In general, it appears that today's generals are, if anything, less inclined to go to war than the politicians. One reason that it took so long for the U.S. to intervene in the former Yugoslavia was because every time Clinton asked the generals for their advice, their advice was "it'd be a bloodbath, don't send the troops."
Today's graduates of the military academies appear to have taken Sherman's doctrine of "War is hell" to heart. I know a lot of retired military officers (I'm from the South, traditionally one of the heaviest sources of military personnel) and their doctrine appears to be "don't go to war, and if the politicians force you to go to war, bomb the enemy back to the stone age then send in overwhelming force. " The pre-Vietnam hubris appears to be gone. Vietnam apparently traumatized the military establishment to the point where they had to rethink many of their basic assumptions (such as the assumption that the U.S. could easily defeat any little tin-pot dictator with the use of a couple of divisions and a few B-52 strikes), much as the end of the Cold War has led to some soul searching on the part of today's up-and-coming officers as to what the proper role and composition of the military should be.
All in all, I've gotten good vibes off of the retired military officers that I've met. Yes, they're conservative. But they're conservative in the old fashioned sense of the word -- i.e., people who don't believe in hasty actions and who believe in leading a personally upright life (as vs. the hypocrisy of many so-called "conservatives" which is mere mean-spiritedness and spite). Many of them are now teachers, for example. While I'm not going to try to glorify the military, I will state that the folks in the military are as decent and love their country as much as the average American. If only the civilian leadership above them had those qualities.
(BTW, the notion of a military junta absolutely appalled the retired military I asked -- while they complained bitterly about the civilian leadership, they also pointed out that a military junta would inevitably destroy their beloved military as it turned into yet another corrupt banana republic army, just as bad as the politicians that were forced out of office, not to mention that oath they swore to uphold the Constitution...).
This is of course what they did in the case of Steve Jackson Games. SJ never got back their computers. Several years after the Secret Service seized their computers, a fed-up judge finally ordered the SS to either turn over the computers or he was going to start throwing people in jail for contempt of court. The SS turned over a bunch of broken-up circuit boards, smashed cases, and busted hard drives.
Note: "SS" in the above stands for "Secret Service". Any similarity between that abbreviation and the Nazi stormtrooper service's abbreviation is intentional.
In general, if the cops seize your computers, assume that you're going to need a new computer. I suggest purchasing a lightweight laptop (AFTER the SS seizes your computers -- otherwise they might come after you for "concealing evidence"). I also suggest that you retain off-site backups, perhaps with co-workers that the cops won't think of immediately as friends, perhaps in some other semi-anonymous fashion, so that you won't lose 20 years of your writings just because some Nazi stormtrooper wannabe with a police uniform got peeved that you called him by name.
I'm from Louisiana, and many folks from France say the same thing about the Cajun French.
Until one day a French scholar happened by the University, happened to overhear a conversation, and excitedly demanded to know how they'd learned 17th century French dialect from the northern provinces so well (his specialty apparently was 17th century folk literature of that area).
Point being -- North American French is French. It's a dialect of French that once was spoken in France but has since largely died out there, and it's a dialect of French that has to a certain extent migrated in different directions due to being surrounded by English-speakers, but it's French. My father served on sub tenders during the Korean War, and whenever the ship needed somebody to talk with the French (they were poking around in Indochina at the time), they'd haul him off of his usual duties and put him to work as a translater. It was no more disconcerting than trying to put a Southern USA English type talking to a BBC London English type, where the USA type wonders why the other is talking about pretty girls, and the BBC type is wondering why the USA type is talking about using hand carts for transporting troops and supplies. (Sorry, "truck" vs. "lorrie").
After the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) here in the U.S. sued a few big companies for millions of dollars, they swiftly changed their practices.
Graphology and polygraph tests are also prohibited for most job applicants (polygraph tests are only allowed for certain jobs that affect national security).
Every company here in the United States knows that if they request these things, the next thing that will be waiting for them will be a subpoena to appear as a defendent in a lawsuit. There are lawyers salivating over the opportunity to stick it to some moron who blatantly violates the law. So companies don't do this stuff. Score one for the lawyers.
The lawyer thing works well for blatant "yes or no" things like "did they request a photo". It of course does not work well for less blatant violations of the laws against race and age descrimination. If they get you in for an interveiew, see that you're black, and say "I'm sorry, but after more review we see that you're not qualified for this position", it's quite hard to prove racial discrimination. The famous study where identical resumes were sent out to Fortune 1000 companies, half with a stereotypically black name and half with a stereotypically white name, shows that racial bias definitely still exists in hiring in the United States (for those who have poor memory -- the resume with the stereotypically white name got significantly more callbacks, even though it was completely and absolutely otherwise identical to the other one). So the lack of photos does not make it impossible to racially discriminate based on one's resume (curriculum vitae). But at least it's not as blatant and up-front an indicator of racial or age bias as a request for a photograph.
Corporate misdeeds in America are nothing new. See, for example, the Bisbee Deportation of 1917, where the full force of law was used to run out of town everybody who dared criticize Phelps-Dodge.
The only difference is that the company towns have gotten bigger, sometimes encompassing entire nations. But the same elements of vigilante justice ("Death to those who bounced a check due to our own incompetence!") and sheer disregard for human life, still apply.
For example, it was common in Europe a few years ago to be required to submit a photograph and a handwriting sample as part of your curiculum vitae. This allowed employers to easily discard those who were the wrong color, too young, too old, or whose penmanship showed they were possibly creative messy people, without the hassle of having to bring them in for a time-consuming personal interview.
That is not to say that age discrimination, discrimination against sloppy dressers, etc. do not exist here in the United States. Just that it costs corporations more money to practice it, because U.S. law outlaws hiring practices that are common in Europe.
You are correct, we have no privacy, especially in the Internet age. When you can pull my name and address by simply looking at the billing info on my domain, it's rather futile to fight it. Thus if you look at my home page you'll find everything up to and including my phone number. But I *WILL* demand that the information that other people have be correct and non-libelous. If anybody needs a kick-ass attorney in the Phoenix area willing to fight when someone refuses to correct information, drop me some EMAIL and I'll forward you his name. (Oh heck, just do a Google search for "phoenix car dealer tax lawsuit", look for the Phoenix New Times story, and you'll get his name).
Join a credit union. Join a smaller local bank or savings and loan. The big multi-outlet chain banks don't really care about your business, they make their money from lending to businesses, not from walk-in retail customers. If a bank doesn't want your business, walk. That's how a free market is supposed to work -- and it does work. There's somebody out there who wants your business. Find him or her. Bring in the latest copy of your credit report, and remind her that you did NOT apply for credit 15 times when you were applying for housing. If the bank wants your business, the lending officer will kick it upstairs. If the bank doesn't want your business, walk.
Note that "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is a principle of jurisprudence for *CRIMINAL* cases, but it is not the law, and it is not written into the Constitution, and it does not apply to civil cases in any event. CRA's are not governmental bodies, they are not courts, they do not judge they merely report, thus they do not have to comply with rules restricting the behavior of governments. All they have to comply with are the laws passed restricting their own behaviors, laws which basically give them blanket immunity until they're told by the provider of the information (or by a court via court order against the provider) that the information is incorrect.
Credit agencies don't divulge credit reports that you yourself have ordered for purposes of reviewing your credit report. Or at least federal regulations say that they're not supposed to, and the credit reports I've obtained appear to bear that out. On my credit reports (that I have obtained for myself), the inquiries are divided into two categories -- "account reviews" for existing accounts (which are not disclosed) and "credit requests" (which are disclosed). For example, there is one credit card company that I have an account with that every month requests a copy of my credit report for "account review". This request (and the requests that I'd earlier made while checking/cleaning my report) did not show up on the copy of my credit report that my credit union obtained when I bought my new car (I checked, I was looking over the lady's shoulder as she brought up my credit report:-).
There seems to be a lot of myths floating around about what counts and doesn't count. Basically, there's four things that count: 1) Number of credit requests, 2) payment history (do you have a history of paying your bills on time, or do you have late payments?), 3) number of accounts and current balances on your outstanding debts, and 4) available credit on your credit cards and lines of credit. All the other things I've seen appear to be mythical. They certainly haven't shown up on the credit reports that I, my bank, or my landlord have obtained.
Note that credit reporting agencies are given virtually blanket immunity from slander under the guise that they aren't the source of the information, they are simply reporting what other people tell them.
If you want incorrect information removed, and the source of the information says "yeah, that information is correct" when the CRA calls, then the CRA has no liability. You must then contact and possibly sue the source of the information, not the credit reporting agency. Only once the source (or a court) says that the information is incorrect, is the CRA liable -- meaning, if they *STILL* refuse to remove the info after the source (or court) says it's incorrect, then and *ONLY* then can you sue the CRA (and for a laughably small amount... $50,000 max, if I recall, or maybe that's the Fair Debt Collections Act, it's been a few months since I looked all this up).
Back in the 1980's, when mail order was big and Computer Shopper and Byte Magazine were the size of an encyclopedia, many of the mail order advertisers did add on that 2% if you paid by credit card. But then the MasterVisaCard monopoly changed their retailer agreements to forbid the practice. There are many retailers who would happily charge that 2% to their customers -- but if they tried, Master would yank their credit card priviliges (meaning they'd lose all their credit card customers). Thus those of us who pay cash are subsidizing the bums who use credit, all because a monopoly provider (the Master clearing house) decided to screw the consumer.
Note that if I had ever seen one of these credit card agreements, I would not be allowed to tell you about it (they may or may not be stamped with legalese saying that all contents are proprietary information, but I haven't seen one, right, so I couldn't tell you that!:-).
I have copies of my credit reports from every national CRA. There is no information there about monthly balance for past months. The only balance information is the information for the current month. What there *IS* on there is month-by-month "on time" information. There is nothing to say whether you bought a $200 chainsaw and spent 10 months paying it off, or bought $5 worth of Coleman fuel once per month and paid it off in full.
Do note that you have to make a payment every month in order for it to enter your credit record as something that looks good. In months that you have no payments, no info gets reported.
Note that credit bureaus do *NOT* have the problem of either proving it or striking it. Their only burden is the burden of contacting the provider of the information and asking him if the information is correct or not. If the provider says "yeah, it's correct", then the credit bureau *HAS NO LIABILITY* and has no responsibility to remove the incorrect information -- you must instead contact the provider of the incorrect information yourself and either get him to tell the CRA "whoops, sorry, I was wrong, that information was incorrect", or if he refuses to do that, you must sue him. The credit reporting agency has no liability until such time as they've been informed either by the provider or by being served with a copy of a court order that the information is incorrect.
I recently bought a car. I spent three months cleaning up my credit report beforehand. There were debts on there that had been discharged years ago. There were accounts marked as "open" with available balances (bad credit score!) that had been closed years ago. I dutifully sent the letters to the credit reporting agencies, which then picked up the phone, called XYZ Corps, and asked "does Eric Green, SSN 666-66-6666, have an open account 123-456-78?". This usually resolved it, but there was one credit card company that had been sold off by its dying parent bank and they had no records showing that I'd paid my bill. So I had to contact that credit card company directly. Two certified letters and a threatened lawsuit later (after I demanded proof of indebtedness, along with providing a copy of the check) and they finally sent me a letter saying that all derogatory information was being removed from my credit record. [Luckily I *NEVER* throw away old bank statements or cancelled checks... too bad banks have stopped providing cancelled checks...]
Note that credit reporting agencies are virtually immune from lawsuits. This is in the fine print of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which exempts CRA's from any liability for incorrect or inaccurate information (it places that liability upon the person who reported the incorrect information). The only time you can sue a CRA is if you provide them with the judgement/court order from a lawsuit against the provider of the incorrect information, and they *STILL* refuse to remove the incorrect information.
Amongst other things, this led to a friend having to sue a court because a clerk accidentally hit the wrong button and marked a lawsuit against him as "resolved" (i.e. he owed the debt and had to be sued before he'd pay it) rather than as "dismissed" (i.e., he didn't owe the debt in the first place). This despite a letter from the apartment complex manager to the CRA saying that the lawsuit against the friend had been a case of mistaken identity. The CRA replied that they could not remove the information because it had been provided by the court, rather than by the apartment complex. The court said they had no record of such a lawsuit (it'd been dismissed, after all) and could not provide any documentation to the CRA. The CRA thus refused to remove the information. Thus the need to sue the court in order to get it to issue a letter to the CRA -- not exactly the most pleasant of things to do.
See http://badtux.org/eric/grumblings/eviltwin.html
for my own experience with deadbeats who have
the name "Eric Green" and getting contacted by
debt collectors... Note that every time this happens, I
have to send the morons a certified letter demanding
that they either provide proof of debt or cease and
desist as required by the Fair Debt Collections Act.
So far I haven't had to go to the next step (where my
attorney sends them a cease and desist -- I have
a kick-ass attorney for that kind of stuff).
Other history -- Linux Hardware Solutions, an early vendor of Linux-branded hardware that was later bought by VA Linux Systems, had huggers (the things you put cans into to keep them cool) with that quote on it. I have one in my memorabilia box.
What I wish I'd gotten, when I had the chance, was the LHS t-shirt with the Ghandi quote on it. That was so appropriate for the state of Linux at that time. Today, an appropriate t-shirt would have the word "Linux" with dollar signs all over it, because Linux is now a business, not a cult. Which is fine and dandy especially for someone like me who likes to eat! But it's good to remember that Linux survived just fine without the IBM's and Dells of the world.
In my view, the advantage of writing things in an object-oriented manner is not that you can change the implementation without changing the interface. The advantage is that if you ever do have to add things to the interface (e.g., if you find that your nice foobar class needs a new blurbfoo attribute) it's easy to find all the functions you need to touch in order to add that new blurbfoo attribute -- because they're all there as part of that class (if you've done your job right).
One thing that Python makes easy is the concept of a procedural object -- a chunk of code that performs some task. For example, in BRU Professional the tape switcher (that switches tapes in a tape loader as you proceed in a network backup) is a procedural object. The high level backup/restore/verify code that actually manages tapes initializes the tape switcher with a list of what slots in the tape changer to go to for which volume in the backup, then passes this tape switcher object down to the lowlevel code that actually touches the hardware. The lowlevel code then calls the tape switcher object's "load a volume" method whenever it needs to change tapes.
I can't think of anything more procedural than an actual tape backup, but even there many things can be easily abstracted out as objects -- not just the high level stuff like "drive" and "tape", but also lower-level procedural items such as changing tapes.
C++ is syntactic glop on top of "C". Object Oriented programming can be done in any modern language. I regularly write object-oriented "C" code -- when I am programming, I naturally write things as "objects" (structs) whose members are operated upon by the routines mentioned in a particular.h file (the "methods" that go with that "object"). So if I have a struct netstream { stuff } ; in a file named net.h, I also list the routines that operate upon stuff of type 'netstream' (and implement them in a net.c file too, of course). This way I know all routines that operate upon data of that type, and in the rest of the program can create and destroy netstreams and do various operations upon them without having to track down code scattered all over the landscape.
I think that most of the criticisms that have been aimed at object oriented programming are in fact aimed at particular programming languages and implementations. Object oriented programming has nothing to do with any particular idea of "classes" or "inheritance" or with any particular programming language. I can write object-oriented code in assembly language -- and have done so. There are things that are much nicer when language support exists -- inheritance is not easy to do in "C", for example, while in Python it's as natural as breathing -- but that doesn't make them impossible, merely more difficult.
Finally: I recently was project lead on a large project written mostly in Python. I can attest that an object oriented paradigm saved us a ton of programming time and coding time. Encapsulating generic database table access into a 'dbaccess' class, then subclassing our various tables using that class, for example, saved us a ton of programming time. There are some of our classes that consist of nothing more than the import of 'dbaccess' and the subclassing of 'dbaccess' in a class whose only (non-dbaccess) members are the data type descriptor strings for that table. Being able to say "d=Destination(destid); tape=d.FindFirstTape() ; if t.is_recycled()... " is not just the natural result of object oriented programming -- it also allowed my team to write a major application in an amazingly small amount of time.
My basic conclusion: Object oriented programming is not a buzzword or a programming language. It is simply how you build big programs -- no matter what language you're building them in.
I must admit, as someone who has seen approximately 3 decades now as a thinking sentient, that things are getting better in some ways. While "tolerance" is only skin-deep in much of the country (and totally non-existent in the deep South), things are at least better than during the late 70's, where all attempts at being individualistic were swiftly and brutally put down (see what they did to the skate scene at the end of the 70's -- destroyed it, using all the power of government, using both legal and illegal means to make sure that every skate park was dismantled and every skateboard manufacturer crippled by lawsuits).
There is still, however, a long way to go, and any gains could swiftly be wiped away if it is decided that it's not to the benefit of the megacorps that run this country. The Internet is one thing that helps today -- while it is not easy to find opposing views (it has taken over a year for me to find sites that provide news critical of the status quo), it is at least easier than trying to find things via "the grapevine" (because one megacorps controls over 90% of newsstand distribution in this country, and one megacorps controls over 80% of book distribution in this country, you can't find dissenting views at most bookstores or newsstands). That is one of the reasons I joined the EFF, so that at least governmental efforts to kill free speech on the Internet can be fought -- though if we get to the point where one megacorps controls over 90% of the Internet (the way they do w/newsstands), and can thus censor sites with impunity via their boundary routers, the EFF's efforts may be for naught.
Just as V.P. of Information Systems got turned into CIO, in many engineering and technology firms the VP of Engineering (who develops the products sold by the company) got turned into the CTO. In this case the two have entirely different jobs. The CTO is responsible for managing the engineering effort and communicating with upper management and the marketing department to make sure that engineering is producing what's needed to compete in the marketplace. The CIO makes sure that all the internal systems and networks are working, that the COO knows how much money is in the bank, that the corporate web site has relevant information on it, etc.
If you see a CTO who is underneath the CIO in the corporate heirarchy, *RUN*. This means that the company has not adequately thought out the roles for its managers and is thus probably run by a process of backstabbing and who-you-know rather than via ability and execution. Those are *NOT* happy places to work.
-E
H.L. Menken predicted this
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 2
Ole' H.L. said that the key to practical politics was to find a threat and use it to scare people into voting for you and your policies. The "War on Drugs" has been just such a threat for thousands of local sheriffs, legislators, and attorneys general running on "get tough on crime" platforms. Violent crime has been declining in this country since the early 90's, but you would not know it from the way local officials act.
In addition, the War on Drugs serves as a proxy for two other wars that governments in the United States wage: The war on minorities, and the war on children.
Regarding minorities, it serves as an excuse for local racist officials to use to embark upon sweeping raids and widespread violations of civil rights and the U.S. Constitution while dealing with "those" people (where "those" people are brown, black, poor, you know, anybody who doesn't "look like us").
As regards the war on children, we are a nation of hypocrits. We profess to love children. Politicians get elected promising to do such-and-such "for the children". Yet we do not provide the necessities for children to engage in healthy lifestyles. Our children are fat and unhealthy because they are cloistered inside homes rather than being allowed to run and play, thanks to the "war on drugs". This allows more profit for the megacorporations that advertise on television. Similarly, our children eat fatty unhealthy foods because that's what's profitable for the megacorporations that control the U.S. food supply. If a parent fights the megacorporations and tries to guide his children into a healthy lifestyle, local governments, which are owned by developers, make sure that there are no bicycle paths, skateboard parks, obstacle/fitness courses, etc. for children to play safely on (such things cost developers money to build and affect the bottom line, after all). If recreation facilities are provided by local governments, they are inevitably for group sports rather than for individual sports such as bicycling or rollerblading -- lord knows we wouldn't want children to learn to be individuals, we want them to be well-indoctrinated consumers who create profit for the mega-corporations and who think exactly like everybody else (otherwise they might demand homes that aren't cookie-cutter suburbian glee -- oh woe to the tract housing developer!).
The War on Drugs makes a convenient proxy for these other wars that go on every day. After all, if local skate parks are accused of being gathering places for "drug-dealing skate punks", this gives an excuse to shut them down (thus punishing those kids who would be individuals rather than comfortable groupthinkers). And if the Hispanics in your area are getting uppity and not being content to mow your lawn and trim your hedges, why, let's just send in the Sheriff's Posse to bust in a few doors and bang a few heads based on "anonymous tips"! And oh, if we manage to kill a few of those nasty brown people, gosh, that's one less spic cluttering the earth.
Feh. As long as there are bigots and megacorps, there will be a threat. If the War on Drugs had not been invented, something else just as nasty would have (much as the "Red Scare" was similarly invented in the late 40's-early 50's to feed the careers of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon).
You're confusing us Catholics with the Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptists
are the ones who say that members of all other religions are going to Hell. The
Catholics merely believe that members of all other religions are misguided.
The Catholic Church is a rather schitzo institution. On the one hand, it has a long history of intellectual thought (go to your local library and look at volumes of "The Catholic Encyclopedia" for examples of that intellectual thought). On
the other hand, it also has a long history of suppression of intellectual thought that is viewed as incompatible with the Catholic faith. How to reconcile those two views of the Catholic church -- our history of intellectual thought vs. tolerance of ideas that seem anti-Catholic -- has long been a issue within the Catholic community. Even today, it is a current and active issue within the Catholic community, especially at U.S. Catholic universities.
All in all, I must say that I prefer a religion that is willing to debate such issues to one that says that all intellectual thought and discussion about moral
issues is a waste of time (such as, e.g., the Southern Baptists, which bluntly state that all you need is faith and the words of the Bible and forget all that intellectual stuff).
[Note: I had a somewhat schitzo religious upbringing. Summers were spent with my Southern Baptist grandparents, Vacation Bible School, etc., winters were Catholic school and catechism... so my compare/contrast, while perhaps not fair to the Baptists, certainly does reflect personal experience.]
I think it depends on the size of the program. If it's a small program like, say, mtx, where compiling it takes moments, well, no big deal. I would go nut compiling PostGreSQL all the time though -- it's just too big and bulky to compile swiftly, and I have better things to do with my time.
But for alpha software, sure, make them compile it. If it doesn't compile it shouldn't have even been released to alpha...
Note that it's impossible for people to change how their brain is wired. I am quite capable of communicating complex ideas in a clear manner. I will never, however, be the kind of butt-licking schmoozer ex-used-car-salesman who ends up with upper management twisted around my little pinkie giving me everything I want or need for my job. That's incompatible with how I'm wired. That's also why I can be a good project or team leader, but would not accept a job as CIO or IT director -- it's incompatible with my wiring, and I'm not going to put myself into that kind of situation again.
This has very little to do with "leadership abilities", by the way. There are many different styles of leadership, and not all of them require that you be Mr. Used Car Salesman. They do, however, all require goal setting, effective communication of goals, and a meeting of minds with those you work with, as well as (gasp) initiative and drive (you can't lead from the rear!).
Slashdot Mirror
Today's graduates of the military academies appear to have taken Sherman's doctrine of "War is hell" to heart. I know a lot of retired military officers (I'm from the South, traditionally one of the heaviest sources of military personnel) and their doctrine appears to be "don't go to war, and if the politicians force you to go to war, bomb the enemy back to the stone age then send in overwhelming force. " The pre-Vietnam hubris appears to be gone. Vietnam apparently traumatized the military establishment to the point where they had to rethink many of their basic assumptions (such as the assumption that the U.S. could easily defeat any little tin-pot dictator with the use of a couple of divisions and a few B-52 strikes), much as the end of the Cold War has led to some soul searching on the part of today's up-and-coming officers as to what the proper role and composition of the military should be.
All in all, I've gotten good vibes off of the retired military officers that I've met. Yes, they're conservative. But they're conservative in the old fashioned sense of the word -- i.e., people who don't believe in hasty actions and who believe in leading a personally upright life (as vs. the hypocrisy of many so-called "conservatives" which is mere mean-spiritedness and spite). Many of them are now teachers, for example. While I'm not going to try to glorify the military, I will state that the folks in the military are as decent and love their country as much as the average American. If only the civilian leadership above them had those qualities.
(BTW, the notion of a military junta absolutely appalled the retired military I asked -- while they complained bitterly about the civilian leadership, they also pointed out that a military junta would inevitably destroy their beloved military as it turned into yet another corrupt banana republic army, just as bad as the politicians that were forced out of office, not to mention that oath they swore to uphold the Constitution...).
-E
Note: "SS" in the above stands for "Secret Service". Any similarity between that abbreviation and the Nazi stormtrooper service's abbreviation is intentional.
In general, if the cops seize your computers, assume that you're going to need a new computer. I suggest purchasing a lightweight laptop (AFTER the SS seizes your computers -- otherwise they might come after you for "concealing evidence"). I also suggest that you retain off-site backups, perhaps with co-workers that the cops won't think of immediately as friends, perhaps in some other semi-anonymous fashion, so that you won't lose 20 years of your writings just because some Nazi stormtrooper wannabe with a police uniform got peeved that you called him by name.
-E
Until one day a French scholar happened by the University, happened to overhear a conversation, and excitedly demanded to know how they'd learned 17th century French dialect from the northern provinces so well (his specialty apparently was 17th century folk literature of that area).
Point being -- North American French is French. It's a dialect of French that once was spoken in France but has since largely died out there, and it's a dialect of French that has to a certain extent migrated in different directions due to being surrounded by English-speakers, but it's French. My father served on sub tenders during the Korean War, and whenever the ship needed somebody to talk with the French (they were poking around in Indochina at the time), they'd haul him off of his usual duties and put him to work as a translater. It was no more disconcerting than trying to put a Southern USA English type talking to a BBC London English type, where the USA type wonders why the other is talking about pretty girls, and the BBC type is wondering why the USA type is talking about using hand carts for transporting troops and supplies. (Sorry, "truck" vs. "lorrie").
-E
Graphology and polygraph tests are also prohibited for most job applicants (polygraph tests are only allowed for certain jobs that affect national security).
Every company here in the United States knows that if they request these things, the next thing that will be waiting for them will be a subpoena to appear as a defendent in a lawsuit. There are lawyers salivating over the opportunity to stick it to some moron who blatantly violates the law. So companies don't do this stuff. Score one for the lawyers.
The lawyer thing works well for blatant "yes or no" things like "did they request a photo". It of course does not work well for less blatant violations of the laws against race and age descrimination. If they get you in for an interveiew, see that you're black, and say "I'm sorry, but after more review we see that you're not qualified for this position", it's quite hard to prove racial discrimination. The famous study where identical resumes were sent out to Fortune 1000 companies, half with a stereotypically black name and half with a stereotypically white name, shows that racial bias definitely still exists in hiring in the United States (for those who have poor memory -- the resume with the stereotypically white name got significantly more callbacks, even though it was completely and absolutely otherwise identical to the other one). So the lack of photos does not make it impossible to racially discriminate based on one's resume (curriculum vitae). But at least it's not as blatant and up-front an indicator of racial or age bias as a request for a photograph.
-E
The only difference is that the company towns have gotten bigger, sometimes encompassing entire nations. But the same elements of vigilante justice ("Death to those who bounced a check due to our own incompetence!") and sheer disregard for human life, still apply.
-E
That is not to say that age discrimination, discrimination against sloppy dressers, etc. do not exist here in the United States. Just that it costs corporations more money to practice it, because U.S. law outlaws hiring practices that are common in Europe.
-E
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There seems to be a lot of myths floating around about what counts and doesn't count. Basically, there's four things that count: 1) Number of credit requests, 2) payment history (do you have a history of paying your bills on time, or do you have late payments?), 3) number of accounts and current balances on your outstanding debts, and 4) available credit on your credit cards and lines of credit. All the other things I've seen appear to be mythical. They certainly haven't shown up on the credit reports that I, my bank, or my landlord have obtained.
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If you want incorrect information removed, and the source of the information says "yeah, that information is correct" when the CRA calls, then the CRA has no liability. You must then contact and possibly sue the source of the information, not the credit reporting agency. Only once the source (or a court) says that the information is incorrect, is the CRA liable -- meaning, if they *STILL* refuse to remove the info after the source (or court) says it's incorrect, then and *ONLY* then can you sue the CRA (and for a laughably small amount... $50,000 max, if I recall, or maybe that's the Fair Debt Collections Act, it's been a few months since I looked all this up).
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Note that if I had ever seen one of these credit card agreements, I would not be allowed to tell you about it (they may or may not be stamped with legalese saying that all contents are proprietary information, but I haven't seen one, right, so I couldn't tell you that! :-).
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Do note that you have to make a payment every month in order for it to enter your credit record as something that looks good. In months that you have no payments, no info gets reported.
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I recently bought a car. I spent three months cleaning up my credit report beforehand. There were debts on there that had been discharged years ago. There were accounts marked as "open" with available balances (bad credit score!) that had been closed years ago. I dutifully sent the letters to the credit reporting agencies, which then picked up the phone, called XYZ Corps, and asked "does Eric Green, SSN 666-66-6666, have an open account 123-456-78?". This usually resolved it, but there was one credit card company that had been sold off by its dying parent bank and they had no records showing that I'd paid my bill. So I had to contact that credit card company directly. Two certified letters and a threatened lawsuit later (after I demanded proof of indebtedness, along with providing a copy of the check) and they finally sent me a letter saying that all derogatory information was being removed from my credit record. [Luckily I *NEVER* throw away old bank statements or cancelled checks... too bad banks have stopped providing cancelled checks...]
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Amongst other things, this led to a friend having to sue a court because a clerk accidentally hit the wrong button and marked a lawsuit against him as "resolved" (i.e. he owed the debt and had to be sued before he'd pay it) rather than as "dismissed" (i.e., he didn't owe the debt in the first place). This despite a letter from the apartment complex manager to the CRA saying that the lawsuit against the friend had been a case of mistaken identity. The CRA replied that they could not remove the information because it had been provided by the court, rather than by the apartment complex. The court said they had no record of such a lawsuit (it'd been dismissed, after all) and could not provide any documentation to the CRA. The CRA thus refused to remove the information. Thus the need to sue the court in order to get it to issue a letter to the CRA -- not exactly the most pleasant of things to do.
See http://badtux.org/eric/grumblings/eviltwin.html for my own experience with deadbeats who have the name "Eric Green" and getting contacted by debt collectors... Note that every time this happens, I have to send the morons a certified letter demanding that they either provide proof of debt or cease and desist as required by the Fair Debt Collections Act. So far I haven't had to go to the next step (where my attorney sends them a cease and desist -- I have a kick-ass attorney for that kind of stuff).
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What I wish I'd gotten, when I had the chance, was the LHS t-shirt with the Ghandi quote on it. That was so appropriate for the state of Linux at that time. Today, an appropriate t-shirt would have the word "Linux" with dollar signs all over it, because Linux is now a business, not a cult. Which is fine and dandy especially for someone like me who likes to eat! But it's good to remember that Linux survived just fine without the IBM's and Dells of the world.
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In my view, the advantage of writing things in an object-oriented manner is not that you can change the implementation without changing the interface. The advantage is that if you ever do have to add things to the interface (e.g., if you find that your nice foobar class needs a new blurbfoo attribute) it's easy to find all the functions you need to touch in order to add that new blurbfoo attribute -- because they're all there as part of that class (if you've done your job right).
I can't think of anything more procedural than an actual tape backup, but even there many things can be easily abstracted out as objects -- not just the high level stuff like "drive" and "tape", but also lower-level procedural items such as changing tapes.
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I think that most of the criticisms that have been aimed at object oriented programming are in fact aimed at particular programming languages and implementations. Object oriented programming has nothing to do with any particular idea of "classes" or "inheritance" or with any particular programming language. I can write object-oriented code in assembly language -- and have done so. There are things that are much nicer when language support exists -- inheritance is not easy to do in "C", for example, while in Python it's as natural as breathing -- but that doesn't make them impossible, merely more difficult.
Finally: I recently was project lead on a large project written mostly in Python. I can attest that an object oriented paradigm saved us a ton of programming time and coding time. Encapsulating generic database table access into a 'dbaccess' class, then subclassing our various tables using that class, for example, saved us a ton of programming time. There are some of our classes that consist of nothing more than the import of 'dbaccess' and the subclassing of 'dbaccess' in a class whose only (non-dbaccess) members are the data type descriptor strings for that table. Being able to say "d=Destination(destid); tape=d.FindFirstTape() ; if t.is_recycled() ... " is not just the natural result of object oriented programming -- it also allowed my team to write a major application in an amazingly small amount of time.
My basic conclusion: Object oriented programming is not a buzzword or a programming language. It is simply how you build big programs -- no matter what language you're building them in.
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There is still, however, a long way to go, and any gains could swiftly be wiped away if it is decided that it's not to the benefit of the megacorps that run this country. The Internet is one thing that helps today -- while it is not easy to find opposing views (it has taken over a year for me to find sites that provide news critical of the status quo), it is at least easier than trying to find things via "the grapevine" (because one megacorps controls over 90% of newsstand distribution in this country, and one megacorps controls over 80% of book distribution in this country, you can't find dissenting views at most bookstores or newsstands). That is one of the reasons I joined the EFF, so that at least governmental efforts to kill free speech on the Internet can be fought -- though if we get to the point where one megacorps controls over 90% of the Internet (the way they do w/newsstands), and can thus censor sites with impunity via their boundary routers, the EFF's efforts may be for naught.
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If you see a CTO who is underneath the CIO in the corporate heirarchy, *RUN*. This means that the company has not adequately thought out the roles for its managers and is thus probably run by a process of backstabbing and who-you-know rather than via ability and execution. Those are *NOT* happy places to work.
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In addition, the War on Drugs serves as a proxy for two other wars that governments in the United States wage: The war on minorities, and the war on children.
Regarding minorities, it serves as an excuse for local racist officials to use to embark upon sweeping raids and widespread violations of civil rights and the U.S. Constitution while dealing with "those" people (where "those" people are brown, black, poor, you know, anybody who doesn't "look like us").
As regards the war on children, we are a nation of hypocrits. We profess to love children. Politicians get elected promising to do such-and-such "for the children". Yet we do not provide the necessities for children to engage in healthy lifestyles. Our children are fat and unhealthy because they are cloistered inside homes rather than being allowed to run and play, thanks to the "war on drugs". This allows more profit for the megacorporations that advertise on television. Similarly, our children eat fatty unhealthy foods because that's what's profitable for the megacorporations that control the U.S. food supply. If a parent fights the megacorporations and tries to guide his children into a healthy lifestyle, local governments, which are owned by developers, make sure that there are no bicycle paths, skateboard parks, obstacle/fitness courses, etc. for children to play safely on (such things cost developers money to build and affect the bottom line, after all). If recreation facilities are provided by local governments, they are inevitably for group sports rather than for individual sports such as bicycling or rollerblading -- lord knows we wouldn't want children to learn to be individuals, we want them to be well-indoctrinated consumers who create profit for the mega-corporations and who think exactly like everybody else (otherwise they might demand homes that aren't cookie-cutter suburbian glee -- oh woe to the tract housing developer!).
The War on Drugs makes a convenient proxy for these other wars that go on every day. After all, if local skate parks are accused of being gathering places for "drug-dealing skate punks", this gives an excuse to shut them down (thus punishing those kids who would be individuals rather than comfortable groupthinkers). And if the Hispanics in your area are getting uppity and not being content to mow your lawn and trim your hedges, why, let's just send in the Sheriff's Posse to bust in a few doors and bang a few heads based on "anonymous tips"! And oh, if we manage to kill a few of those nasty brown people, gosh, that's one less spic cluttering the earth.
Feh. As long as there are bigots and megacorps, there will be a threat. If the War on Drugs had not been invented, something else just as nasty would have (much as the "Red Scare" was similarly invented in the late 40's-early 50's to feed the careers of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon).
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The Catholic Church is a rather schitzo institution. On the one hand, it has a long history of intellectual thought (go to your local library and look at volumes of "The Catholic Encyclopedia" for examples of that intellectual thought). On the other hand, it also has a long history of suppression of intellectual thought that is viewed as incompatible with the Catholic faith. How to reconcile those two views of the Catholic church -- our history of intellectual thought vs. tolerance of ideas that seem anti-Catholic -- has long been a issue within the Catholic community. Even today, it is a current and active issue within the Catholic community, especially at U.S. Catholic universities.
All in all, I must say that I prefer a religion that is willing to debate such issues to one that says that all intellectual thought and discussion about moral issues is a waste of time (such as, e.g., the Southern Baptists, which bluntly state that all you need is faith and the words of the Bible and forget all that intellectual stuff).
[Note: I had a somewhat schitzo religious upbringing. Summers were spent with my Southern Baptist grandparents, Vacation Bible School, etc., winters were Catholic school and catechism... so my compare/contrast, while perhaps not fair to the Baptists, certainly does reflect personal experience.]
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But for alpha software, sure, make them compile it. If it doesn't compile it shouldn't have even been released to alpha...
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This has very little to do with "leadership abilities", by the way. There are many different styles of leadership, and not all of them require that you be Mr. Used Car Salesman. They do, however, all require goal setting, effective communication of goals, and a meeting of minds with those you work with, as well as (gasp) initiative and drive (you can't lead from the rear!).
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