Restraining people from doing bad things is called policing. Restraining corporations from doing bad things is called regulating.
How'd we get this schism in thinking that says policing is good but regulating is bad? Solely by having different terminology? If regulation is bad, then we ought to shut down all our police departments. Save a bundle of money. Let people police themselves. Give everyone weapon permits.
I wonder how many recruits we've generated by killing innocents with our bombs and drones.
Probably not nearly as many recruits as our corporate citizens have generated with their actions, direct or proxy. It is they who often persuade our government to actively maintain "stability", prop up all these illiberal leaders in corrupt deals that are "good" for business-- the business of oil and the military industrial complex. Obama's abandonment of Mubarak was a welcome change. No more "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard!"
Yes, my impression of Bose is mediocre sound with high end price. It works, but it sure isn't the awesomeness their advertising makes it out to be.
I find putting bass speakers on a hard surface really helps. Had the subwoofer of a cheap 5.1 system (not Bose) on a carpeted floor, and all I did was slide some scrap plywood (about 3x4 ft) under it. Did wonders for clarity and sound projection. Can feel the board vibrating when you rest a hand on it. Haven't stumbled over an easy way to improve the higher ranges.
Would you consider a talented C/C++ programmer who has zero experience with.NET? If the answer is "no", then I don't think you're trying hard enough. The DBA position might be a little riskier to fill with a novice-- depends how damaging it would be to leak or lose information. But if it's not sensitive and you have competent system admins, that info should be backed up, shouldn't it? So it would be okay to take a chance on a novice for that too. And are you offering market rates? And what of the working conditions? Are you a sweatshop? Do you routinely do death marches?
For years, been hearing this complaint that there aren't enough STEM workers. And it has never looked like a genuine complaint. It's been a manufactured excuse to parade in front of Congress to ask for more H1Bs. Or it's been the pretext to cover up nepotism or favoritism. So far as I've seen and heard, excepting the 1990s, the pay for these positions has not exceeded inflation. Therefore by the basic economic principle known as "supply and demand", there can't be a shortage of STEM workers.
This article raises difficult questions. Is the US anti-science? More anti-science than other nations? Is a career in science lousy?
On the individual level, the US is not exactly anti-science. Most citizens do respect science, openly and freely. But there is a very noisy minority who are noisy because they are in the minority, and they know it. There are the religious crazies of course. There are jealous trolls everywhere who will hate you just for having a PhD. They try to set traps for you, try to cut you down to their level. They always have stories about PhDs who were stupid. A bad position is one that is subordinate to such a person. And yet they do respect science, or at the least see that most others do, as they make clear in the very act of scorning it. They wouldn't bother sneering about "academics" and "ivory towers" otherwise. There are the distrustful, micromanaging sorts who drive themselves and "their" scientists crazy trying to figure out whether they are doing honest work, or not, trying to treat scientific endeavor as if it is an assembly line, trying to measure productivity. There are incompetents who managed to cheat their way to an advanced degree, and cutthroat scramblers for what seems to be a scarce resource, jobs. They will stab the real scientists at every opportunity, usually by stealing their work. There are never more than a few of them, or the places they infest would quickly collapse. But why should some people strive so hard to get a degree that they even stoop to cheating? Like the trolls, they must believe in science at some level.
On the national level, these are no longer the glory days of sending man to the Moon, of Cold War competition to prove who's the best. So science has been in a long slide of declining resources. Complicating this however is that America is also in relative decline. One of our political parties, the Republican, has swung dangerously close to denying that science has value. Yet they themselves do not really believe that, not yet, as they show when they strive to manipulate our scientific research, rather than destroy it. However, too much of their brand of "science" will destroy it. They've confused the public on some very important matters.
We have a lot of problems to solve, plenty of challenges to engage our ingenuity. We need science. Need it badly. In a way, we should be grateful. AGW is perhaps the most urgent problem. I would prefer a more uplifting and less dire problem, like going to Mars. Who wouldn't? However, the various stresses we are mercilessly placing on the environment, such as AGW, pollution, ocean acidification and overfishing, deforestation and loss of biodiversity, are what we must face. At least we're not looking at World War. But the Republicans, rather than rising to these challenges, are afraid, and greedy, and in denial. Cowards. Fools. We are closing in on a world where everyone could be free, really free. Imagine if you didn't need to buy electricity from a power company, or gas from an oil company, or even food, because you could produce all you needed yourself, with inexpensive consumer appliances. What if you didn't have to have a job? Technological paradise! (I dislike that "singularity" term.) The Earth receives immense amounts of free energy from the Sun. There's also a good deal of heat within the planet, even after 4.5 billion years. We just aren't very good at harnessing it. But we could be. Or we could blow it, and watch our civilization crumble as the ice sheets melt and flood our coasts and cause crop failures and massive famines and millions of refugees on the march, and ultimately war and the use of nuclear weapons, which just might kill us all off. If we're lucky, a few of us will survive, and we will surely get a little smarter. If not, we will be an object lesson to whatever intelligent species arises after us, if any. These are the 2 extremes that could be.
Been there, done that. You think I live in the sticks or something? Been right through downtown Dallas and Fort Worth, on the interstates. Was able to stay with the traffic at 75 mph. Once even took it to Colorado and over several 10000 ft passes. As to passing people, where is the need? Near the speed limit works for me. You mostly do not pass, not in a car like that, but you can if you really need to. You'll get there as fast as the guy in the sports car, unless he greatly exceeds the speed limit. Only things you are going to pass is the occasional vehicle going 10 or 15 mph under the limit. And on a multilane highway, you have all the miles you need to pass that slow vehicle in the right lane.
You can't equate a Model T with a Metro! The Model T's top speed is somewhere around 30 mph. The 1.0L antique can do 75 mph, which is orders of magnitude better than the T. The Metro is to that car as that car is to a Model T. I don't know what the Metro's top speed is, but I expect it's around 100 mph. I've never needed to run it that fast. When you lump Metros and Model Ts together, you show you don't know what you're talking about. I mentioned the Model T to contrast it with the Metro. I'm telling you we can do just fine with smaller engines. I'll concede the antique 1.0L is a little weak to make a comfortable cruiser. But the Metro is absolutely fine. You ought to talk to someone from South America. There, any engine over 2.0L is considered big.
You spoke of downshifting. If your vehicle has a decently tall high gear, that's going to happen. If your vehicle doesn't need to downshift when you push it hard trying to pass someone while going uphill or some such, that's not a sign of power, but that your top gear is too low. You wouldn't drive a 5 speed on the highway in 4th gear all the time, would you? But that's effectively what your vehicle is forcing you to do if it has power to spare when in top gear.
Of course I mean an 18 wheeler, with a load. No problem at all to beat a truck like that. Tough to find 0 to 60 times for such vehicles (no one seems to care), but I did find one, and they reported a time of 65 seconds.
Sounds like pickups have become much better in snow than they used to be. What little I know of driving them in snow dates to the 70s. Still, don't think they're the ultimate in flexibility. They aren't so good in cities. Try to parallel park that thing in a tight spot, turn a very sharp corner, duck into an old parking garage with a low ceiling, or drive down a really narrow alley, and you'll be wishing you had a little hatchback.
I agree that we should let the market dictate gas prices. But we tend to subsidize it. The gas tax is supposed to pay for our roads, but somehow we are finding it necessary to resort to tolls. More than that though is all the external costs of oil. If the reason we deploy peackeeping forces in some of the places we have is because there's oil there, shouldn't gasoline bear at least some of this huge expense, rather than hiding behind the taxpayers?
Very nice on the math. But there are some costs you have not factored in. What can we expect of gas prices over the next decade? $3.50/gallon is probably on the low side. What of all the external costs, such as all the economic destruction to the Gulf of Mexico fishing and tourism industries, the likely chances and costs of future accidents, and the effects on our health from pollution both at the exhaust pipe and at the refinery? And as for your conclusion, maybe $5000 is pocket change for you, and not worth it. But it sure isn't pocket change for me!
Yes, I have driven many small cars. I owned a Ford Fiesta (1.3L), and 2 Chevy Metros (also 1.3L). My first Metro was totaled in a crash when a teen driver ran a red light in front of me. T-boned him at about 45 mph. I walked away from that crash with a few bruises, and a cracked rib from the airbag. Good thing for them I wasn't driving a monster SUV or one of them might have been seriously injured, or even killed. And if the car had failed crash tests, the outcome would have been much worse for me.
Horribly slow? You sometimes tow a boat, you say. But you don't know slow. You have no appreciation for how fast current cars are. I have driven a '59 car with a 1.0L engine. 0 to 60 mph takes 28 seconds. Now that's slow. But it is still faster than a truck. And still worlds more powerful than a Model A or a Model T. That car actually can keep up with the traffic, except the jackrabbits. Compared to that, a Metro is a powerhouse. We've occasionally passed cars on two lane roads with the 1.0L antique. I daresay you're spoiled, and you don't know how to do that. I'll tell you. You can't just hang on the slow car's bumper until a break comes and then open the throttle wide and roar past, not when the car needs 10 seconds to accelerate from 50 to 60. Unless you have a whole mile or more of clear road ahead, you won't have enough time. You have to back way off, give yourself room to build up speed. You time it so you come up on them when a chance to pass comes, perhaps just as a car in the opposing direction has gone by, or when you crest a hill. Then, if it is safe to pass, you pass. Otherwise, you hit the brakes and stay behind. Usually though, this is not a problem.
Maybe pickup trucks can plow snow, I don't know. But I doubt it. They suck for driving in snow, as you would know if you'd ever compared it to something that's good. I hear minivans are excellent for such conditions. As for towing boats with little cars, you don't, unless we're taking something like a jet ski. I think most states require that the towing vehicle outweigh the load. Towing your own boat around is not the only way to enjoy a bit of boating. (I presume your boat is purely for pleasure. You don't fish regularly, or transport cargo by water, or operate a riverboat casino, or conduct any other sort of business that requires a boat, do you?) You can rent boats, or leave yours at a marina. But why this hobby, this way? If not renting or using a marina, why not scale down? Two canoes or a rowboat that can be strapped to the roof of a car? Or an inflatable raft? Possibly have an outboard motor. But if you can and want to afford to own and operate a larger boat, and a trailer to tow it on, with a vehicle that can tow that kind of load, surely a few more dollars for gas is no problem? I don't see why the world should go out of its way to make pleasure boating more affordable. We are NOT going to keep gas artificially low for that.
I didn't say anything about forcing anyone to switch. I much prefer to scrap the CAFE regulations, and let high gas prices do the job. If gas is expensive enough, people will respond, as we saw in 2008 when sales went way down for every manufacturer but Honda, and SUVs piled up in used car lots. No need for clumsy regulations. Since a sane gas tax is politically impossible, thanks mostly to Big Oil-- and by sane, I mean a percentage, not a fixed amount-- we'll just have to wait. Peak oil, you know.
Neither ethanol nor hybrids are the fuel economy bonanza they've been hyped to be. An electric motor is 10x better than a combustion engine. But a gas tank is 20x better than a battery pack. I'll be a lot more interested in electric cars when batteries can be recharged in 5 or perhaps 10 minutes, and last at least 10 years. And don't weigh 5 times as much as a full tank of gas.
But fuel economy is still well worth doing. Would be a considerable help if we didn't distract ourselves with flashy, dubious whiz bang tech, and paid more attention to some low hanging fruit we've been ignoring. For instance, the aerodynamics of the average car can still be significantly improved. We've recessed the door handles. But we haven't gotten serious about smoothing the underside or the engine compartment. Some of the things done to cars increase the cost and make the aerodynamics worse at the same time. One such is the opening for the front grill. Tends to be far too large. Why? Purely cosmetic reasons. It's just stupid to go to all the trouble of building a hybrid, and then ignore such simple improvements. Then there are the roads. Traffic lights are brainless, and frequently make drivers wait for nothing.
Don't let a few bad ideas fool you into thinking all ideas for the environment are bad.
I wish I could get some of those wonderful European gas sippers in the US. I've looked into importing one, or buying in Mexico and driving across the border, but the requirements are so onerous that it's not worth doing. Have to tighten up the pollution standards-- Europe's regulations on diesel emissions in particular are less stringent. Then have to strengthen the B pillar and do a few other safety improvements. That adds weight to the car, which reduces fuel economy. When manufacturers do it, they mess it up even more. They remove all but the biggest engine and the shortest gear ratio so that the car can do the jackrabbit start they think Americans must have. By the time they're done modifying a car for the US market, they've knocked 1/3 off its fuel economy.
Without collections agencies the only reason that anybody would ever pay their bills would be because it was the ethical thing to do. Consequently the cost of just about anything would likely sky rocket.
Wow, what a negative view of humanity. If that were really true, one of the few good things that would be is that the entertainment industry would have long since lost their war on piracy. Most people deal fairly most of the time, out of more than enlightened self-interest. We have these highly developed feelings that serve us well in this. We really do care that artists and children not starve, that others treat us the way we treat them, and that there is law and order. The few who don't genuinely feel that way we call sociopaths.
The problem is the climate and the attitude. Too many desperate job seekers, too few jobs. Employers are simply too picky and arbitrary, putting on this big act as if even a rather ordinary job requires such specialized and honed skills that only 0.1% of job seekers can handle. Simply not true, but the numbers dictate this behavior. Some job seekers have responded with a shotgun approach of blasting out resumes by the hundreds, making things worse. This interview process is more like pledging a fraternity. I suspect Google weeds out a lot of good people. There are more good people out there than employers will admit. We all know industry complaints about not enough STEM workers is a self-serving lie, used as a reason for increasing H1Bs among others. I believe Google is above that sort of thing. I read that Microsoft is not, but what can be done about it? Anyway, data about compensation does not support this notion. If there really was a healthy demand for STEM workers, we'd see pay going up, and last I heard, we aren't seeing that.
The hiring decision could be made in 15 minutes, or less, with good information. But there isn't good information, or is there? Seems that most of the time needed in Google's interview process is for gathering information, not evaluating it. Another poster complained that most of the information the interviewer gets is biased, and therefore of little value. The interviewees will of course slant everything about themselves in their favor. And school systems are too easy to game. I'm sorry, but employers haven't deserved better. They play games too. Otherwise, we wouldn't have an EEOC as it wouldn't be necessary. There are the fake job offers that are only resume bait, or to be used for politics either internal or external, or long since filled. There's the cooked job posting that has so many requirements that only one resume fits, and that is the resume of a favorite, perhaps a relative of the boss. There are unfair rejections over things like whether a candidate has young children or is too old, this information being found out underhandedly and some other reason being given to dodge EEOC rules. More than once I've seen "advice" to remove graduation dates from resumes, so they can't so easily guess your age. It's hard to take employers seriously when they make basic mistakes in their job postings, such as demanding more years of experience in something than that something has existed. It's infuriating to have my time wasted by an employer who never had any intention of seriously considering me. They have all this money to waste putting on a show, but not to pay someone. Many of us have little choice but to suck it up, and scramble for even those jobs that can't possibly be real, just in case they might be. Then there are recruiters. No resume is good enough for them.
The idea that school systems are not rigorous enough is nonsense. Though I admit after seeing a little of a second or third rate school, an obscure place with a name like Backwoods State U. somewhere in rural Mississippi, which could be just a diploma mill, I wouldn't accept their graduates unquestioningly. At the public university I attended, which I think is rather typical, the admissions criteria disqualify more than half of high school graduates. If you get in, the odds are still against you. Public universities would prefer higher admittance standards. Instead they resort to "weed out" courses. The graduation rate of the College of Engineering was 20%. Right there, the university has already screened out at least 90% of the public. More like 95%, if you consider that not everyone graduates from high school. And if that's not good enough, there's graduate school. By the time we top out at the PhD level, we're down to, what, less than 1% of the population? I know, exclusivity in itself is not a good measure, but that is only a consequence of the education, which despite all the doubt to the contrary, is really pretty good. But employers carry on as if that doesn't m
That's a long interview, and a number of inferences can be made just from that. First, it is still an employer's market, or candidates might not put up with that, at least, not without pay. "... lean towards rejection", yes indeed! Second, I get just a little tired of claims of exceptionalism. This says, not in words but in this action, that Google thinks themselves very special indeed, whatever anyone may say about their efforts to eschew arrogance. It doesn't help that they are the current darlings of the tech biz, and that there are thousands of job seekers beating on their doors, and would be even if the economy was great. Third, it's very expensive to conduct such long interviews. As much as companies try to externalize costs, this shows that when it come to hiring decisions, Google at least has utterly failed at that. I have suggested before that a college degree (of some level from bachelors to PhD, depending on the job), which should be checkable in about 2 seconds, ought to be enough. It's rather sad how many people heap scorn on that notion. People violently reject the idea that colleges are any good at preparing graduates for the real world, despite this being one of the primary goals of education. Easy to ride the popular conception that schools are doing a bad job. So Google, and most other employers, want more, more, more, and test everyone all over again, despite the years and ways schools have put into it. If a degree isn't enough of an indication of competence, intelligence and perseverance, what's wrong with at least considering something like the results from appropriate subject tests of the GRE? This is usually explained away with the one word assertion that schools are "academic", with heaps of perjorative meaning loaded in. Fourth, is it so hard to undo a mistaken hiring decision? Isn't the US supposed to be famously flexible and mobile, particularly compared to Europe? Work is "at will"? Why are hiring decisions so heavy and critical? Cost again? Something like health benefits is another area of cost externalization employers have not seized on. Far from that. Most have preferred using health care as a weapon, something to hold over employees' heads.
You say Google is data driven? Then why not use the available data about a candidate's past? Yet, "Google interviewers pay no attention to what you have done in the past" But there are other ways. Why not go to a "probationary" period, or more of an internship?
From what I've heard, I'm really not impressed with Google's interview process. "Is the system perfect? Clearly not" Yeah, clearly. Get that interview process down to 15 minutes, without significantly increasing the number of bad hires, then I'll be impressed.
Ugh. Think you might also like the old British coinage, with farthings, shillings, florins, pence, and other oddball units? How about the Chinese alphabet with some 40k characters? What's your favorite programming language? Perl?
How about mixed measures? I have seen drink labels that used units of "mg/8 ounces"!
Life is complicated enough as is. Some people like complexity, for purposes of obfuscation. I don't. We all pay for needless complexity.
We are certainly in the group of casual watchers-- when we watch anything at all. Make it hard, and we find something else to do. We have only 1 TV in the house.
In 1982, we bought a 13" TV for $200. Was a bargain price at the time. We kept that TV until 1998, though we had planned to replace it sooner. Because we heard HDTV was coming in the early 90s, we decided to wait for that. And we waited, and waited, until finally the old TV began to fail. Since we don't follow the prices of TVs, was a pleasant surprise to see how much bigger and inexpensive TVs had gotten over the years. And how the twist knobs had been replaced with push buttons, and how remote control had become a standard feature. Bought a 19" for $150. But that 19" TV was lacking in connections-- only input was for an antenna. So a few years later we upgraded to a 27" model for $175, with component video, S-video, composite video, and antenna connections. The DVD player we got at that time drove the decision to upgrade the TV.
Then came the switch to digital signals. And flat screens. We could have gotten one of those adapters to receive the new signals, but didn't think that was worthwhile. We tossed the 27" tube for a 37" LCD, 1080p, with all the inputs the old TV had, plus HDMI. And of course the ability to receive the digital broadcast signals. We even added a cheap 5.1 surround sound system. But no Blu Ray, and no plans to get that, though we have all the other ingredients. Our movie collection is not much, perhaps 20 titles on DVD. Not looking to expand that either.
We were also burned by the entire Betamax/VHS contest. We bought Betamax. Since then, we've not been in a hurry to dive into any new entertainment tech. Both HD-DVD and Blu Ray can rot as far as I'm concerned. The real contest is between the Netflix model, and the home entertainment server with massive hard drive capacity. As for general data storage, I'll stick with multiple hard drives. It's inconvenient enough getting data off a DVD, why in the world would I want to burn data back onto one? My other main need is primarily boot media, and I'd much, much rather use a flash drive than a scummy old, scratch and trouble prone CD or DVD-RW.
Perhaps in the short term. But in the long term, such behaviour almost always turns out to have been foolish. History is littered with mighty empires that quickly collapsed. The Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, the Aztec Empire... it's a long list. They did not have and never gained, barely even tried to gain, the good will of the peoples that they conquered. Instead they tended to think of themselves as superior, and viewed their subjects with contempt. "White Man's Burden". (Does this sound at all like our top business people? I do believe it does. The Donald is a prime example of this sort of unwarranted arrogance. Now he thinks he ought to be President of the US!) But always, their ability to get their way by force faltered, and they fell. The Assyrian Empire was an especially hated one that shows this. A student of history might well conclude that's just the natural order of things, that empires come and always go, and soon America's ascendancy will be over and we will be added to the pile of failed empires. Maybe so if we let fools run things.
Sounds like Righthaven is very, very wrong. So wrong that they might have to pay the defendents' legal costs. From my limited understanding of the legal system, only exceptionally unwarranted cases, cases with no legitimate basis that were only brought to scare, harrass, and damage other parties, are subject to such sanctions. Except they don't have the assets to pay those costs. Strikes me as a sneaky way to shield the real prosecutors from such an outcome. Set up a shell company to do the dirty work and to fold like a house of cards if it backfires. But it looks like that's not going to work. The judge is not going to be fooled by this cute corporate trickery to evade responsiblity, and will rope the real prosecutors into the cases.
If the outcome is that the newspapers have to pay for the damage their sock puppet corporation caused, will that be enough to deter others from ever again trying such a heinous scheme? I doubt it. For instance, MS wasn't punished for the mess SCO made. These newspapers will conclude that Righthaven wasn't circumspect enough, and may well try again with another organization that is less obviously their sock puppet, same as SCO was a real separate party that began with no MS affiliation or support.
And I had one case where such a clause could have been a problem. I had been brought in on a 1099, not salary, yet was still asked to sign a non-compete. It didn't seem fair to me to be asked not to compete for a longer term than I was actually employed, but that's what they demanded. Then, my employer's customer wanted to retain me alone for additional work after their contract with my employer had ended on a less than satisfactory note. My employer had promised far too much, as the customer tried to tell them all along, and could not deliver. When that contract ended, my employer wanted to keep me for another position, but I felt their prospects were at best uncertain, given the poor decision making that went into entering into such a bad contract (bad for my employer, good for their customer of course), and some other things I had heard. They were a little too desperate for the business from that customer. Sure enough, they folded a few years later. In the meantime, they were in no position to tell me I could not go work directly for their former customer, right away, if I wanted. When I told the customer of the non-compete clause, they made short work of that difficulty. They even threatened my employer (at that point, already former employer) so that I could! It was something like that they would sue for breach of the original contract if I was prevented from working directly for them. When told of the customer's offer to me, my previous employer kicked around notions of keeping me, so they could enter into a new contract with the customer, getting a piece of this new action, to make up a little for how badly burned they were in the earlier contract. Wasn't going to happen that way-- the customer wanted nothing more to do with them.
There are many ways to fight unjust laws. A PAC is just one way, and has a number of problems. We shouldn't have to do anything like that. Pay the representatives to do the right thing? Bribe them, when we can simply vote them out? I really don't like the thought of playing by the rules of a rigged game, or inadvertently helping to perpetuate a corruption of our system. No. The copyright cartels are the rebels and the criminals, not us. We should not have to defend ourselves in court or Congress, for anything. It is they who should be on trial, for having pushed copyright to ludicrous extremes, for winning million dollar judgements against ordinary citizens who have done nothing to deserve that, for trying to scuttle the best technological and societal advances of the past century, and trying to stifle all future progress. They would kill the Internet itself if they could, despite the immense damage this would cause. They are on trial in the highest court of all, the court of public opinion. And they're losing. Vote Pirate Party! Congress can come to us, and beg for re-election. Congress is supposed to serve the public, not the other way around.
There are further, and quite massive differences. Speed limits are a good idea, and, barring things like speed traps, are mostly fair. They make our roads safer. We have studies showing that there are fewer fatalities when speeds are lower. Saves gas too, which was the original intent of the national 55 mph speed limit.
Copyrights on the other hand, are legal fantasies, largely unenforceable on individuals. They are blatantly unfair. They cause more harm than good. What of all the works that were removed from the public domain without any compensation whatsoever to the public, each time copyright terms were extended? Robbery! Many of us understand this about copyrights, and no cheesy "educational" film is going to persuade us otherwise. I'm sure Google understands these films are nothing more than bad jokes at best, offensive to our intelligence and common sense. The propaganda is so badly done it should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent kids. Couldn't be any better than Capt. Copyright! It's little better than forcing rape victims to watch films implying it is all their fault because they didn't dress appropriately. But if it serves to appease the idiotic copyright extremists who might well be the only people on the planet who actually believe these films will win others over, while backfiring by helping to persuade more people that copyright laws are crazy, Google likes that. And so should we.
Seems Dilbert and The Office are the most accurate description of how American business really works. Fortunately for us, there are still many workplaces that aren't dysfunctional, or which have engineers who manage to accomplish things in spite of bad management. Education has its problems, but there, I never saw anything as bad as the problems at the work place. I've wondered if it's just me, perhaps I've been unlucky, or haven't been careful enough about accepting certain job offers and then finding out I shouldn't have. I've asked everyone I could what their work experiences have been like, and most have said more than half their job experiences were dysfunctional. Whatever laments we have over the lack of quality of STEM education, management education has got to be much worse. What kind of fool management shoves their best people into closets, out of personal and totally unjustified dislike or fear, perhaps only for being too smart? Tries to treat their employees as slaves, with heavy micromanagement and surveillance, believing people are naturally lazy slackers and must be forced to work? Thinks putting up a front of competence is the most important thing to do, denying there are problems, rather than actually being competent? Lacks the imagination to envision what is really important, and grasp what is a total waste of everyone's time? Gotta love being told your thoughts and ideas are not wanted and are all wrong anyway, then ordered to spend weeks or months on a worthless project only to have it cancelled... and then they try to blame you for it! Employment seems like it's Revenge of the Incompetent.
And why is it like this? One reason is the pressure. We're straining to improve our already very fat standard of living on a static base. This is a recipe for angst. Another is that the meritocracy seemingly stops at the management level. Our leadership is crap. Our corporations are positively medieval in their governance. As if it isn't hard enough to perform to the level necessary to justify the relatively hefty compensation our engineers earn, we have incompetent, thieving management making life harder while upping the requirements because their far larger compensation packages and blunders must be paid for somehow.
The problem is with that word "computer". Think of it as Computation Science, or Computing Science, or Algorithm Science. That's the core of CS. It's such a fundamental tool, that maybe it ought to be called simply Computation, same as Math is just Math and not Mathematical Science or some such.
Classic mathematics mostly avoids algorithms. They do the simple stuff like grade school multiplication and greatest common denominator, but not much more. Newton's method and Simpson's Rule is about their limit. In Calculus, they teach all sorts of techniques, from rote memorization of the differentials of particular functions such as sine, to limits and transforms. But straight mathematicians tend to shy away from the numeric methods. They use them, but they don't program them. Fire up the math software for that. By hand on a test, you can't very well bang out 100 iterations of the Jacobi method, or do piecewise interpolation with cubic splines in order to make a nice, smooth, easily handled function from an arbitrary set of dozens of points. Something like Matrix Chain Multiplication is never seen in pure math.
EE also dodges issues with algorithms. They're quite happy to apply calculus to analog circuitry, but making programs to use on digital logic is not their thing.
It was this recognition that algorithms do indeed have properties, characteristics, and most of all powers that cannot be adequately handled with pure math, that is, with classical formulae, that lead to CS being recognized as a discipline of its own.
Algorithms are core, but hardly all of CS. Language is not science, you say? You could not be more wrong. Never looked into Automata Theory, have you? And you take a pot shot at databases too? Lot of specialized research, scientific research, in there.
The usual argument is that sales taxes are regressive.
Better question: what's the replacement for sales taxes? Raise income tax rates? At least sales taxes are relatively simple. Not as simple as they ought to be, with every local jurisdiction doing their own thing, but simpler than the mess lawmakers like to make of income tax. If we could keep it simple, have just one rate nationwide, and refrain from constantly tinkering with it and changing it every year, and toss in some kind of refund for low income poeple, so it isn't so regressive, then sales tax could be fair and good.
Texas doesn't have an income tax, and I like it that way. No damned state version of the IRS ready to assume the worst if they think there's an error. I still have to deal with federal income tax. In many ways, the money is not the biggest worry, it's the responsibility, the burden. They demand you get it right, or you could be in big, BIG trouble. Tax is forever, there is no statute of limitations. Nice to know that in your retirement you could get roasted for some tax mistake that happened 50 years ago. The IRS is infamous for the harshness of their enforcement. We hear horror stories of the IRS going nuts, assuming someone is a tax cheat and shutting down their life. This is why I never do itemized deductions. I don't have a house payment, and if all I'm saving is a few hundred dollars at best, it's so not worth it. May cost me more, but standard deduction reduces the complexity and the risk.
Maybe nuclear power plants can be safe. Maybe. But once again, we've seen that they won't be.
They knew, all the way back in 1972, that the design used at Fukushima was not safe. But they tried to cover it up, tried to deny it. When disaster struck, they kept right on trying to tell the world it wasn't that serious. Some have accused the media of exaggerating the problems. TEPCO has done the opposite, downplaying, excusing, and belittling the problems. We've seen a worrysome pattern of corruption and deceit in their operation, of inspection fails that were changed to passes, or testing that was never done, and maintenance neglected. And twisting of standards and evaluation procedures, and willful blindness to a number of disaster scenarios, to make it all sound safer. For instance, a large building in Oklahoma City was nearly destroyed by just one bomb, put together by just one person with only a little help. What if a nuclear power plant had been bombed? Then there's the matter of guarding against theft of the fuel, and the waste. And of persuading other states, particularly those who might be tempted to make nuclear weapons, not to use nuclear power.
We shouldn't be complacent about alternatives. I don't think we can just wait, because we'll never get around to putting alternatives in place if we keep on operating these nuclear plants. We've got to push ourselves. I agree we do not want to shut them all down, right now, all at once. But we should get moving.
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We'll warm up the atmosphere so much that the expansion from the heat will thicken it enough to quickly bring down everything in Low Earth Orbit.
Restraining people from doing bad things is called policing. Restraining corporations from doing bad things is called regulating.
How'd we get this schism in thinking that says policing is good but regulating is bad? Solely by having different terminology? If regulation is bad, then we ought to shut down all our police departments. Save a bundle of money. Let people police themselves. Give everyone weapon permits.
I wonder how many recruits we've generated by killing innocents with our bombs and drones.
Probably not nearly as many recruits as our corporate citizens have generated with their actions, direct or proxy. It is they who often persuade our government to actively maintain "stability", prop up all these illiberal leaders in corrupt deals that are "good" for business-- the business of oil and the military industrial complex. Obama's abandonment of Mubarak was a welcome change. No more "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard!"
Yes, my impression of Bose is mediocre sound with high end price. It works, but it sure isn't the awesomeness their advertising makes it out to be.
I find putting bass speakers on a hard surface really helps. Had the subwoofer of a cheap 5.1 system (not Bose) on a carpeted floor, and all I did was slide some scrap plywood (about 3x4 ft) under it. Did wonders for clarity and sound projection. Can feel the board vibrating when you rest a hand on it. Haven't stumbled over an easy way to improve the higher ranges.
Would you consider a talented C/C++ programmer who has zero experience with .NET? If the answer is "no", then I don't think you're trying hard enough. The DBA position might be a little riskier to fill with a novice-- depends how damaging it would be to leak or lose information. But if it's not sensitive and you have competent system admins, that info should be backed up, shouldn't it? So it would be okay to take a chance on a novice for that too. And are you offering market rates? And what of the working conditions? Are you a sweatshop? Do you routinely do death marches?
For years, been hearing this complaint that there aren't enough STEM workers. And it has never looked like a genuine complaint. It's been a manufactured excuse to parade in front of Congress to ask for more H1Bs. Or it's been the pretext to cover up nepotism or favoritism. So far as I've seen and heard, excepting the 1990s, the pay for these positions has not exceeded inflation. Therefore by the basic economic principle known as "supply and demand", there can't be a shortage of STEM workers.
This article raises difficult questions. Is the US anti-science? More anti-science than other nations? Is a career in science lousy?
On the individual level, the US is not exactly anti-science. Most citizens do respect science, openly and freely. But there is a very noisy minority who are noisy because they are in the minority, and they know it. There are the religious crazies of course. There are jealous trolls everywhere who will hate you just for having a PhD. They try to set traps for you, try to cut you down to their level. They always have stories about PhDs who were stupid. A bad position is one that is subordinate to such a person. And yet they do respect science, or at the least see that most others do, as they make clear in the very act of scorning it. They wouldn't bother sneering about "academics" and "ivory towers" otherwise. There are the distrustful, micromanaging sorts who drive themselves and "their" scientists crazy trying to figure out whether they are doing honest work, or not, trying to treat scientific endeavor as if it is an assembly line, trying to measure productivity. There are incompetents who managed to cheat their way to an advanced degree, and cutthroat scramblers for what seems to be a scarce resource, jobs. They will stab the real scientists at every opportunity, usually by stealing their work. There are never more than a few of them, or the places they infest would quickly collapse. But why should some people strive so hard to get a degree that they even stoop to cheating? Like the trolls, they must believe in science at some level.
On the national level, these are no longer the glory days of sending man to the Moon, of Cold War competition to prove who's the best. So science has been in a long slide of declining resources. Complicating this however is that America is also in relative decline. One of our political parties, the Republican, has swung dangerously close to denying that science has value. Yet they themselves do not really believe that, not yet, as they show when they strive to manipulate our scientific research, rather than destroy it. However, too much of their brand of "science" will destroy it. They've confused the public on some very important matters.
We have a lot of problems to solve, plenty of challenges to engage our ingenuity. We need science. Need it badly. In a way, we should be grateful. AGW is perhaps the most urgent problem. I would prefer a more uplifting and less dire problem, like going to Mars. Who wouldn't? However, the various stresses we are mercilessly placing on the environment, such as AGW, pollution, ocean acidification and overfishing, deforestation and loss of biodiversity, are what we must face. At least we're not looking at World War. But the Republicans, rather than rising to these challenges, are afraid, and greedy, and in denial. Cowards. Fools. We are closing in on a world where everyone could be free, really free. Imagine if you didn't need to buy electricity from a power company, or gas from an oil company, or even food, because you could produce all you needed yourself, with inexpensive consumer appliances. What if you didn't have to have a job? Technological paradise! (I dislike that "singularity" term.) The Earth receives immense amounts of free energy from the Sun. There's also a good deal of heat within the planet, even after 4.5 billion years. We just aren't very good at harnessing it. But we could be. Or we could blow it, and watch our civilization crumble as the ice sheets melt and flood our coasts and cause crop failures and massive famines and millions of refugees on the march, and ultimately war and the use of nuclear weapons, which just might kill us all off. If we're lucky, a few of us will survive, and we will surely get a little smarter. If not, we will be an object lesson to whatever intelligent species arises after us, if any. These are the 2 extremes that could be.
Take your little 1.0 into a big city
Been there, done that. You think I live in the sticks or something? Been right through downtown Dallas and Fort Worth, on the interstates. Was able to stay with the traffic at 75 mph. Once even took it to Colorado and over several 10000 ft passes. As to passing people, where is the need? Near the speed limit works for me. You mostly do not pass, not in a car like that, but you can if you really need to. You'll get there as fast as the guy in the sports car, unless he greatly exceeds the speed limit. Only things you are going to pass is the occasional vehicle going 10 or 15 mph under the limit. And on a multilane highway, you have all the miles you need to pass that slow vehicle in the right lane.
You can't equate a Model T with a Metro! The Model T's top speed is somewhere around 30 mph. The 1.0L antique can do 75 mph, which is orders of magnitude better than the T. The Metro is to that car as that car is to a Model T. I don't know what the Metro's top speed is, but I expect it's around 100 mph. I've never needed to run it that fast. When you lump Metros and Model Ts together, you show you don't know what you're talking about. I mentioned the Model T to contrast it with the Metro. I'm telling you we can do just fine with smaller engines. I'll concede the antique 1.0L is a little weak to make a comfortable cruiser. But the Metro is absolutely fine. You ought to talk to someone from South America. There, any engine over 2.0L is considered big.
You spoke of downshifting. If your vehicle has a decently tall high gear, that's going to happen. If your vehicle doesn't need to downshift when you push it hard trying to pass someone while going uphill or some such, that's not a sign of power, but that your top gear is too low. You wouldn't drive a 5 speed on the highway in 4th gear all the time, would you? But that's effectively what your vehicle is forcing you to do if it has power to spare when in top gear.
Of course I mean an 18 wheeler, with a load. No problem at all to beat a truck like that. Tough to find 0 to 60 times for such vehicles (no one seems to care), but I did find one, and they reported a time of 65 seconds.
Sounds like pickups have become much better in snow than they used to be. What little I know of driving them in snow dates to the 70s. Still, don't think they're the ultimate in flexibility. They aren't so good in cities. Try to parallel park that thing in a tight spot, turn a very sharp corner, duck into an old parking garage with a low ceiling, or drive down a really narrow alley, and you'll be wishing you had a little hatchback.
I agree that we should let the market dictate gas prices. But we tend to subsidize it. The gas tax is supposed to pay for our roads, but somehow we are finding it necessary to resort to tolls. More than that though is all the external costs of oil. If the reason we deploy peackeeping forces in some of the places we have is because there's oil there, shouldn't gasoline bear at least some of this huge expense, rather than hiding behind the taxpayers?
Very nice on the math. But there are some costs you have not factored in. What can we expect of gas prices over the next decade? $3.50/gallon is probably on the low side. What of all the external costs, such as all the economic destruction to the Gulf of Mexico fishing and tourism industries, the likely chances and costs of future accidents, and the effects on our health from pollution both at the exhaust pipe and at the refinery? And as for your conclusion, maybe $5000 is pocket change for you, and not worth it. But it sure isn't pocket change for me!
Yes, I have driven many small cars. I owned a Ford Fiesta (1.3L), and 2 Chevy Metros (also 1.3L). My first Metro was totaled in a crash when a teen driver ran a red light in front of me. T-boned him at about 45 mph. I walked away from that crash with a few bruises, and a cracked rib from the airbag. Good thing for them I wasn't driving a monster SUV or one of them might have been seriously injured, or even killed. And if the car had failed crash tests, the outcome would have been much worse for me.
Horribly slow? You sometimes tow a boat, you say. But you don't know slow. You have no appreciation for how fast current cars are. I have driven a '59 car with a 1.0L engine. 0 to 60 mph takes 28 seconds. Now that's slow. But it is still faster than a truck. And still worlds more powerful than a Model A or a Model T. That car actually can keep up with the traffic, except the jackrabbits. Compared to that, a Metro is a powerhouse. We've occasionally passed cars on two lane roads with the 1.0L antique. I daresay you're spoiled, and you don't know how to do that. I'll tell you. You can't just hang on the slow car's bumper until a break comes and then open the throttle wide and roar past, not when the car needs 10 seconds to accelerate from 50 to 60. Unless you have a whole mile or more of clear road ahead, you won't have enough time. You have to back way off, give yourself room to build up speed. You time it so you come up on them when a chance to pass comes, perhaps just as a car in the opposing direction has gone by, or when you crest a hill. Then, if it is safe to pass, you pass. Otherwise, you hit the brakes and stay behind. Usually though, this is not a problem.
Maybe pickup trucks can plow snow, I don't know. But I doubt it. They suck for driving in snow, as you would know if you'd ever compared it to something that's good. I hear minivans are excellent for such conditions. As for towing boats with little cars, you don't, unless we're taking something like a jet ski. I think most states require that the towing vehicle outweigh the load. Towing your own boat around is not the only way to enjoy a bit of boating. (I presume your boat is purely for pleasure. You don't fish regularly, or transport cargo by water, or operate a riverboat casino, or conduct any other sort of business that requires a boat, do you?) You can rent boats, or leave yours at a marina. But why this hobby, this way? If not renting or using a marina, why not scale down? Two canoes or a rowboat that can be strapped to the roof of a car? Or an inflatable raft? Possibly have an outboard motor. But if you can and want to afford to own and operate a larger boat, and a trailer to tow it on, with a vehicle that can tow that kind of load, surely a few more dollars for gas is no problem? I don't see why the world should go out of its way to make pleasure boating more affordable. We are NOT going to keep gas artificially low for that.
I didn't say anything about forcing anyone to switch. I much prefer to scrap the CAFE regulations, and let high gas prices do the job. If gas is expensive enough, people will respond, as we saw in 2008 when sales went way down for every manufacturer but Honda, and SUVs piled up in used car lots. No need for clumsy regulations. Since a sane gas tax is politically impossible, thanks mostly to Big Oil-- and by sane, I mean a percentage, not a fixed amount-- we'll just have to wait. Peak oil, you know.
Neither ethanol nor hybrids are the fuel economy bonanza they've been hyped to be. An electric motor is 10x better than a combustion engine. But a gas tank is 20x better than a battery pack. I'll be a lot more interested in electric cars when batteries can be recharged in 5 or perhaps 10 minutes, and last at least 10 years. And don't weigh 5 times as much as a full tank of gas.
But fuel economy is still well worth doing. Would be a considerable help if we didn't distract ourselves with flashy, dubious whiz bang tech, and paid more attention to some low hanging fruit we've been ignoring. For instance, the aerodynamics of the average car can still be significantly improved. We've recessed the door handles. But we haven't gotten serious about smoothing the underside or the engine compartment. Some of the things done to cars increase the cost and make the aerodynamics worse at the same time. One such is the opening for the front grill. Tends to be far too large. Why? Purely cosmetic reasons. It's just stupid to go to all the trouble of building a hybrid, and then ignore such simple improvements. Then there are the roads. Traffic lights are brainless, and frequently make drivers wait for nothing.
Don't let a few bad ideas fool you into thinking all ideas for the environment are bad.
I wish I could get some of those wonderful European gas sippers in the US. I've looked into importing one, or buying in Mexico and driving across the border, but the requirements are so onerous that it's not worth doing. Have to tighten up the pollution standards-- Europe's regulations on diesel emissions in particular are less stringent. Then have to strengthen the B pillar and do a few other safety improvements. That adds weight to the car, which reduces fuel economy. When manufacturers do it, they mess it up even more. They remove all but the biggest engine and the shortest gear ratio so that the car can do the jackrabbit start they think Americans must have. By the time they're done modifying a car for the US market, they've knocked 1/3 off its fuel economy.
Without collections agencies the only reason that anybody would ever pay their bills would be because it was the ethical thing to do. Consequently the cost of just about anything would likely sky rocket.
Wow, what a negative view of humanity. If that were really true, one of the few good things that would be is that the entertainment industry would have long since lost their war on piracy. Most people deal fairly most of the time, out of more than enlightened self-interest. We have these highly developed feelings that serve us well in this. We really do care that artists and children not starve, that others treat us the way we treat them, and that there is law and order. The few who don't genuinely feel that way we call sociopaths.
The problem is the climate and the attitude. Too many desperate job seekers, too few jobs. Employers are simply too picky and arbitrary, putting on this big act as if even a rather ordinary job requires such specialized and honed skills that only 0.1% of job seekers can handle. Simply not true, but the numbers dictate this behavior. Some job seekers have responded with a shotgun approach of blasting out resumes by the hundreds, making things worse. This interview process is more like pledging a fraternity. I suspect Google weeds out a lot of good people. There are more good people out there than employers will admit. We all know industry complaints about not enough STEM workers is a self-serving lie, used as a reason for increasing H1Bs among others. I believe Google is above that sort of thing. I read that Microsoft is not, but what can be done about it? Anyway, data about compensation does not support this notion. If there really was a healthy demand for STEM workers, we'd see pay going up, and last I heard, we aren't seeing that.
The hiring decision could be made in 15 minutes, or less, with good information. But there isn't good information, or is there? Seems that most of the time needed in Google's interview process is for gathering information, not evaluating it. Another poster complained that most of the information the interviewer gets is biased, and therefore of little value. The interviewees will of course slant everything about themselves in their favor. And school systems are too easy to game. I'm sorry, but employers haven't deserved better. They play games too. Otherwise, we wouldn't have an EEOC as it wouldn't be necessary. There are the fake job offers that are only resume bait, or to be used for politics either internal or external, or long since filled. There's the cooked job posting that has so many requirements that only one resume fits, and that is the resume of a favorite, perhaps a relative of the boss. There are unfair rejections over things like whether a candidate has young children or is too old, this information being found out underhandedly and some other reason being given to dodge EEOC rules. More than once I've seen "advice" to remove graduation dates from resumes, so they can't so easily guess your age. It's hard to take employers seriously when they make basic mistakes in their job postings, such as demanding more years of experience in something than that something has existed. It's infuriating to have my time wasted by an employer who never had any intention of seriously considering me. They have all this money to waste putting on a show, but not to pay someone. Many of us have little choice but to suck it up, and scramble for even those jobs that can't possibly be real, just in case they might be. Then there are recruiters. No resume is good enough for them.
The idea that school systems are not rigorous enough is nonsense. Though I admit after seeing a little of a second or third rate school, an obscure place with a name like Backwoods State U. somewhere in rural Mississippi, which could be just a diploma mill, I wouldn't accept their graduates unquestioningly. At the public university I attended, which I think is rather typical, the admissions criteria disqualify more than half of high school graduates. If you get in, the odds are still against you. Public universities would prefer higher admittance standards. Instead they resort to "weed out" courses. The graduation rate of the College of Engineering was 20%. Right there, the university has already screened out at least 90% of the public. More like 95%, if you consider that not everyone graduates from high school. And if that's not good enough, there's graduate school. By the time we top out at the PhD level, we're down to, what, less than 1% of the population? I know, exclusivity in itself is not a good measure, but that is only a consequence of the education, which despite all the doubt to the contrary, is really pretty good. But employers carry on as if that doesn't m
The on-site interview takes five hours
That's a long interview, and a number of inferences can be made just from that. First, it is still an employer's market, or candidates might not put up with that, at least, not without pay. "... lean towards rejection", yes indeed! Second, I get just a little tired of claims of exceptionalism. This says, not in words but in this action, that Google thinks themselves very special indeed, whatever anyone may say about their efforts to eschew arrogance. It doesn't help that they are the current darlings of the tech biz, and that there are thousands of job seekers beating on their doors, and would be even if the economy was great. Third, it's very expensive to conduct such long interviews. As much as companies try to externalize costs, this shows that when it come to hiring decisions, Google at least has utterly failed at that. I have suggested before that a college degree (of some level from bachelors to PhD, depending on the job), which should be checkable in about 2 seconds, ought to be enough. It's rather sad how many people heap scorn on that notion. People violently reject the idea that colleges are any good at preparing graduates for the real world, despite this being one of the primary goals of education. Easy to ride the popular conception that schools are doing a bad job. So Google, and most other employers, want more, more, more, and test everyone all over again, despite the years and ways schools have put into it. If a degree isn't enough of an indication of competence, intelligence and perseverance, what's wrong with at least considering something like the results from appropriate subject tests of the GRE? This is usually explained away with the one word assertion that schools are "academic", with heaps of perjorative meaning loaded in. Fourth, is it so hard to undo a mistaken hiring decision? Isn't the US supposed to be famously flexible and mobile, particularly compared to Europe? Work is "at will"? Why are hiring decisions so heavy and critical? Cost again? Something like health benefits is another area of cost externalization employers have not seized on. Far from that. Most have preferred using health care as a weapon, something to hold over employees' heads.
You say Google is data driven? Then why not use the available data about a candidate's past? Yet, "Google interviewers pay no attention to what you have done in the past" But there are other ways. Why not go to a "probationary" period, or more of an internship?
From what I've heard, I'm really not impressed with Google's interview process. "Is the system perfect? Clearly not" Yeah, clearly. Get that interview process down to 15 minutes, without significantly increasing the number of bad hires, then I'll be impressed.
Ugh. Think you might also like the old British coinage, with farthings, shillings, florins, pence, and other oddball units? How about the Chinese alphabet with some 40k characters? What's your favorite programming language? Perl?
How about mixed measures? I have seen drink labels that used units of "mg/8 ounces"!
Life is complicated enough as is. Some people like complexity, for purposes of obfuscation. I don't. We all pay for needless complexity.
We are certainly in the group of casual watchers-- when we watch anything at all. Make it hard, and we find something else to do. We have only 1 TV in the house.
In 1982, we bought a 13" TV for $200. Was a bargain price at the time. We kept that TV until 1998, though we had planned to replace it sooner. Because we heard HDTV was coming in the early 90s, we decided to wait for that. And we waited, and waited, until finally the old TV began to fail. Since we don't follow the prices of TVs, was a pleasant surprise to see how much bigger and inexpensive TVs had gotten over the years. And how the twist knobs had been replaced with push buttons, and how remote control had become a standard feature. Bought a 19" for $150. But that 19" TV was lacking in connections-- only input was for an antenna. So a few years later we upgraded to a 27" model for $175, with component video, S-video, composite video, and antenna connections. The DVD player we got at that time drove the decision to upgrade the TV.
Then came the switch to digital signals. And flat screens. We could have gotten one of those adapters to receive the new signals, but didn't think that was worthwhile. We tossed the 27" tube for a 37" LCD, 1080p, with all the inputs the old TV had, plus HDMI. And of course the ability to receive the digital broadcast signals. We even added a cheap 5.1 surround sound system. But no Blu Ray, and no plans to get that, though we have all the other ingredients. Our movie collection is not much, perhaps 20 titles on DVD. Not looking to expand that either.
We were also burned by the entire Betamax/VHS contest. We bought Betamax. Since then, we've not been in a hurry to dive into any new entertainment tech. Both HD-DVD and Blu Ray can rot as far as I'm concerned. The real contest is between the Netflix model, and the home entertainment server with massive hard drive capacity. As for general data storage, I'll stick with multiple hard drives. It's inconvenient enough getting data off a DVD, why in the world would I want to burn data back onto one? My other main need is primarily boot media, and I'd much, much rather use a flash drive than a scummy old, scratch and trouble prone CD or DVD-RW.
In great enough quantities. It's called "drowning".
mean things WORK
Perhaps in the short term. But in the long term, such behaviour almost always turns out to have been foolish. History is littered with mighty empires that quickly collapsed. The Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, the Aztec Empire... it's a long list. They did not have and never gained, barely even tried to gain, the good will of the peoples that they conquered. Instead they tended to think of themselves as superior, and viewed their subjects with contempt. "White Man's Burden". (Does this sound at all like our top business people? I do believe it does. The Donald is a prime example of this sort of unwarranted arrogance. Now he thinks he ought to be President of the US!) But always, their ability to get their way by force faltered, and they fell. The Assyrian Empire was an especially hated one that shows this. A student of history might well conclude that's just the natural order of things, that empires come and always go, and soon America's ascendancy will be over and we will be added to the pile of failed empires. Maybe so if we let fools run things.
Sounds like Righthaven is very, very wrong. So wrong that they might have to pay the defendents' legal costs. From my limited understanding of the legal system, only exceptionally unwarranted cases, cases with no legitimate basis that were only brought to scare, harrass, and damage other parties, are subject to such sanctions. Except they don't have the assets to pay those costs. Strikes me as a sneaky way to shield the real prosecutors from such an outcome. Set up a shell company to do the dirty work and to fold like a house of cards if it backfires. But it looks like that's not going to work. The judge is not going to be fooled by this cute corporate trickery to evade responsiblity, and will rope the real prosecutors into the cases.
If the outcome is that the newspapers have to pay for the damage their sock puppet corporation caused, will that be enough to deter others from ever again trying such a heinous scheme? I doubt it. For instance, MS wasn't punished for the mess SCO made. These newspapers will conclude that Righthaven wasn't circumspect enough, and may well try again with another organization that is less obviously their sock puppet, same as SCO was a real separate party that began with no MS affiliation or support.
Sign anyway is what I did. They are a joke.
And I had one case where such a clause could have been a problem. I had been brought in on a 1099, not salary, yet was still asked to sign a non-compete. It didn't seem fair to me to be asked not to compete for a longer term than I was actually employed, but that's what they demanded. Then, my employer's customer wanted to retain me alone for additional work after their contract with my employer had ended on a less than satisfactory note. My employer had promised far too much, as the customer tried to tell them all along, and could not deliver. When that contract ended, my employer wanted to keep me for another position, but I felt their prospects were at best uncertain, given the poor decision making that went into entering into such a bad contract (bad for my employer, good for their customer of course), and some other things I had heard. They were a little too desperate for the business from that customer. Sure enough, they folded a few years later. In the meantime, they were in no position to tell me I could not go work directly for their former customer, right away, if I wanted. When I told the customer of the non-compete clause, they made short work of that difficulty. They even threatened my employer (at that point, already former employer) so that I could! It was something like that they would sue for breach of the original contract if I was prevented from working directly for them. When told of the customer's offer to me, my previous employer kicked around notions of keeping me, so they could enter into a new contract with the customer, getting a piece of this new action, to make up a little for how badly burned they were in the earlier contract. Wasn't going to happen that way-- the customer wanted nothing more to do with them.
There are many ways to fight unjust laws. A PAC is just one way, and has a number of problems. We shouldn't have to do anything like that. Pay the representatives to do the right thing? Bribe them, when we can simply vote them out? I really don't like the thought of playing by the rules of a rigged game, or inadvertently helping to perpetuate a corruption of our system. No. The copyright cartels are the rebels and the criminals, not us. We should not have to defend ourselves in court or Congress, for anything. It is they who should be on trial, for having pushed copyright to ludicrous extremes, for winning million dollar judgements against ordinary citizens who have done nothing to deserve that, for trying to scuttle the best technological and societal advances of the past century, and trying to stifle all future progress. They would kill the Internet itself if they could, despite the immense damage this would cause. They are on trial in the highest court of all, the court of public opinion. And they're losing. Vote Pirate Party! Congress can come to us, and beg for re-election. Congress is supposed to serve the public, not the other way around.
There are further, and quite massive differences. Speed limits are a good idea, and, barring things like speed traps, are mostly fair. They make our roads safer. We have studies showing that there are fewer fatalities when speeds are lower. Saves gas too, which was the original intent of the national 55 mph speed limit.
Copyrights on the other hand, are legal fantasies, largely unenforceable on individuals. They are blatantly unfair. They cause more harm than good. What of all the works that were removed from the public domain without any compensation whatsoever to the public, each time copyright terms were extended? Robbery! Many of us understand this about copyrights, and no cheesy "educational" film is going to persuade us otherwise. I'm sure Google understands these films are nothing more than bad jokes at best, offensive to our intelligence and common sense. The propaganda is so badly done it should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent kids. Couldn't be any better than Capt. Copyright! It's little better than forcing rape victims to watch films implying it is all their fault because they didn't dress appropriately. But if it serves to appease the idiotic copyright extremists who might well be the only people on the planet who actually believe these films will win others over, while backfiring by helping to persuade more people that copyright laws are crazy, Google likes that. And so should we.
Seems Dilbert and The Office are the most accurate description of how American business really works. Fortunately for us, there are still many workplaces that aren't dysfunctional, or which have engineers who manage to accomplish things in spite of bad management. Education has its problems, but there, I never saw anything as bad as the problems at the work place. I've wondered if it's just me, perhaps I've been unlucky, or haven't been careful enough about accepting certain job offers and then finding out I shouldn't have. I've asked everyone I could what their work experiences have been like, and most have said more than half their job experiences were dysfunctional. Whatever laments we have over the lack of quality of STEM education, management education has got to be much worse. What kind of fool management shoves their best people into closets, out of personal and totally unjustified dislike or fear, perhaps only for being too smart? Tries to treat their employees as slaves, with heavy micromanagement and surveillance, believing people are naturally lazy slackers and must be forced to work? Thinks putting up a front of competence is the most important thing to do, denying there are problems, rather than actually being competent? Lacks the imagination to envision what is really important, and grasp what is a total waste of everyone's time? Gotta love being told your thoughts and ideas are not wanted and are all wrong anyway, then ordered to spend weeks or months on a worthless project only to have it cancelled... and then they try to blame you for it! Employment seems like it's Revenge of the Incompetent.
And why is it like this? One reason is the pressure. We're straining to improve our already very fat standard of living on a static base. This is a recipe for angst. Another is that the meritocracy seemingly stops at the management level. Our leadership is crap. Our corporations are positively medieval in their governance. As if it isn't hard enough to perform to the level necessary to justify the relatively hefty compensation our engineers earn, we have incompetent, thieving management making life harder while upping the requirements because their far larger compensation packages and blunders must be paid for somehow.
The problem is with that word "computer". Think of it as Computation Science, or Computing Science, or Algorithm Science. That's the core of CS. It's such a fundamental tool, that maybe it ought to be called simply Computation, same as Math is just Math and not Mathematical Science or some such.
Classic mathematics mostly avoids algorithms. They do the simple stuff like grade school multiplication and greatest common denominator, but not much more. Newton's method and Simpson's Rule is about their limit. In Calculus, they teach all sorts of techniques, from rote memorization of the differentials of particular functions such as sine, to limits and transforms. But straight mathematicians tend to shy away from the numeric methods. They use them, but they don't program them. Fire up the math software for that. By hand on a test, you can't very well bang out 100 iterations of the Jacobi method, or do piecewise interpolation with cubic splines in order to make a nice, smooth, easily handled function from an arbitrary set of dozens of points. Something like Matrix Chain Multiplication is never seen in pure math.
EE also dodges issues with algorithms. They're quite happy to apply calculus to analog circuitry, but making programs to use on digital logic is not their thing.
It was this recognition that algorithms do indeed have properties, characteristics, and most of all powers that cannot be adequately handled with pure math, that is, with classical formulae, that lead to CS being recognized as a discipline of its own.
Algorithms are core, but hardly all of CS. Language is not science, you say? You could not be more wrong. Never looked into Automata Theory, have you? And you take a pot shot at databases too? Lot of specialized research, scientific research, in there.
The usual argument is that sales taxes are regressive.
Better question: what's the replacement for sales taxes? Raise income tax rates? At least sales taxes are relatively simple. Not as simple as they ought to be, with every local jurisdiction doing their own thing, but simpler than the mess lawmakers like to make of income tax. If we could keep it simple, have just one rate nationwide, and refrain from constantly tinkering with it and changing it every year, and toss in some kind of refund for low income poeple, so it isn't so regressive, then sales tax could be fair and good.
Texas doesn't have an income tax, and I like it that way. No damned state version of the IRS ready to assume the worst if they think there's an error. I still have to deal with federal income tax. In many ways, the money is not the biggest worry, it's the responsibility, the burden. They demand you get it right, or you could be in big, BIG trouble. Tax is forever, there is no statute of limitations. Nice to know that in your retirement you could get roasted for some tax mistake that happened 50 years ago. The IRS is infamous for the harshness of their enforcement. We hear horror stories of the IRS going nuts, assuming someone is a tax cheat and shutting down their life. This is why I never do itemized deductions. I don't have a house payment, and if all I'm saving is a few hundred dollars at best, it's so not worth it. May cost me more, but standard deduction reduces the complexity and the risk.
Maybe nuclear power plants can be safe. Maybe. But once again, we've seen that they won't be.
They knew, all the way back in 1972, that the design used at Fukushima was not safe. But they tried to cover it up, tried to deny it. When disaster struck, they kept right on trying to tell the world it wasn't that serious. Some have accused the media of exaggerating the problems. TEPCO has done the opposite, downplaying, excusing, and belittling the problems. We've seen a worrysome pattern of corruption and deceit in their operation, of inspection fails that were changed to passes, or testing that was never done, and maintenance neglected. And twisting of standards and evaluation procedures, and willful blindness to a number of disaster scenarios, to make it all sound safer. For instance, a large building in Oklahoma City was nearly destroyed by just one bomb, put together by just one person with only a little help. What if a nuclear power plant had been bombed? Then there's the matter of guarding against theft of the fuel, and the waste. And of persuading other states, particularly those who might be tempted to make nuclear weapons, not to use nuclear power.
We shouldn't be complacent about alternatives. I don't think we can just wait, because we'll never get around to putting alternatives in place if we keep on operating these nuclear plants. We've got to push ourselves. I agree we do not want to shut them all down, right now, all at once. But we should get moving.