren't the same religion you are tolerant of each other's, you have similar dreams and goals in life for the future, etc... If you don't agree on the big stuff it will end up being a disaster.
Yeah just an example, about 2 years ago Lenova was still calling the thinkpads IBM. But Lenova, Dell, HP are more expensive than say Asus, Acer, etc... Of course enterprise contracts are good so maybe a Dell could offer some type of cost savings in support, but still.... Desktops cost less.
It really depends. But anyway I had a GPA that rounded off to 4.0 in 2002 (and there weren't a lot of graduates with highest honors so grade inflation must not have been as widespread) and my career services department couldn't provide any assistance. If the college advertised that it would and it didn't, I say sue them. I'm not a suing kind of guy but I definitely felt like strangling someone after all the time they spent advertising their career services only to find that they offer next to no help in reality. A lawsuit seems a bit silly but if it raises awareness that maybe there is no guarantee of a job after college it is good.
College costs are out of control and as long as people think they need a degree to get a job they will remain that way because colleges can charge what they want. No offense to you IT guys but the school does not need new computers every year. I change computers every 4 or 5 years and mostly it's not need, but just lust....mmmm pentium.....mmmm dual core.......Also the network does not need to be upgraded every year. Every professor does not need an IBM thinkpad laptop, and even worse ever professor does not need a Macintosh. A gateway or other less popular (read cheap) brand is fine.... But really every professor doesn't need a laptop....Also the higher college professors don't need giant limos and drivers to take them everywhere. And those are just the beginnings of the fluff....When I was an undergrad it cost 5,000 for the year full time when in state and not living on campus. Now I pay 5,000 for two classes in a semester...And while graduate classes are more expensive than the ungrad ones, the difference in price is barely noticeable compared to the total price of the classes. Overall by raising awareness that college is not a guarantee to a job this might result in less people enrolling. At first prices will skyrocket but then with even lower enrollment colleges will have no choice but to become more affordable...
I don't know about grade inflation. I am doing a masters now and it is pretty hard. And I do actually read the textbook as well as study the notes and do the homework/projects. Only one class had easy tests, but the project was a killer. But mostly the exams are hard questions. As an undergrad the exam problems in math/physics/problem solving parts of cs exams were mostly based on homework problems, or obvious straight applications of concepts. Then the harder classes would have one or two questions where you'd have to think hard and really make some type of jump to the answer. Still there was a good grade spread on the exams and often a curve (and even with the curve often not that many A's). So far in two of my graduate classes around half the exam were those questions where you have to make some type of jump to the answer. Anyone who gets an A on those things deserves the A whether inflated or not.
I wish I knew. Most employers seem to want to hire someone who did the exact same thing at their previous jobs. I guess it is a way of taking on less risk by knowing that you can do the job because you did it at your previous jobs. But it also results in pigeonholing someone into whatever role they happened to get into. I graduated college in 2002 and ended up taking a job at a startup doing mostly SQL Server stuff and a bit of.NET. They really underpaid me and I stayed way too long. I know my way around a shell, and never met a programming assignment in college that I couldn't complete. But mostly I am relegated to SQL Server queries because that's what I did in my previous job. I may get the occasional C# user interface, but mostly it is SQL Server reports/stored procedures......Recruiters contact me all the time with SQL Server DBA positions, even though in big letters my resume says I'm not interested in DBA positions....
Certification is just another way of reinforcing this behavior. I'll bet that certification with no experience will be next to useless. But certification in the thing that you've been doing since you started working is just another mark saying you are low risk and can do the job. It will help you land another job like your last one. But like you said you are on your third job now....Do you really want another like your previous ones?
Now there are some companies that will hire you out of your previous job. I suspect if I passed the Google interview process all the way, they would have hired me as a full fledged software developer even if I was sewing at my current job. I did have one company after taking a month to deliberate (probably looking for anyone but me) decide to hire me as a Python/Perl/Oracle/Linux developer. Unfortunately the offer was kind of low and they didn't come out with it until after I accepted another job that I couldn't delay anymore (even after warning them). So pretty much I'm stuck. I suspect if I had previous jobs oding Perl/Oracle/Linux/Python they wouldn't have taken a month to decide and they would have made the offer higher. But anyway the point is that there are some companies willing to take a chance and let you do something different. But it is very hard to land the job and those companies are in the minority.
Wow thank you very much. I definitely think this is worth a try. These bindings look much easier than the other ones. Too bad I don't have mod points, but even if I did they wouldn't help.... But this is definitely very informative.
I was drooling over emacs for those reasons as well, unfortunately my inferior hands cannot handle the keyboard reaches without pain.... I'm still not a vi fan though because I just can't get into the modal thing.
Not to mention that properly coded Bubble Sort, especially bidirectional bubble sort can be much quicker than quicksort for sorting an almost sorted list. So can Insertion sort.....
Wow that's great, gotta find out what school that is:) Some colleges have mandatory retirement at 67. But basically it just goes to show the value of a PhD, that's the way to stay employed in a technology related field well past retirement age for the right person/school...
I don't get the ageism in IT. In the past when people joined a company at 20 and stayed until retirement then sure better to get the extra 20 years by hiring younger. But now you're lucky if people stay more than 3 or 4 years...... So in that case even if you hired someone at 50, you still have the potential for 15 years....in reality you'll be lucky if they stay 2.
As far as brain goes, they are constantly changing the studies on them. But anyway my psychology textbook in 2002 said intelligence went up until 45 or something, stayed the same (the line had a tiny increase) until 65, then starts a modest decline (a tiny decrease) until 80 or so and then the decline becomes more rapid. Also there are researchers and scientists who are very productive in their 70's. Also one of the brightest college professors in my masters program is in his 50's. I can't keep up with him. There are others (both younger and older) who are absolute idiots.
Also you get the 60 and 50 year old whose brain is total mush due to dementia, lazyiness, etc... and then you get the 90 year old who is pretty sharp (although physically slow).
OH I should also add that an issue with the kindle is that amazon can pull books from their store. So if you buy a book but then lose it and need to redownload it the store has to still have it. If not then you can't get the book. Sometimes they are pulled for "formatting" issues. But other times they are pulled for other issues...
You have to ask yourself how hard would it be for the government to control the population if everyone has e readers and they order all reader stores to pull a given ebook. Now printed books are easily shared between people. But if the only way to transfer stuff onto your devices is through a store and someone orders the books pulled from all the stores then you have effectively killed it. It's like a paradise for China. In fact my gripe about China seeing I am reading books on democracy may not apply since China may automatically ban them all from all Chinese stores (and mandate Chinese citizens can only use e-readers that pull from government approved stores).....
Well that's why you are an absolute idiot my friend. You see there are people who photocopy books today and copy software/music. The more you lock it down with DRM the more people will break that DRM eventually. Then the break will be distributed. Even in the itunes store, often apple would recommend cracking its songs (by burning a CD and then ripping the mp3) in certain situations. Even the DVD format was cracked. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There will always be a DVD Jon to crack it.
But the DRM does hurt legitimate customers. I buy books and I absolutely refuse to buy e-books until I get the same rights that a normal book gives me. Over and over I hear that company x has decided to close down its DRM servers and fuck over the customer. Then all the works either become totally unplayable or the company unlocks them all. The other issue with DRM formats is that except for DVDs there seem to be multiple formats. Look at e-books, there are a variety of formats. Sony has their own format, the kindle has its own format, Microsoft had its own format, etc.. Many authors only pick one format. So it is quite often that if there is a book I want, either the author has not decided to publish to e-books at all (so I can't get it), or the author has published to only one format, so if you don't have that device you can't get it.
Currently everyone publishes to paper so that's what I buy. And if your book is lousy which I'm sure from such a narrow minded prick who wants to fuck over the consumer such as yourself, I will sell it to a used bookstore and you will get nothing from that sale. Then someone a bit smarter than me will pay much less to realize your writing is a worthless piece of shit. But DRM meanwhile kills the used book market completely. In fact that's one thing publishes like about DRM. It kills a used music market. Even Video games are under consideration for DRM because game stop makes a nice profit on used video games that goes write to game stop and not the publishers. IT is fair because when buying a video game or a book I own the media and I can sell it.
But anyway now back to the book thing. I have a ton of books, some older than I am. They take up a ton of space. I would love an e-book reader so that instead of a giant book case I only need a tiny device. In fact I would love multiple readers. But if I can't get all the books that I want on that reader, I need a giant bookcase anyway so why bother. Also if I get the device and amazon invents a new device and abandons the kindle (or god forbid goes out of business) and shuts down the services that say convert PDFs to the kindle format, or even shuts down the store, then I"m fucked. I have to throw out my kindle. But even if I keep all the books on my kindle, I'm still fucked as I can no longer buy new books for my kindle, because if they close down and so does the kindle no one will make books in that format. Also what happens if my hard disk is wiped out? Amazon has a content manager so you can re-download the book but if amazon goes out of business and closes that then you can't, if you lose the kindle you have lost your entire library....that's not good. I probably spent well over 10,000 or 20,000 on books for my entire life. First of all to get an e-format I'd have to buy them all again. But then to tell me that if I lose my device or because a company goes out of business/stops supporting it I have to buy it all again. I say to you publishes and authors "fuck you" and a "go to hell".
I will buy an e-book when the following criteria is met:
1. The format is open. If I buy a kindle and then decide to get a sony reader, I want my library to work. I want my library to be mine.
2. The entire industry embraces this format. I have eclectic tastes in books. I want "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" available on my device, but at the same time I also want the Anita Blake series available too. I don't want some paper books and some electronic bo
But the reality is that this "well I've never done it before but I'll try" is not a function of the degree, it is a function of the person.
Also regardless of what you say, many companies screen out resumes of anyone who does not possess a 4 year college degree. So I would say get the degree for nothing else other than to stop HR from throwing out the resume.
Get a Masters degree if you want to learn about computer science. A bachelors degree is more than enough for most jobs and the research jobs often require a doctorate. A masters degree may help you initially because employers often count it as 5 years experience (once you get a year of work experience, prior to that a masters and no experience is not that different from a bachelors and no experience).
But anyway you get people with doctorates who don't want to explore or try to do things too. I have noticed some PhD people who are way below even my level of things who can't keep up with me in a conversation about computer stuff or who take a few minutes to grasp a question I raise. I have also noticed some people who don't even have bachelor degrees who can program in their sleep better than me. It really depends on the person.
Probably the best test you could do is invent some fictitious piece of hardware (or for a programming job invent some programming problem in an antiquated language) and have them configure it. If the test is something that no one can know (but it has to be reasonable...I'm not going to spend a 40 hour work week unpaid [or even a 10 hour work week] without a job) then they will have to be a go getter and try to figure it out on their own. I would say even if they don't succeed but put forth a reasonable effort then it is probably worth hiring them.
Actually a lot of companies build new apps in SQL Server. It works "Good Enough" for them and they don't need to sacrifice their firstborn sons for an Oracle License. Also in my first company we did some benchmarks with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 VS MySQL VS PostgreSQL around 2003 and in the end SQL Server 2000 ran the fastest. We had MySQL/PostgreSQL on Redhat Linux and SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2000. Maybe at the time we weren't expert MySQL/PosgreSQL tuners, but we also weren't expert SQL Server tuners either...It just worked faster out of the box.
I know a few people who use Oracle as well who prefer SQL Server. I didn't know why because Oracle supposedly was much better, cursors had less of a performance penalty, Oracle also had arrays in PL/SQL (which I have been whining about in SQL Server for a long time). But now that I use Oracle in school I realize it is really a pain to use. PL/SQL is extremely rigid while in SQL Server you can use Transact SQL constructs in any query. Also the Oracle error messages are much more cryptic than those in SQL Server. Performancewise I'm sure Oracle can't be beat, or else companies wouldn't continue to pay their huge licensing fees (although more and more people are changing from Oracle to SQL Server, Sybase, IBM DB2, or the various open source databases). However there are a number of databases that are pretty small (less than 1 GB) with light transaction volume (maybe just some department's system). Personally instead of going with even SQL Server I'd just pick MySQL or PostgreSQL (I am biased towards PostgreSQL because it was designed with ACID compliance much longer than MySQL and many of its features [triggers, stored procedures, etc.] have been around longer than the ones in MySQL).
But for companies with a Microsoft vendor relationship often internal development SQL Server instances are free due to the MSDN or enterprise site license. You only need to pay extra for the production boxes. Still what is "internal" and what is "production" is often stretched and open to interpretation with the bias being on internal. Also if licensing is too expensive and you use the L word and are a giant client often Microsoft is willing to "work with you" to help make it affordable. Still personally if I opened a small business I'd just use PostgreSQL or MySQL to save on licenses. But if you already have MSDN and Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, using SQL Server may not be a huge cost in terms of your overall IT budget....
But anyway overall Microsoft SQL Server is cheaper than some alternatives (like Oracle). It is on the Microsoft Platform which is good for Microsoft shops. There are a lot of great tools included with it. And the Microsoft name gives some people a warm fuzzy feeling. Also as a database goes it is ACID compliant and it is actually pretty stable. I find SQL Server to be a pretty good Microsoft product overall. 2005 added a number of features like extended XML support and support for.NET code running in the database which correct a lot of gripes I had. If windows was as good as SQL Server I would be lining up to get my copy of Windows 7..... But seriously for me Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and SQL Server are among the best Microsoft products I have ever used. They are too expensive for me to go buying like crazy at home and if I had my own business I'd go with Linux/PostgreSQL probably. But I still say it is pretty good software and I'm not the only one who recognizes that. People will continue to migrate from other DBMS packages to SQL Server as well as tapping into it due to existing vendor relationships with Microsoft.
That's what forced my company to upgrade too. I suggest spiffmastercow mentioned that he is concerned that the company won't get any more support from Microsoft.
But the first company I worked for is on 2000 and will stay on 2000 until the end of time. They are a start up and SQL Server 2000 is "good enough" for them. They are too cheap to buy a support contract so it works for them.
I agree strongly. And quite often when the low baller coders realize how much work they agreed to they just drop the project. The lowballer buyers just re-post and whine that I've been through 3 coders and none could finish, they either dropped the project within the deadline to drop (I think it was a day or something) or got arbitration against them. Max bid $100.
Quite often the max bids are a joke too. One example I often see is buyers wanting a copy of software x or website y for $500 max bid where software x is a very popular package or website y is a popular site (like facebook or myspace). If I could say build a clone of quick book, why the heck would I give it to you for $500 when I could sell it myself and make way more money. The same goes for my space, if I made something like that you'd have to pay a lot more. But in reality I'd settle for a percentage of revenue!!!
On Rent a coder typically I see pretty complex projects posted at totally and utterly ridiculous prices. The reality is that rent a coder is consulting, you have to pay double taxes on any money you make (in the US). There is some convenience at marrying devs/clients but it is still like a consulting company. Consulting rates are over $100 an hour. But rent a coder often asks for entire projects that would take multiple days to be completed with a max bid of $100.
The other irking thing is that often the requirements are so vague that in order to make a bid you basically do the scope and maybe even some project management work at deciding tasks and saying what the bid should be. The project owner may deny the bid, but then he gets the free scope and project management work. Eventually I figured why even bother.
For example lets look at your modules. I would assume each registrar specific module takes at least two hours to develop and test (along with the other various overheads of getting it done). at even $30 per hour (a salary of 62,400 per year which is low for a programmer in the US) comes to $60 per module. At 100 modules that comes to $6,000. $30 per hour is slightly less than what I make at my job where my employer pays his share of social security taxes/etc...If you're not paying at least $60 per hour it's not really financially worth it for me. Then there are rent a coder fees, so the programmer should raise his/her price to get 6,000 after the fees. Or agree to swallow 1/2 the fee in which case the programmer still raises the price but gets less. But the reality is that projects like this are often posted with a max bid of $500 or so. So now you are relegated to inexperienced people, students who are busy with school and trying to work this in as a side project, or people from foreign countries who may or may not have a firm grasp of English.
Anyway I mostly don't waste my time on rent a coder. I did a Perl Script for someone for $15 dollars once. It took me about an hour to do it. After the rent a coder fee I had less. In reality if you go looking at jobs, quite often positions involving Perl and Unix pay more than those with windows/C#. In reality $15 per hour comes to 31,200 per year. That's a lousy wage for a programmer in US/Canada/EU. Basically it's a free gift. I noticed the best things on rent a coder seem to be long term relationships. Where a client and programmer hook up on a simple project and then the more complex projects are negotiated between the two parties with bonuses/etc. being paid.
So I think rent a coder itself is bad. When looking at bids most buyers tend to see the smallest bid or the smaller end of the bids and then bid on there. Then everyone wonders why the boards are full of people complaining about programmers not getting the job done, etc.. I have seen tons of projects where the description mentioned that other programmer failed to deliver, fix it. And even then with a more realistic estimate the bid is denied. The other issue is a vaguely specified project. Ie Max Bid $100, make me this web page... A Fixed Cost project without a spec if dangerous. That's why they invented the software development lifecycle. If you don't know what you're building, then you can't set a price. Often I have seen auctions won by people who make extremely low bids not even knowing what they are getting into. Maybe some sellers are nice and will pay more when the scope is clarified. But I wouldn't take that risk.
The other thing I have seen is people asking for a super low project and a year or six months of support. Ie make a web scraping for site x, but if the site changes you must keep changing the software for one year...oh maximum bid $25. Maybe there are some coding gods on rent a coder but it would take me several hours to make a web scraper for site x. And if the site totally changes, then it is almost like starting from scratch. So if we assume 1/2 day to write/test the scraper, then I should make $60 * 4 = $24
1) If it is related to the work at work then yes you should have first right to it. Ie if you are paying your employee to work on an operating system and they develop a new scheduling algorithm then you have rights to it. However if the employee offers you the algorithm and you are like no it's not part of our scheduled project and then he goes on to develop it on his own time (without using any company resources) and it becomes the next big thing you can't go back and claim you have rights on it.
a) note if you are a super international company with like 10 lines of business and your employee is working in IT for 1 line of business but creates something else for one of the other 9 lines of business, then that is tricky..... Especially since you are paying them to work on your 1 line of business but not the others....
I would say there is a fairness doctrine. If you invent something related to your job, you should offer it to your employer first. Otherwise as long as you develop it on your own time and equipment you should have all rights.
2) Stuff done on the employee's own time belongs to the employee and not you. If he/she is working on it during work hours or using equipment that you gave him/her then you have a claim. If it is being worked on in his/her own time and equipment then no you shouldn't have a claim on it. Assuming it's not an idea that was thought up as a result of work (in which case in fairness you deserve at least an offer to use it).
But I agree with some agreements. It should be obvious but I see why there need to be legal agreements to say keep your employers shit secret. After all it's not fair to go leaking out customer lists or other data you have access to. Also leaking out your employer's software secrets/proprietary algorithms should be a no no. But there is also the issue of gaining experience and on the job knowledge. That you should take with you. And the line between technique and proprietary software secrets is a slippery one. Especially on "obvious" inventions. Still there is no way you should be giving or using any source code from your employer to anyone (unless it is under an open source license that permits it and your employer makes it available for distribution so anyone can access it). On the other hand because you wrote a binary search for your employer that doesn't mean you can't go writing a binary search for anyone else. Or because you write some new indexing scheme for a database file using a btree/hash table/etc. does not mean you shouldn't be able to do that for anyone else....
And that's the bottom line. If you're paying me to be a junior developer why the fuck should I give you stuff I develop that you would pay someone 5 or 10 times my salary to create for free. Let's say you are paying me 80,000 to work on your database system. I do that 40 hours per week or whatever, you keep me busy full time. My main job is doing reports for business users. Meanwhile at home I create a revolutionary new database system. This is a trickier case because you could argue it is related to what I do at work. However using a database for reporting and developing one are completely different. If I was working for Oracle on their core engine there would be an issue. But as my job is reporting for end users and not database engine design I would say it's not related at all to what you're paying for and you have no claim as long as I don't work on it during work hours.
But let's say you pay me to work on a project. Then I work on that project and in my own time I create another project that is closely related. Then you probably have a claim on my project if you want. But if you are paying me as a grunt developer and I deliver you a full project where I was a project manager/qa tester/architect/developer and you just take it and don't give me a bonus, percentage of the revenue, promotion, etc. I'm going to quit. And I'm going to go invent something to bury you and give it away for free.
I'm going to say yes as well. But I think even G.W. wouldn't be able to allow that to go with his Bible he is the next coming of Jesus complex.
Basically I'll give him some credit. After all he did graduate from a good college, so I think on some level he can think for himself. And even though he may be delusional there is a limit where even he will realize HEY I can't do that...I think Bush meant well and was just a bumbling idiot.
Cheney and Rove I don't know. Cheney is no idiot. I think funneling money to is company Haliburton or whatever was no coincidence. And even now he defends torturing people. So he is quite willing to abandon his humanity when it suits him. And like Scooter realized he's also ready to throw other people to the wolves as long as it suits his purpose. Basically he should be Emperor Cheney.
If congress wasn't such idiots they should pass further laws checking the VP's power immediately to make sure there are no future emperors. And while at it the president's power should be scaled back....
Newsflash, there are other countries besides Venezuela. Countries like Chile and Columbia (supposedly US allies interested in free trade), middle countries like Brazil and Argentina (not Chavezlike but certainly not interested in free trade). But there are a lot of poor people there and often the poor people far outnumber the rich people. Here in the US many of the poor people don't even bother voting, in fact many of the rich people don't even bother voting. In some south american countries (like Argentina) voting is mandatory. Every disinterested poor person or rich person has to vote. So rather than pandering to older people with a pole up there ass like here (and the corporations who donate money), politicians need to pander to the typical poor demographic with policies that benefit them at the expense of rich people.
And Hugo Chavez is actually pretty smart (though he appears as a bumbling idiot on the international stage). It's not the smart people who vote for him. It's the poor people who he keeps making social programs for. They'll keep voting him until the end of time. There are many more poorer people than wealthy ones so he is set.
In the US we have a similar thing. In the north generally democrats are voted in no matter how badly they suck in many cases and in the south generally republicans are voted in no matter how hard they suck. Then there is room to swing things occasionally. But generally the presidential election comes down to a few states. Things like trying to make abortion/gay marriage/etc. election issues also serve to polarize people into voting for a candidate even if 99% of that candidate's platform is total crap. So basically welcome to reality.
Actually LOL it's funny you mention that. My mother in law is from South America and down there a whole bunch of people believe Osama Bin Ladin and George Bush staged the whole 9/11 thing and are friends. I mean I am not a fan of Bush, I think he's a complete idiot who can't even do Arithmetic (aka tax less spend more). But even I don't believe that, I don't think he's smart enough.
Also I think the guy is delusional and belongs in a mental institution. He seemed to think he was Jesus's second coming or something and with the hand of god he would smite all those violent Islamic people who dare occupy the holy land, they're all terrorists. But I think he needs to believe his delusions. I don't even think with GWB logic he could justify planning 9/11.
But anyway it is amusing how bad the sentiment against the whole US is in the rest of the world. Especially South America. They're still a bit pissed off over the whole keeping dictators in power and training their armies to murder/torture people. Ronald Regan the hero of the Republican party here is a mass murderer down there guilty of crimes against humanity. Personally I was just a kid when Regan was in office, all I remember is the guy took a lot of vacations LOL....
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Well first, marriage is nothing more than some legal protections for your relationship and some discounts on insurance/etc... It is basically just like the relationship before except that is is harder and more expensive to leave. In the end a wife/husband is nothing more than a friend who you have sex with. If the sex sucks or you find yourself much more friendly with other woman, then there is a serious problem.
On sexual compatibility, there is a lot. Some people just like you to sink the hole, but other people like other actions. If you don't match there, one partner will either cheat or be very depressed.
On the whole friendship thing. If she likes to read and discuss Geoffrey Chaucer all the time and you like to discuss the tty subsystem of the linux kernel, it's going to be hard to be friends. If you have no middle ground so you enjoy talking to that girl who works next to you at work hacking away new device drivers for her crazy devices more than you enjoy talking to your girlfriend/wife then there is a problem. Presumably the two of you must meet on some middle ground to feel connected...
Neglecting with sports can be anything. If you are working 100 hours a week, then the office is your football. If you are going after extra courses, playing games all night and not spending time with her, pursuing advanced degrees, watching movies, etc. then they are your sports.
The other question is do you live together yet? Married or not stuff changes when you live together. Then all the habits come out. If she likes the house spotless and creates a rule about everything and you are lackadaisical about things that will cause friction. If one of you is OCD and the other isn't then that will cause friction too. For some people even what time to go to bed causes friction. Maybe one is a nigh owl and the other one is a morning lark or however they say. Sometimes a partner gets all crazy when the other doesn't go to bed at the same time. It's little things like that which can add up over time.
And of course there is the obvious stuff. You both want kids, if you aren't the same religion you are tolerant of each other's, you have similar dreams and goals in life for the future, etc... If you don't agree on the big stuff it will end up being a disaster.
Yeah just an example, about 2 years ago Lenova was still calling the thinkpads IBM. But Lenova, Dell, HP are more expensive than say Asus, Acer, etc... Of course enterprise contracts are good so maybe a Dell could offer some type of cost savings in support, but still.... Desktops cost less.
It really depends. But anyway I had a GPA that rounded off to 4.0 in 2002 (and there weren't a lot of graduates with highest honors so grade inflation must not have been as widespread) and my career services department couldn't provide any assistance. If the college advertised that it would and it didn't, I say sue them. I'm not a suing kind of guy but I definitely felt like strangling someone after all the time they spent advertising their career services only to find that they offer next to no help in reality. A lawsuit seems a bit silly but if it raises awareness that maybe there is no guarantee of a job after college it is good.
College costs are out of control and as long as people think they need a degree to get a job they will remain that way because colleges can charge what they want. No offense to you IT guys but the school does not need new computers every year. I change computers every 4 or 5 years and mostly it's not need, but just lust....mmmm pentium.....mmmm dual core.......Also the network does not need to be upgraded every year. Every professor does not need an IBM thinkpad laptop, and even worse ever professor does not need a Macintosh. A gateway or other less popular (read cheap) brand is fine.... But really every professor doesn't need a laptop....Also the higher college professors don't need giant limos and drivers to take them everywhere. And those are just the beginnings of the fluff....When I was an undergrad it cost 5,000 for the year full time when in state and not living on campus. Now I pay 5,000 for two classes in a semester...And while graduate classes are more expensive than the ungrad ones, the difference in price is barely noticeable compared to the total price of the classes. Overall by raising awareness that college is not a guarantee to a job this might result in less people enrolling. At first prices will skyrocket but then with even lower enrollment colleges will have no choice but to become more affordable...
I don't know about grade inflation. I am doing a masters now and it is pretty hard. And I do actually read the textbook as well as study the notes and do the homework/projects. Only one class had easy tests, but the project was a killer. But mostly the exams are hard questions. As an undergrad the exam problems in math/physics/problem solving parts of cs exams were mostly based on homework problems, or obvious straight applications of concepts. Then the harder classes would have one or two questions where you'd have to think hard and really make some type of jump to the answer. Still there was a good grade spread on the exams and often a curve (and even with the curve often not that many A's). So far in two of my graduate classes around half the exam were those questions where you have to make some type of jump to the answer. Anyone who gets an A on those things deserves the A whether inflated or not.
I wish I knew. Most employers seem to want to hire someone who did the exact same thing at their previous jobs. I guess it is a way of taking on less risk by knowing that you can do the job because you did it at your previous jobs. But it also results in pigeonholing someone into whatever role they happened to get into. I graduated college in 2002 and ended up taking a job at a startup doing mostly SQL Server stuff and a bit of .NET. They really underpaid me and I stayed way too long. I know my way around a shell, and never met a programming assignment in college that I couldn't complete. But mostly I am relegated to SQL Server queries because that's what I did in my previous job. I may get the occasional C# user interface, but mostly it is SQL Server reports/stored procedures......Recruiters contact me all the time with SQL Server DBA positions, even though in big letters my resume says I'm not interested in DBA positions....
Certification is just another way of reinforcing this behavior. I'll bet that certification with no experience will be next to useless. But certification in the thing that you've been doing since you started working is just another mark saying you are low risk and can do the job. It will help you land another job like your last one. But like you said you are on your third job now....Do you really want another like your previous ones?
Now there are some companies that will hire you out of your previous job. I suspect if I passed the Google interview process all the way, they would have hired me as a full fledged software developer even if I was sewing at my current job. I did have one company after taking a month to deliberate (probably looking for anyone but me) decide to hire me as a Python/Perl/Oracle/Linux developer. Unfortunately the offer was kind of low and they didn't come out with it until after I accepted another job that I couldn't delay anymore (even after warning them). So pretty much I'm stuck. I suspect if I had previous jobs oding Perl/Oracle/Linux/Python they wouldn't have taken a month to decide and they would have made the offer higher. But anyway the point is that there are some companies willing to take a chance and let you do something different. But it is very hard to land the job and those companies are in the minority.
Wow thank you very much. I definitely think this is worth a try. These bindings look much easier than the other ones. Too bad I don't have mod points, but even if I did they wouldn't help.... But this is definitely very informative.
I was drooling over emacs for those reasons as well, unfortunately my inferior hands cannot handle the keyboard reaches without pain.... I'm still not a vi fan though because I just can't get into the modal thing.
Not to mention that properly coded Bubble Sort, especially bidirectional bubble sort can be much quicker than quicksort for sorting an almost sorted list. So can Insertion sort.....
Wow that's great, gotta find out what school that is :) Some colleges have mandatory retirement at 67. But basically it just goes to show the value of a PhD, that's the way to stay employed in a technology related field well past retirement age for the right person/school...
I don't get the ageism in IT. In the past when people joined a company at 20 and stayed until retirement then sure better to get the extra 20 years by hiring younger. But now you're lucky if people stay more than 3 or 4 years...... So in that case even if you hired someone at 50, you still have the potential for 15 years....in reality you'll be lucky if they stay 2.
As far as brain goes, they are constantly changing the studies on them. But anyway my psychology textbook in 2002 said intelligence went up until 45 or something, stayed the same (the line had a tiny increase) until 65, then starts a modest decline (a tiny decrease) until 80 or so and then the decline becomes more rapid. Also there are researchers and scientists who are very productive in their 70's. Also one of the brightest college professors in my masters program is in his 50's. I can't keep up with him. There are others (both younger and older) who are absolute idiots.
Also you get the 60 and 50 year old whose brain is total mush due to dementia, lazyiness, etc... and then you get the 90 year old who is pretty sharp (although physically slow).
OH I should also add that an issue with the kindle is that amazon can pull books from their store. So if you buy a book but then lose it and need to redownload it the store has to still have it. If not then you can't get the book. Sometimes they are pulled for "formatting" issues. But other times they are pulled for other issues...
You have to ask yourself how hard would it be for the government to control the population if everyone has e readers and they order all reader stores to pull a given ebook. Now printed books are easily shared between people. But if the only way to transfer stuff onto your devices is through a store and someone orders the books pulled from all the stores then you have effectively killed it. It's like a paradise for China. In fact my gripe about China seeing I am reading books on democracy may not apply since China may automatically ban them all from all Chinese stores (and mandate Chinese citizens can only use e-readers that pull from government approved stores).....
Well that's why you are an absolute idiot my friend. You see there are people who photocopy books today and copy software/music. The more you lock it down with DRM the more people will break that DRM eventually. Then the break will be distributed. Even in the itunes store, often apple would recommend cracking its songs (by burning a CD and then ripping the mp3) in certain situations. Even the DVD format was cracked. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There will always be a DVD Jon to crack it.
But the DRM does hurt legitimate customers. I buy books and I absolutely refuse to buy e-books until I get the same rights that a normal book gives me. Over and over I hear that company x has decided to close down its DRM servers and fuck over the customer. Then all the works either become totally unplayable or the company unlocks them all. The other issue with DRM formats is that except for DVDs there seem to be multiple formats. Look at e-books, there are a variety of formats. Sony has their own format, the kindle has its own format, Microsoft had its own format, etc.. Many authors only pick one format. So it is quite often that if there is a book I want, either the author has not decided to publish to e-books at all (so I can't get it), or the author has published to only one format, so if you don't have that device you can't get it.
Currently everyone publishes to paper so that's what I buy. And if your book is lousy which I'm sure from such a narrow minded prick who wants to fuck over the consumer such as yourself, I will sell it to a used bookstore and you will get nothing from that sale. Then someone a bit smarter than me will pay much less to realize your writing is a worthless piece of shit. But DRM meanwhile kills the used book market completely. In fact that's one thing publishes like about DRM. It kills a used music market. Even Video games are under consideration for DRM because game stop makes a nice profit on used video games that goes write to game stop and not the publishers. IT is fair because when buying a video game or a book I own the media and I can sell it.
But anyway now back to the book thing. I have a ton of books, some older than I am. They take up a ton of space. I would love an e-book reader so that instead of a giant book case I only need a tiny device. In fact I would love multiple readers. But if I can't get all the books that I want on that reader, I need a giant bookcase anyway so why bother. Also if I get the device and amazon invents a new device and abandons the kindle (or god forbid goes out of business) and shuts down the services that say convert PDFs to the kindle format, or even shuts down the store, then I"m fucked. I have to throw out my kindle. But even if I keep all the books on my kindle, I'm still fucked as I can no longer buy new books for my kindle, because if they close down and so does the kindle no one will make books in that format. Also what happens if my hard disk is wiped out? Amazon has a content manager so you can re-download the book but if amazon goes out of business and closes that then you can't, if you lose the kindle you have lost your entire library....that's not good. I probably spent well over 10,000 or 20,000 on books for my entire life. First of all to get an e-format I'd have to buy them all again. But then to tell me that if I lose my device or because a company goes out of business/stops supporting it I have to buy it all again. I say to you publishes and authors "fuck you" and a "go to hell".
I will buy an e-book when the following criteria is met:
1. The format is open. If I buy a kindle and then decide to get a sony reader, I want my library to work. I want my library to be mine.
2. The entire industry embraces this format. I have eclectic tastes in books. I want "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" available on my device, but at the same time I also want the Anita Blake series available too. I don't want some paper books and some electronic bo
But the reality is that this "well I've never done it before but I'll try" is not a function of the degree, it is a function of the person.
Also regardless of what you say, many companies screen out resumes of anyone who does not possess a 4 year college degree. So I would say get the degree for nothing else other than to stop HR from throwing out the resume.
Get a Masters degree if you want to learn about computer science. A bachelors degree is more than enough for most jobs and the research jobs often require a doctorate. A masters degree may help you initially because employers often count it as 5 years experience (once you get a year of work experience, prior to that a masters and no experience is not that different from a bachelors and no experience).
But anyway you get people with doctorates who don't want to explore or try to do things too. I have noticed some PhD people who are way below even my level of things who can't keep up with me in a conversation about computer stuff or who take a few minutes to grasp a question I raise. I have also noticed some people who don't even have bachelor degrees who can program in their sleep better than me. It really depends on the person.
Probably the best test you could do is invent some fictitious piece of hardware (or for a programming job invent some programming problem in an antiquated language) and have them configure it. If the test is something that no one can know (but it has to be reasonable...I'm not going to spend a 40 hour work week unpaid [or even a 10 hour work week] without a job) then they will have to be a go getter and try to figure it out on their own. I would say even if they don't succeed but put forth a reasonable effort then it is probably worth hiring them.
Sybase is pretty popular on Wall St. too.
Actually a lot of companies build new apps in SQL Server. It works "Good Enough" for them and they don't need to sacrifice their firstborn sons for an Oracle License. Also in my first company we did some benchmarks with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 VS MySQL VS PostgreSQL around 2003 and in the end SQL Server 2000 ran the fastest. We had MySQL/PostgreSQL on Redhat Linux and SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2000. Maybe at the time we weren't expert MySQL/PosgreSQL tuners, but we also weren't expert SQL Server tuners either...It just worked faster out of the box.
.NET code running in the database which correct a lot of gripes I had. If windows was as good as SQL Server I would be lining up to get my copy of Windows 7..... But seriously for me Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and SQL Server are among the best Microsoft products I have ever used. They are too expensive for me to go buying like crazy at home and if I had my own business I'd go with Linux/PostgreSQL probably. But I still say it is pretty good software and I'm not the only one who recognizes that. People will continue to migrate from other DBMS packages to SQL Server as well as tapping into it due to existing vendor relationships with Microsoft.
I know a few people who use Oracle as well who prefer SQL Server. I didn't know why because Oracle supposedly was much better, cursors had less of a performance penalty, Oracle also had arrays in PL/SQL (which I have been whining about in SQL Server for a long time). But now that I use Oracle in school I realize it is really a pain to use. PL/SQL is extremely rigid while in SQL Server you can use Transact SQL constructs in any query. Also the Oracle error messages are much more cryptic than those in SQL Server. Performancewise I'm sure Oracle can't be beat, or else companies wouldn't continue to pay their huge licensing fees (although more and more people are changing from Oracle to SQL Server, Sybase, IBM DB2, or the various open source databases). However there are a number of databases that are pretty small (less than 1 GB) with light transaction volume (maybe just some department's system). Personally instead of going with even SQL Server I'd just pick MySQL or PostgreSQL (I am biased towards PostgreSQL because it was designed with ACID compliance much longer than MySQL and many of its features [triggers, stored procedures, etc.] have been around longer than the ones in MySQL).
But for companies with a Microsoft vendor relationship often internal development SQL Server instances are free due to the MSDN or enterprise site license. You only need to pay extra for the production boxes. Still what is "internal" and what is "production" is often stretched and open to interpretation with the bias being on internal. Also if licensing is too expensive and you use the L word and are a giant client often Microsoft is willing to "work with you" to help make it affordable. Still personally if I opened a small business I'd just use PostgreSQL or MySQL to save on licenses. But if you already have MSDN and Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, using SQL Server may not be a huge cost in terms of your overall IT budget....
But anyway overall Microsoft SQL Server is cheaper than some alternatives (like Oracle). It is on the Microsoft Platform which is good for Microsoft shops. There are a lot of great tools included with it. And the Microsoft name gives some people a warm fuzzy feeling. Also as a database goes it is ACID compliant and it is actually pretty stable. I find SQL Server to be a pretty good Microsoft product overall. 2005 added a number of features like extended XML support and support for
That's what forced my company to upgrade too. I suggest spiffmastercow mentioned that he is concerned that the company won't get any more support from Microsoft. But the first company I worked for is on 2000 and will stay on 2000 until the end of time. They are a start up and SQL Server 2000 is "good enough" for them. They are too cheap to buy a support contract so it works for them.
You'll get used to it by the time you hit 20 :)
Not if no one tells, didn't the OEM's keep their deals with Microsoft secret at first in the US.
I agree strongly. And quite often when the low baller coders realize how much work they agreed to they just drop the project. The lowballer buyers just re-post and whine that I've been through 3 coders and none could finish, they either dropped the project within the deadline to drop (I think it was a day or something) or got arbitration against them. Max bid $100.
Quite often the max bids are a joke too. One example I often see is buyers wanting a copy of software x or website y for $500 max bid where software x is a very popular package or website y is a popular site (like facebook or myspace). If I could say build a clone of quick book, why the heck would I give it to you for $500 when I could sell it myself and make way more money. The same goes for my space, if I made something like that you'd have to pay a lot more. But in reality I'd settle for a percentage of revenue!!!
On Rent a coder typically I see pretty complex projects posted at totally and utterly ridiculous prices. The reality is that rent a coder is consulting, you have to pay double taxes on any money you make (in the US). There is some convenience at marrying devs/clients but it is still like a consulting company. Consulting rates are over $100 an hour. But rent a coder often asks for entire projects that would take multiple days to be completed with a max bid of $100.
The other irking thing is that often the requirements are so vague that in order to make a bid you basically do the scope and maybe even some project management work at deciding tasks and saying what the bid should be. The project owner may deny the bid, but then he gets the free scope and project management work. Eventually I figured why even bother.
For example lets look at your modules. I would assume each registrar specific module takes at least two hours to develop and test (along with the other various overheads of getting it done). at even $30 per hour (a salary of 62,400 per year which is low for a programmer in the US) comes to $60 per module. At 100 modules that comes to $6,000. $30 per hour is slightly less than what I make at my job where my employer pays his share of social security taxes/etc...If you're not paying at least $60 per hour it's not really financially worth it for me. Then there are rent a coder fees, so the programmer should raise his/her price to get 6,000 after the fees. Or agree to swallow 1/2 the fee in which case the programmer still raises the price but gets less. But the reality is that projects like this are often posted with a max bid of $500 or so. So now you are relegated to inexperienced people, students who are busy with school and trying to work this in as a side project, or people from foreign countries who may or may not have a firm grasp of English.
Anyway I mostly don't waste my time on rent a coder. I did a Perl Script for someone for $15 dollars once. It took me about an hour to do it. After the rent a coder fee I had less. In reality if you go looking at jobs, quite often positions involving Perl and Unix pay more than those with windows/C#. In reality $15 per hour comes to 31,200 per year. That's a lousy wage for a programmer in US/Canada/EU. Basically it's a free gift. I noticed the best things on rent a coder seem to be long term relationships. Where a client and programmer hook up on a simple project and then the more complex projects are negotiated between the two parties with bonuses/etc. being paid.
So I think rent a coder itself is bad. When looking at bids most buyers tend to see the smallest bid or the smaller end of the bids and then bid on there. Then everyone wonders why the boards are full of people complaining about programmers not getting the job done, etc.. I have seen tons of projects where the description mentioned that other programmer failed to deliver, fix it. And even then with a more realistic estimate the bid is denied. The other issue is a vaguely specified project. Ie Max Bid $100, make me this web page... A Fixed Cost project without a spec if dangerous. That's why they invented the software development lifecycle. If you don't know what you're building, then you can't set a price. Often I have seen auctions won by people who make extremely low bids not even knowing what they are getting into. Maybe some sellers are nice and will pay more when the scope is clarified. But I wouldn't take that risk.
The other thing I have seen is people asking for a super low project and a year or six months of support. Ie make a web scraping for site x, but if the site changes you must keep changing the software for one year...oh maximum bid $25. Maybe there are some coding gods on rent a coder but it would take me several hours to make a web scraper for site x. And if the site totally changes, then it is almost like starting from scratch. So if we assume 1/2 day to write/test the scraper, then I should make $60 * 4 = $24
And you can be sure that MS will offer discounts of some sort to OEM's that pledge to offer IE on all their windows PC's.
P.S. You're an idiot
1) If it is related to the work at work then yes you should have first right to it. Ie if you are paying your employee to work on an operating system and they develop a new scheduling algorithm then you have rights to it. However if the employee offers you the algorithm and you are like no it's not part of our scheduled project and then he goes on to develop it on his own time (without using any company resources) and it becomes the next big thing you can't go back and claim you have rights on it. a) note if you are a super international company with like 10 lines of business and your employee is working in IT for 1 line of business but creates something else for one of the other 9 lines of business, then that is tricky..... Especially since you are paying them to work on your 1 line of business but not the others....
I would say there is a fairness doctrine. If you invent something related to your job, you should offer it to your employer first. Otherwise as long as you develop it on your own time and equipment you should have all rights.
2) Stuff done on the employee's own time belongs to the employee and not you. If he/she is working on it during work hours or using equipment that you gave him/her then you have a claim. If it is being worked on in his/her own time and equipment then no you shouldn't have a claim on it. Assuming it's not an idea that was thought up as a result of work (in which case in fairness you deserve at least an offer to use it).
But I agree with some agreements. It should be obvious but I see why there need to be legal agreements to say keep your employers shit secret. After all it's not fair to go leaking out customer lists or other data you have access to. Also leaking out your employer's software secrets/proprietary algorithms should be a no no. But there is also the issue of gaining experience and on the job knowledge. That you should take with you. And the line between technique and proprietary software secrets is a slippery one. Especially on "obvious" inventions. Still there is no way you should be giving or using any source code from your employer to anyone (unless it is under an open source license that permits it and your employer makes it available for distribution so anyone can access it). On the other hand because you wrote a binary search for your employer that doesn't mean you can't go writing a binary search for anyone else. Or because you write some new indexing scheme for a database file using a btree/hash table/etc. does not mean you shouldn't be able to do that for anyone else....
And that's the bottom line. If you're paying me to be a junior developer why the fuck should I give you stuff I develop that you would pay someone 5 or 10 times my salary to create for free. Let's say you are paying me 80,000 to work on your database system. I do that 40 hours per week or whatever, you keep me busy full time. My main job is doing reports for business users. Meanwhile at home I create a revolutionary new database system. This is a trickier case because you could argue it is related to what I do at work. However using a database for reporting and developing one are completely different. If I was working for Oracle on their core engine there would be an issue. But as my job is reporting for end users and not database engine design I would say it's not related at all to what you're paying for and you have no claim as long as I don't work on it during work hours.
But let's say you pay me to work on a project. Then I work on that project and in my own time I create another project that is closely related. Then you probably have a claim on my project if you want. But if you are paying me as a grunt developer and I deliver you a full project where I was a project manager/qa tester/architect/developer and you just take it and don't give me a bonus, percentage of the revenue, promotion, etc. I'm going to quit. And I'm going to go invent something to bury you and give it away for free.
I'm going to say yes as well. But I think even G.W. wouldn't be able to allow that to go with his Bible he is the next coming of Jesus complex.
Basically I'll give him some credit. After all he did graduate from a good college, so I think on some level he can think for himself. And even though he may be delusional there is a limit where even he will realize HEY I can't do that...I think Bush meant well and was just a bumbling idiot.
Cheney and Rove I don't know. Cheney is no idiot. I think funneling money to is company Haliburton or whatever was no coincidence. And even now he defends torturing people. So he is quite willing to abandon his humanity when it suits him. And like Scooter realized he's also ready to throw other people to the wolves as long as it suits his purpose. Basically he should be Emperor Cheney.
If congress wasn't such idiots they should pass further laws checking the VP's power immediately to make sure there are no future emperors. And while at it the president's power should be scaled back....
Newsflash, there are other countries besides Venezuela. Countries like Chile and Columbia (supposedly US allies interested in free trade), middle countries like Brazil and Argentina (not Chavezlike but certainly not interested in free trade). But there are a lot of poor people there and often the poor people far outnumber the rich people. Here in the US many of the poor people don't even bother voting, in fact many of the rich people don't even bother voting. In some south american countries (like Argentina) voting is mandatory. Every disinterested poor person or rich person has to vote. So rather than pandering to older people with a pole up there ass like here (and the corporations who donate money), politicians need to pander to the typical poor demographic with policies that benefit them at the expense of rich people.
And Hugo Chavez is actually pretty smart (though he appears as a bumbling idiot on the international stage). It's not the smart people who vote for him. It's the poor people who he keeps making social programs for. They'll keep voting him until the end of time. There are many more poorer people than wealthy ones so he is set.
In the US we have a similar thing. In the north generally democrats are voted in no matter how badly they suck in many cases and in the south generally republicans are voted in no matter how hard they suck. Then there is room to swing things occasionally. But generally the presidential election comes down to a few states. Things like trying to make abortion/gay marriage/etc. election issues also serve to polarize people into voting for a candidate even if 99% of that candidate's platform is total crap. So basically welcome to reality.
Actually LOL it's funny you mention that. My mother in law is from South America and down there a whole bunch of people believe Osama Bin Ladin and George Bush staged the whole 9/11 thing and are friends. I mean I am not a fan of Bush, I think he's a complete idiot who can't even do Arithmetic (aka tax less spend more). But even I don't believe that, I don't think he's smart enough.
Also I think the guy is delusional and belongs in a mental institution. He seemed to think he was Jesus's second coming or something and with the hand of god he would smite all those violent Islamic people who dare occupy the holy land, they're all terrorists. But I think he needs to believe his delusions. I don't even think with GWB logic he could justify planning 9/11.
But anyway it is amusing how bad the sentiment against the whole US is in the rest of the world. Especially South America. They're still a bit pissed off over the whole keeping dictators in power and training their armies to murder/torture people. Ronald Regan the hero of the Republican party here is a mass murderer down there guilty of crimes against humanity. Personally I was just a kid when Regan was in office, all I remember is the guy took a lot of vacations LOL....