Well, that and the wierdness of corporate taxes in this state. Minimum Income Tax for corporations: $10, and it hasn't changed since 1939. And the kicker checks, which I have to wonder what companies based in New York do with in the accounting department (who ever heard of the state GIVING BACK money to out-of-state corporations? They must think we're crazy.)
Great speech, comrade. Read that in Pravda, did you?
Actually, no. It was originally written by the VAT tax guy who back in the 1920s sometime led Oregon's *first* anti-sales-tax brigade. Oddly enough- his VAT sticker tax would be almost as bad, had it passed. Instead, he did- back in 1997, about 10 years after I first met him at the Oregon State Fair.
People should be taxed equally. We should not discriminate based upon income.
Then we shouldn't have discrimination in income- the motivation factor disappears, and nobody does anything.
But that is NOT equality under the law.
We don't have equality under the law now- voting means nothing as long as people are able to pay to deny the will of the voters.
Why should one be rewarded or punished by the government based on the amount of money they make?
To preserve democracy. As long as special interests can afford lobbyists, we have no democracy. The key is obviously to destroy the earning potential of special interests.
If you make something people want, they will find you. If you make something they really want, they will move mountains to get to you.
And if they can't afford it due to the sales tax after they get to you, they still can't have it.:-)
I don't really disagree with you, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend time making stuff that won't have a buyer(it's a waste of a valuable resource, time), but in the world as it is right now, if you make something of value, you can usually find a buyer.
That won't continue to be so if you excessively tax the buyers is my point. If all the wealth is concentrated in a few families at the top, and they can afford jet planes to go to other continents to buy what you make cheaper, and nobody else can afford what you make, what will you do?
Spending shifts and transfers wealth. Production creates wealth; doing things that encourage productive activity is generally a better idea than encouraging spending.
The number one thing that creates production, is having somebody to buy your production. In other words, spending. Destroy your customers, and you destroy any hope of having a business OR wealth above minimum wage.
So like North Korea, but with no economy of scale. Let me know how that works out.
A slightly less violent form has worked out for the past 1600 years: Catholic contemplative communities. Many are self-sufficient now, especially since the teachings on environmentalism came along.
I watched my hometown economy go down in flames, when the "Spotted Owl" scandal happened, I don't want to see that here.
Unfortuneately it already happened. I used to live in a town that had logging trucks roll through every day- but the sawmill was based on old-growth sized trees (most were really 80 year old 2nd growth), and spotted owls killed it.
I think you meant to say that "Savings and investment are things that everyone except the very poor can afford to do." Hell, even freakin Walmart has a 401K plan.
401k plans are not investment. 401k plans are the federal government using a tax loophole to funnel money from the poor into brokerage acounts, at which point it gets eaten up between "stock market downturns" and "brokerage fees", with the total zeroing out every 5-10 years. REAL investing doesn't use the con game known as a stock market; instead you give the money to a venture capitalist who invests it in small businesses and inventors who haven't gone public yet. For this, you get pre-market stock. You make your real money when such businesses go public, and you sell at a rather high rate on IPO day to the pyramid scheme that is the stock market, thus getting somebody else to take all the real risk when the business goes bankrupt a few years later from the short-sighted behavior that is encouraged by going public.
Well, I actually perfer a form of income tax based on multiples of the minimum wage / 10 (with all money below the bracket being tax free- you're only taxed on additional income. Which gives you ten brackets between the poorest and the richest Americans out there. More than enough to preserve motivation, but a low enough maximum wage to minimize the hyperinflationary aspects of allowing people to be excessively rich due to inflation, savings, or investment. At minimum wage, all money you earn between minimum wage and twice minimum wage would be taxed at 10%. At 2mw, all money you earn between 2mw and 3mw is taxed at 20%. Here's the real table:
Range Tax Free Income Taxable rate for taxable income
1mw-2mw 1mw 10%
2mw-3mw 2mw 20%
3mw-4mw 3mw 30%
4mw-5mw 4mw 40%
5mw-6mw 5mw 50%
6mw-7mw 6mw 60%
7mw-8mw 7mw 70%
8mw-9mw 8mw 80%
9mw-10mw 9mw 90%
10mw+ 10mw 100%
I also believe that counties should collect this tax- states should collect taxes from the counties at the same rates, but mw*population. States should owe the feds mw*population rates as well. With a current federal minimum wage rate of $7.50/hr, this means that the first $21,600 you earn per person in your household is tax free (kids included). For a family of two, this means $43,200 is your household minimum wage, etc. This also means that the top single wage is $216,000; the top for married filing jointly is $432,000. Add another minimum wage modifier at your current bracket for each dependants for your household (based on the assumption that you deserve to have as many dependants as you can afford to take care of). If you're single and can't feel rich enough to save and invest at a salary of $216,000 a year, you either need to lobby to change the minimum wage (thus automatically changing the maximum) or seriously consider changing your lifestyle.:-) That's enough money to live a life of luxury, but not enough to control the lives of your fellow citizens (as it should be). Hmm- I wonder what my take home vs taxes would be at 51,000 and a family of three? ooops. I guess I'm too poor to pay taxes under this plan- in fact I'm willing to bet most people would be...for a household of three, my taxes would start at $64,800. If you want to be a billionaire- you still can. Just get yourself a household full of freeloaders- and you'll probably be able to afford to make your house a small city.
And we come to why no one should ever take financial advice from someone titled "Marxist Hacker 42". I could save and invest and I'm certainly NOT rich. I just had the discipline to do it, instead of playing the "blame game".
I suppose this could be true- but I find living in a cardboard box usually means that employment soon ends. If you were truly *not rich* then you'd be spending all of your money on food, clothing, shelter, water, heat, electricity, and enough tools of the trade to get hired. By definition. If you're earning enough to save and invest, then you're doing better than 45% of American citizens.
NINE times we have voted on a sales tax. 9 times it has been voted out... and they STILL keep proposing it.. When will the wastrels we call Gu'bmint figure it out? WE know your game and we want NO PART OF IT HERE!
I think they're hoping for the day that foreigners and Californicators outnumber 'Gonies like you and me.
I am also in Oregon and Mister, I don't care if your oposition to the sales tax is due to alien communications or your pet ferret thinks its a bad idea as long as you oposes it!
Six more like you and I'll have hit my limit on friends and defriended all my freaks.
If the rich consume more resources, presumably they're paying for such consumption, and so they pay a consumption tax proportionally.
Doesn't work that way because they hide behind fake persons called Corporations, and Corporations don't have to pay local taxes. Likewise, the corporations can afford to save, unlike regular people.
There are at least a few good reasons to have a progressive income tax instead of a consumption tax, but you have not offered a single one.
Ok, here's one: taxes as a percentage of income- the guy living on the street can't afford to avoid sales tax, but the billionaire living in the mansion only spends 1/100th of what he earns. With corporations being exempt from sales taxes- that leaves more money for savings and spending on out-of-state lobbyists to twist other laws towards corporate control. At this point, it's not even worth voting anymore- the candidates are always chosen by corporate lobbyists ahead of time, and they don't really care who wins, because they've paid off all viable sides already.
Me too- life's just easier when you can find the guy who cheated you, in either government or business, and punch him in the nose if you need to. You must have grown up rural Oregon like I did- few of the Yorkies or Californicators who have moved into the valley in the past 15 years would agree with us.
In Corporatism, the only class that is political is the class that is rich enough to hire lobbyists. Only they have any real power, voting is just a show for the masses between two people picked by the lobbyists.
I HACK Marx, I'm not a communist. Marx wasn't a communist either, strickly speaking. Das Capital and the Manifesto are the same document written from different perspectives. Right now I'm more of a distributist- I prefer small economic communites (of no more than 6000 people at the most, preferably more like 500) that are isolationist and defend their borders against foreign imports with large amounts of force.
How so? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Sales tax is the great equalizer. The more you spend, the more you pay in tax. Sales tax also encourages people to save and invest. I think you have your logic backwards.
Savings and investment are things only the rich can afford to do- a tax shelter in a state that lives on sales tax would be getting Howard Hughes Syndrome- living very poor off of your investments. Likewise, in a state like mine that is already cash poor, you don't WANT people to save. You want them to buy stuff and provide money that supports jobs for other people in your state.
And an income tax isn't? With all of the loopholes, our 'progressive' income tax is actually quite regressive for all but the wealthiest of individuals. FairTax(sm)
Federal yes- Oregon takes great pains to make sure our income tax is extremely progressive. It's the main complaint of business people in this state.
Sales tax is just another way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It is always a scam based on a will for the rich to avoid any responsibility for their greater consumption of natural resources that they would otherwise be paying for. I recommend always avoiding it whenever possible.
The fact is that the US military are totally incompetent to win the kind of war we are in.
That's for sure- and the key is competing values. We're not moral enough to leave other countries to their own isolationism- and we're too moral to commit genocide against an enemy that would quickly commit genocide against us if they had the chance. One either has to realize that there can be no morality in total war- or that the only real morality in international relations is letting other cultures evolve on their own without our "help".
Nope, you've still havn't figured it out. Asking people to perform a double pass n-item bubble sort tells me much less than asking people to average an array of integers. It might be a tougher from a computer science perspective, but its also a much more closed problem that tells me less about the candidate.
Got news for you- averaging an array of integers only has 3 potential solutions also. Double pass n-item bubble sort is less of a closed problem- because it takes more lines of code and can be solved (differently) by all 8 major programming methods (four of which don't even have the concept of "arrays"). So unless you're limiting your languages you're interested in to the main 4 (Basic, C, Pascal and Java), and skipping the 5th most popular language, you've failed.
On the contrary, its not an obviously closed problem at all - its a very open ended problem, and incidently much more openended than your double pass n-item bubble sort.
It's 6 lines of code. The same six lines will always be needed regardless of what array-based language you're programming in. NO creativity at all. Just set an accumulator, create a for loop, accumulate the values in the accumulator, divide by the total. I dare you to find a double-pass bubble sort that uses only 6 lines of code, EVEN IN ASSEMBLY.
The people that approach that question like it was a "closed problem" are precisely the sorts of people that I've found to not work out, and thus I do not hire. The people that I hire are the ones that look at that problem and attempt to ask questions about the environment. For example, they might ask if this was a graphics app, or a financial app. In a graphics app, you would use floating point, and in a financial app, you couldn't do that. I'm not looking for a specific checklist of insights, just good insights. And I've found that the more creative answers they come up with for that problem, the better they do in the workplace.
You can tell all of that from the data type of the array in question. If you're looking to asking about data type as being an "insight" then you're not very "insightful".
As for anybody with an 105+ IQ being able to handle open ended problems, I'm sorry to say that my experience has been very different. You're free to disagree with me, but that doesn't change my personal experiences.
You don't even seem to know the meaning of the words you are using, so your personal experiences seem to be null and void to me. You don't know the FIRST thing about computer programming, you're just making up exercises to run people through some stupid test that doesn't even test what you think it does.
So you're basically saying that my responsibility as an employer is to provide people with jobs? If I'm going to do that, I may as well pay people to dig ditches in the ground and fill them back in again. Or pay people to pick their noses.
That's the entire reason society grants you tax inititives to run your busines. If you don't like it, then you shouldn't be running anything in a corporation.
So basically, you just gave up at 2003 and decided that for the next four years, that "resumes don't do any good?". Seriously Mr. Van Winkle, you need to wake up!
I see no evidence that private industry has changed it's tune to give out long term contracts with 2-3 year unemployment protection, do you? Snake oil salesmen- The last 7 years have proven to me that private industry cannot be trusted with my ability to earn a living.
I don't know anything about Portland, but on the East Coast you would do fine. Your resume is fine, and here the only way that you would not have a job is if you go into a phone screen or an interview and act like an idiot (which sadly is very common).
If industry wants my skills, there is a price to pay. Thar price is loyalty. I see no evidence that private industry is willing to pay that price- so I'm going with the stability of civil service instead.
There is no doubt about it, that 2003 was a shitty year. But I can speak personally as somebody that was at both sides of the fence (as a job seeker and as someone with input in the hiring process), both in 2004 and 2006. In 2004, posting a tech job position online resulted in you getting innundated by resumes, and companies would have to cull the avalanche of resumes because noone had time to phone screen, much less interview everybody.
2003, 2002, 2001. 2003 was when I gave up, 2004 didn't seem any better, and when the economy did turn around, the CxO's got all the money, not the people who actually created anything. I am not going to join that stupidity again- I no longer trust anybody.
In 2006, I was trying to fill a position and expected the same avalanche of resumes; it didn't come, and the people that we interviewed and liked got better jobs elsewhere. At the same time I got frustrated by my job and got inspired to jump ship. I posted my resume online and got innundated - by recruiters. And I got a job that was more satisfying and my pay jumped up.
That's a part of the problem, and the reason you got frustrated- nobody has any loyalty anymore. Why should anybody work for a company that is just going to toss them out without a dime in 2 years anyway?
Seriously dude, I know you've given up, and that thats what your problem is. Like I said, I don't know much about Portland, but judging from your Slashdot posting history, if you spend half of the effort into looking for a job as you spend on Slashdot complaining about the job market, you would have a job. And a good one at that.
I've got a pretty reasonable job right now- I did it the old fashioned way. 4 contracts then a civil service exam then trial service. I've got a job now where the union and the legislature sets my salary- my boss has nothing to say about it. I've got a job where I actually get bonuses for SOLVING PROBLEMS. And if the Department of Transportation ever goes downhill, then the economy will be the least of our worries; unlike Private Industry that yanks projects if they don't turn a profit in 4 months, or lays people off every 2 years just because some CxO wants a $.10 increase in his stock option prices. I'm never going to open myself up to that crap again- and neither should anybody else.
If your first instinct is to shout "BushCo! War criminal! 9/11 was an inside job!", don't.
Not a chance because I don't believe that after reading the 9th Sura of the Koran (should be required reading for ALL Americans in high school at this point, I think). But that doesn't make him an adequate or competant commander in chief either.
Wait, do we hate Bush because he's spending too much money on the war, or because he didn't finance it enough to let the troops do their job? I'm so confused!
If one has a vice president who accepts bribes, one can do both at the same time. And just where did that missing $8 BILLION go?
well, we (Canada) are working on afganistan, though no one seems to want to help us with it. not meaning the US, as they have their hands full with iraq.
Actually, a relative by marriage, an Oregon National Guard member, was killed there at a Taliban checkpoint in September, so yes, the US still has a few under-equiped troops there.
if you don't buy that it is effective, consider that the enemy, armed with AK-47s, RPGs, high explosives, and dedication to their cause, are holding their own against what is likely the most expensive and advanced miltary in the world.
It makes me wonder if they'd continue to hold their own against ICBMs sent from half a world away and turning 100 square kilometers of desert to glass in a single strike.
I disagree with that cartoon. What we have failed to realize is that the Iraqi Shite wearing an American-paid-for uniform IS ALSO THE ENEMY. As is the Kurd, the Turk, the "Moderate Sunni", as is the sleeper mole in the Iraqi government. My recommendation? Shoot everyone who has a gun or an explosive, then hit the gun or explosive with a Class 6 Laser to melt it into slag. Do this over and over until you've completely cleared all weaponry from the country.
Either that or just pull out and nuke them all as hopeless causes.
Something tells me that if we drafted the appropriate industries to build a *REAL* military industrial complex, and punished profiteering adequately in the first place, our troops could have had this technology (instead of a stupid deck of playing cards) in 2002, instead of waiting until 2007 for it to be delivered. But since Bush doesn't want to impact the profitability of this war, we have to wait for a significantly patriotic David to identify who the enemy is. It's exactly this lack of vision that has turned Afghanistan back into a Taliban-controlled country and destroyed our success in Iraq.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that and the wierdness of corporate taxes in this state. Minimum Income Tax for corporations: $10, and it hasn't changed since 1939. And the kicker checks, which I have to wonder what companies based in New York do with in the accounting department (who ever heard of the state GIVING BACK money to out-of-state corporations? They must think we're crazy.)
Great speech, comrade. Read that in Pravda, did you?
Actually, no. It was originally written by the VAT tax guy who back in the 1920s sometime led Oregon's *first* anti-sales-tax brigade. Oddly enough- his VAT sticker tax would be almost as bad, had it passed. Instead, he did- back in 1997, about 10 years after I first met him at the Oregon State Fair.
People should be taxed equally. We should not discriminate based upon income.
Then we shouldn't have discrimination in income- the motivation factor disappears, and nobody does anything.
But that is NOT equality under the law.
We don't have equality under the law now- voting means nothing as long as people are able to pay to deny the will of the voters.
Why should one be rewarded or punished by the government based on the amount of money they make?
To preserve democracy. As long as special interests can afford lobbyists, we have no democracy. The key is obviously to destroy the earning potential of special interests.
If you make something people want, they will find you. If you make something they really want, they will move mountains to get to you.
:-)
And if they can't afford it due to the sales tax after they get to you, they still can't have it.
I don't really disagree with you, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend time making stuff that won't have a buyer(it's a waste of a valuable resource, time), but in the world as it is right now, if you make something of value, you can usually find a buyer.
That won't continue to be so if you excessively tax the buyers is my point. If all the wealth is concentrated in a few families at the top, and they can afford jet planes to go to other continents to buy what you make cheaper, and nobody else can afford what you make, what will you do?
Spending shifts and transfers wealth. Production creates wealth; doing things that encourage productive activity is generally a better idea than encouraging spending.
The number one thing that creates production, is having somebody to buy your production. In other words, spending. Destroy your customers, and you destroy any hope of having a business OR wealth above minimum wage.
So like North Korea, but with no economy of scale. Let me know how that works out.
A slightly less violent form has worked out for the past 1600 years: Catholic contemplative communities. Many are self-sufficient now, especially since the teachings on environmentalism came along.
I watched my hometown economy go down in flames, when the "Spotted Owl" scandal happened, I don't want to see that here.
Unfortuneately it already happened. I used to live in a town that had logging trucks roll through every day- but the sawmill was based on old-growth sized trees (most were really 80 year old 2nd growth), and spotted owls killed it.
I think you meant to say that "Savings and investment are things that everyone except the very poor can afford to do." Hell, even freakin Walmart has a 401K plan.
401k plans are not investment. 401k plans are the federal government using a tax loophole to funnel money from the poor into brokerage acounts, at which point it gets eaten up between "stock market downturns" and "brokerage fees", with the total zeroing out every 5-10 years. REAL investing doesn't use the con game known as a stock market; instead you give the money to a venture capitalist who invests it in small businesses and inventors who haven't gone public yet. For this, you get pre-market stock. You make your real money when such businesses go public, and you sell at a rather high rate on IPO day to the pyramid scheme that is the stock market, thus getting somebody else to take all the real risk when the business goes bankrupt a few years later from the short-sighted behavior that is encouraged by going public.
Well, I actually perfer a form of income tax based on multiples of the minimum wage / 10 (with all money below the bracket being tax free- you're only taxed on additional income. Which gives you ten brackets between the poorest and the richest Americans out there. More than enough to preserve motivation, but a low enough maximum wage to minimize the hyperinflationary aspects of allowing people to be excessively rich due to inflation, savings, or investment. At minimum wage, all money you earn between minimum wage and twice minimum wage would be taxed at 10%. At 2mw, all money you earn between 2mw and 3mw is taxed at 20%. Here's the real table:
:-) That's enough money to live a life of luxury, but not enough to control the lives of your fellow citizens (as it should be). Hmm- I wonder what my take home vs taxes would be at 51,000 and a family of three? ooops. I guess I'm too poor to pay taxes under this plan- in fact I'm willing to bet most people would be...for a household of three, my taxes would start at $64,800. If you want to be a billionaire- you still can. Just get yourself a household full of freeloaders- and you'll probably be able to afford to make your house a small city.
Range Tax Free Income Taxable rate for taxable income
1mw-2mw 1mw 10%
2mw-3mw 2mw 20%
3mw-4mw 3mw 30%
4mw-5mw 4mw 40%
5mw-6mw 5mw 50%
6mw-7mw 6mw 60%
7mw-8mw 7mw 70%
8mw-9mw 8mw 80%
9mw-10mw 9mw 90%
10mw+ 10mw 100%
I also believe that counties should collect this tax- states should collect taxes from the counties at the same rates, but mw*population. States should owe the feds mw*population rates as well. With a current federal minimum wage rate of $7.50/hr, this means that the first $21,600 you earn per person in your household is tax free (kids included). For a family of two, this means $43,200 is your household minimum wage, etc. This also means that the top single wage is $216,000; the top for married filing jointly is $432,000. Add another minimum wage modifier at your current bracket for each dependants for your household (based on the assumption that you deserve to have as many dependants as you can afford to take care of). If you're single and can't feel rich enough to save and invest at a salary of $216,000 a year, you either need to lobby to change the minimum wage (thus automatically changing the maximum) or seriously consider changing your lifestyle.
And we come to why no one should ever take financial advice from someone titled "Marxist Hacker 42". I could save and invest and I'm certainly NOT rich. I just had the discipline to do it, instead of playing the "blame game".
I suppose this could be true- but I find living in a cardboard box usually means that employment soon ends. If you were truly *not rich* then you'd be spending all of your money on food, clothing, shelter, water, heat, electricity, and enough tools of the trade to get hired. By definition. If you're earning enough to save and invest, then you're doing better than 45% of American citizens.
NINE times we have voted on a sales tax. 9 times it has been voted out... and they STILL keep proposing it.. When will the wastrels we call Gu'bmint figure it out? WE know your game and we want NO PART OF IT HERE!
I think they're hoping for the day that foreigners and Californicators outnumber 'Gonies like you and me.
I am also in Oregon and Mister, I don't care if your oposition to the sales tax is due to alien communications or your pet ferret thinks its a bad idea as long as you oposes it!
Six more like you and I'll have hit my limit on friends and defriended all my freaks.
If the rich consume more resources, presumably they're paying for such consumption, and so they pay a consumption tax proportionally.
Doesn't work that way because they hide behind fake persons called Corporations, and Corporations don't have to pay local taxes. Likewise, the corporations can afford to save, unlike regular people.
There are at least a few good reasons to have a progressive income tax instead of a consumption tax, but you have not offered a single one.
Ok, here's one: taxes as a percentage of income- the guy living on the street can't afford to avoid sales tax, but the billionaire living in the mansion only spends 1/100th of what he earns. With corporations being exempt from sales taxes- that leaves more money for savings and spending on out-of-state lobbyists to twist other laws towards corporate control. At this point, it's not even worth voting anymore- the candidates are always chosen by corporate lobbyists ahead of time, and they don't really care who wins, because they've paid off all viable sides already.
Me too- life's just easier when you can find the guy who cheated you, in either government or business, and punch him in the nose if you need to. You must have grown up rural Oregon like I did- few of the Yorkies or Californicators who have moved into the valley in the past 15 years would agree with us.
In Corporatism, the only class that is political is the class that is rich enough to hire lobbyists. Only they have any real power, voting is just a show for the masses between two people picked by the lobbyists.
I HACK Marx, I'm not a communist. Marx wasn't a communist either, strickly speaking. Das Capital and the Manifesto are the same document written from different perspectives. Right now I'm more of a distributist- I prefer small economic communites (of no more than 6000 people at the most, preferably more like 500) that are isolationist and defend their borders against foreign imports with large amounts of force.
How so? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Sales tax is the great equalizer. The more you spend, the more you pay in tax. Sales tax also encourages people to save and invest. I think you have your logic backwards.
Savings and investment are things only the rich can afford to do- a tax shelter in a state that lives on sales tax would be getting Howard Hughes Syndrome- living very poor off of your investments. Likewise, in a state like mine that is already cash poor, you don't WANT people to save. You want them to buy stuff and provide money that supports jobs for other people in your state.
And an income tax isn't? With all of the loopholes, our 'progressive' income tax is actually quite regressive for all but the wealthiest of individuals. FairTax(sm)
Federal yes- Oregon takes great pains to make sure our income tax is extremely progressive. It's the main complaint of business people in this state.
Sales tax is just another way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It is always a scam based on a will for the rich to avoid any responsibility for their greater consumption of natural resources that they would otherwise be paying for. I recommend always avoiding it whenever possible.
The fact is that the US military are totally incompetent to win the kind of war we are in.
That's for sure- and the key is competing values. We're not moral enough to leave other countries to their own isolationism- and we're too moral to commit genocide against an enemy that would quickly commit genocide against us if they had the chance. One either has to realize that there can be no morality in total war- or that the only real morality in international relations is letting other cultures evolve on their own without our "help".
Nope, you've still havn't figured it out. Asking people to perform a double pass n-item bubble sort tells me much less than asking people to average an array of integers. It might be a tougher from a computer science perspective, but its also a much more closed problem that tells me less about the candidate.
Got news for you- averaging an array of integers only has 3 potential solutions also. Double pass n-item bubble sort is less of a closed problem- because it takes more lines of code and can be solved (differently) by all 8 major programming methods (four of which don't even have the concept of "arrays"). So unless you're limiting your languages you're interested in to the main 4 (Basic, C, Pascal and Java), and skipping the 5th most popular language, you've failed.
On the contrary, its not an obviously closed problem at all - its a very open ended problem, and incidently much more openended than your double pass n-item bubble sort.
It's 6 lines of code. The same six lines will always be needed regardless of what array-based language you're programming in. NO creativity at all. Just set an accumulator, create a for loop, accumulate the values in the accumulator, divide by the total. I dare you to find a double-pass bubble sort that uses only 6 lines of code, EVEN IN ASSEMBLY.
The people that approach that question like it was a "closed problem" are precisely the sorts of people that I've found to not work out, and thus I do not hire. The people that I hire are the ones that look at that problem and attempt to ask questions about the environment. For example, they might ask if this was a graphics app, or a financial app. In a graphics app, you would use floating point, and in a financial app, you couldn't do that. I'm not looking for a specific checklist of insights, just good insights. And I've found that the more creative answers they come up with for that problem, the better they do in the workplace.
You can tell all of that from the data type of the array in question. If you're looking to asking about data type as being an "insight" then you're not very "insightful".
As for anybody with an 105+ IQ being able to handle open ended problems, I'm sorry to say that my experience has been very different. You're free to disagree with me, but that doesn't change my personal experiences.
You don't even seem to know the meaning of the words you are using, so your personal experiences seem to be null and void to me. You don't know the FIRST thing about computer programming, you're just making up exercises to run people through some stupid test that doesn't even test what you think it does.
So you're basically saying that my responsibility as an employer is to provide people with jobs? If I'm going to do that, I may as well pay people to dig ditches in the ground and fill them back in again. Or pay people to pick their noses.
That's the entire reason society grants you tax inititives to run your busines. If you don't like it, then you shouldn't be running anything in a corporation.
So basically, you just gave up at 2003 and decided that for the next four years, that "resumes don't do any good?". Seriously Mr. Van Winkle, you need to wake up!
I see no evidence that private industry has changed it's tune to give out long term contracts with 2-3 year unemployment protection, do you? Snake oil salesmen- The last 7 years have proven to me that private industry cannot be trusted with my ability to earn a living.
I don't know anything about Portland, but on the East Coast you would do fine. Your resume is fine, and here the only way that you would not have a job is if you go into a phone screen or an interview and act like an idiot (which sadly is very common).
If industry wants my skills, there is a price to pay. Thar price is loyalty. I see no evidence that private industry is willing to pay that price- so I'm going with the stability of civil service instead.
There is no doubt about it, that 2003 was a shitty year. But I can speak personally as somebody that was at both sides of the fence (as a job seeker and as someone with input in the hiring process), both in 2004 and 2006. In 2004, posting a tech job position online resulted in you getting innundated by resumes, and companies would have to cull the avalanche of resumes because noone had time to phone screen, much less interview everybody.
2003, 2002, 2001. 2003 was when I gave up, 2004 didn't seem any better, and when the economy did turn around, the CxO's got all the money, not the people who actually created anything. I am not going to join that stupidity again- I no longer trust anybody.
In 2006, I was trying to fill a position and expected the same avalanche of resumes; it didn't come, and the people that we interviewed and liked got better jobs elsewhere. At the same time I got frustrated by my job and got inspired to jump ship. I posted my resume online and got innundated - by recruiters. And I got a job that was more satisfying and my pay jumped up.
That's a part of the problem, and the reason you got frustrated- nobody has any loyalty anymore. Why should anybody work for a company that is just going to toss them out without a dime in 2 years anyway?
Seriously dude, I know you've given up, and that thats what your problem is. Like I said, I don't know much about Portland, but judging from your Slashdot posting history, if you spend half of the effort into looking for a job as you spend on Slashdot complaining about the job market, you would have a job. And a good one at that.
I've got a pretty reasonable job right now- I did it the old fashioned way. 4 contracts then a civil service exam then trial service. I've got a job now where the union and the legislature sets my salary- my boss has nothing to say about it. I've got a job where I actually get bonuses for SOLVING PROBLEMS. And if the Department of Transportation ever goes downhill, then the economy will be the least of our worries; unlike Private Industry that yanks projects if they don't turn a profit in 4 months, or lays people off every 2 years just because some CxO wants a $.10 increase in his stock option prices. I'm never going to open myself up to that crap again- and neither should anybody else.
If your first instinct is to shout "BushCo! War criminal! 9/11 was an inside job!", don't.
Not a chance because I don't believe that after reading the 9th Sura of the Koran (should be required reading for ALL Americans in high school at this point, I think). But that doesn't make him an adequate or competant commander in chief either.
Wait, do we hate Bush because he's spending too much money on the war, or because he didn't finance it enough to let the troops do their job? I'm so confused!
If one has a vice president who accepts bribes, one can do both at the same time. And just where did that missing $8 BILLION go?
well, we (Canada) are working on afganistan, though no one seems to want to help us with it. not meaning the US, as they have their hands full with iraq.
Actually, a relative by marriage, an Oregon National Guard member, was killed there at a Taliban checkpoint in September, so yes, the US still has a few under-equiped troops there.
if you don't buy that it is effective, consider that the enemy, armed with AK-47s, RPGs, high explosives, and dedication to their cause, are holding their own against what is likely the most expensive and advanced miltary in the world.
It makes me wonder if they'd continue to hold their own against ICBMs sent from half a world away and turning 100 square kilometers of desert to glass in a single strike.
I disagree with that cartoon. What we have failed to realize is that the Iraqi Shite wearing an American-paid-for uniform IS ALSO THE ENEMY. As is the Kurd, the Turk, the "Moderate Sunni", as is the sleeper mole in the Iraqi government. My recommendation? Shoot everyone who has a gun or an explosive, then hit the gun or explosive with a Class 6 Laser to melt it into slag. Do this over and over until you've completely cleared all weaponry from the country.
Either that or just pull out and nuke them all as hopeless causes.
Something tells me that if we drafted the appropriate industries to build a *REAL* military industrial complex, and punished profiteering adequately in the first place, our troops could have had this technology (instead of a stupid deck of playing cards) in 2002, instead of waiting until 2007 for it to be delivered. But since Bush doesn't want to impact the profitability of this war, we have to wait for a significantly patriotic David to identify who the enemy is. It's exactly this lack of vision that has turned Afghanistan back into a Taliban-controlled country and destroyed our success in Iraq.