1. I never said only some should live by those rules. I do want them to apply to _everyone_, not just a subset. Doesn't matter if I like them or not. Doesn't matter if they're a corporation, or a country, or a garage band publishing their own MP3s on the Internet.
Once something is published, copyright should _not_ be a way to "unpublish" it. For anyone. Ever. That's my whole point.
2. I'm not saying that government should come to your house, raid your diary, and post it on the web. In fact, the government shouldn't do anything whatsoever.
But if you did publish an embarassing story or novel or song with your high school band, you shouldn't be allowed to "unpublish" it. If people still want to buy that story or song or novel, they should be able to either buy it or legally copy it.
Again, that is assuming that you did publish it once to start with.
In Java: Because you do a comparison like "i array.length", that's why. Java arrays already contain the length. In C terms, a Java array is really an object containing the actual array _and_ the length.
That's why Java:
1. Can throw an Exception when you address out of bounds, instead of having a buffer overflow exploit.
2. Can know when you've already compared that variable to the bounds, so it doesn't have to again. A "for (i = 0; i arrayVariable.length; i++)", and no other touching "i" inside the loop, already tells the compiler that "i" is never less than zero, and never can exceed the array length.
In C: Because C arrays don't.
In other words, nothing personal, but you just confirmed my point. Those who don't have some prior knowledge, don't know how to filter what works and what doesn't.
If the company isn't selling those old comics any more, how is it profitting from them any more to start with? What would the income lost there? The exactly zero dollars that they're losing there?
And if re-printing old comics would be so profitable for you, what's keeping the copyright owner from doing the same? I mean, they don't even have the scanning costs in that equation?
Basically all I'm saying is that I _do_ support the idea that "ok, you're allowed to make money from creating something." But then comes the moment they're _not_, in fact, either making any money or even trying to make any money out of it. Then it seems to me like we're way past the point and the scope of what copyright was supposed to solve.
But I'm also for keeping in mind what copyright was supposed to solve: making those works _available_. The moment that's no longer happening, it seems to me like the copyright no longer fulfills its _main_ role and function.
As I've said: as long as it's still profitable to print those old comics (again, they don't have the scanning costs, so it's easier for them to be profitable than it is for you), sure, let them keep the copyright.
You'll also notice that I didn't really put any limits there on _how_ it is to be delivered. I just said I should be able to order it, for no more than the original price. It can be a PDF, if it's a book, or it can be printed-to-order on a nearby color laser printer for comics, or whatever. They just have to keep making it _available_ to keep the copyright.
Because, as I've said, that was the whole idea of copyright to start with. It was _not_ just supposed to support corporate money. So I hardly think it's that unreasonable to expect it to actually fulfill that promise.
Well, I never said I want it to be unlimited or anything. So we can easily aggree upon that part.
But on the issue of taxes:
<sarcasm type="heavy"> Yes, and _my_ taxes are used to protect your car from burglars and thieves. Hey, I don't own a car, so I shouldn't pay for it. Right?
_My_ taxes are used for government AIDS cure research. Hey, I don't screw everyone in sight, so why the heck should I have to pay for that? Let them just die, I say;)
_My_ taxes are used to build highways. Maybe even the one you drive on to work. WTF? I always get a flat very near the company, so I don't have to commute. Why the heck should I pay for all those commuters? No, really.
_My_ taxes go into funding the school system. Piss-poor and under-funded as it is. Or to give a tax break to people with kids. Blah. I have no kids. Why should I pay for that? No, really? Did anyone even ask me if I want to subsidize everyone who's too stupid to use a condom? And let them pay out of their own pocket for their kid's schooling. </sarcasm>
Again, that was sarcasm, if anyone can't tell. I am _not_ really advocating any of that.
I'm sure you probably get the idea already. Yes, society sometimes must use taxes to enforce things that are considered beneficial for society as a _whole_. Yes, there might be people who do not _directly_ get a ROI on their money, but the idea is that on the whole you get more good than bad out of it.
In this case, the whole copyright thing actually costs you _very_ little. Other than the copyright office itself, most other things are handled by lawsuits between companies. Or between companies and individuals.
You might notice, for example, that even the much villified RIAA lawsuits didn't involve the FBI taking the suspects into custody, nor a DA doing a criminal style prosecution. So that part has cost you exactly nothing.
So, well, I hope you'll excuse me if you're not getting much compassion out of me, over the fact that a couple of cents out of your taxes (and mine) go into sponsoring the common good. I do believe that on the whole the benefits far outweight those few cents.
The _only_ people publishing stuff purely for recognition seem to be newbie programmers.
Everyone else is paid for it, even if their work is then included in an OSS project. E.g., OpenOffice is paid for by Sun. So is NetBeans. E.g., Eclipse is mostly IBM's work. E.g., as I've said, check some of the submissions in your average Linux distro. Check out how many of them are paid employees of IBM, Novell, Sun, RedHat, etc.
But let's get back to the actual ones that publish stuff actually written 100% unpaid for, and 100% for recognition. The problem is that invariably they're (1) _only_ the programmers, (2) never polish their work to any degree of usability, and (3) newbies.
1. E.g., one problem most OSS software projects have is the utter lack of usability specialists, good graphics artists, technical writers, etc. Sure, you might find some newbie CS student publishing his newest Pac-Man clone for peer-recognition. You almost _never_ however find also some graphics artist involved to make the graphics, nor someone who could write a good manual, nor more than 1-2 simple levels for their games because good level designers never joined. (E.g., try Pingus someday. Great game engine, but it never got more than the tutorial levels.)
And that also means that other domains would be practically non-existant, because they're not software hacks. E.g., good luck finding someone who'll come over and take professional photos at your wedding, just for fame and recognition. E.g., while every teen dreams of being a famous novelist, I can't remember any good novels that were just posted on the Internet for fame and recognition. E.g., good luck waiting for a good movie to be made purely for fame and recognition: those cost quite a bit to make, even if you don't go for overpaid stars, so everyone will want to recoup their investment one way or another.
2. An invariable problem of projects made purely for fame and recognition, is the lack of polish. And I mean above and beyond the fact that they couldn't find a usability expert that wants to work for free.
See, everyone wants to code great hacks or great algorithms for fame and recognition. "W00t, my clever BitFlipSort works 3 times faster" or "W00t, my clever use of B-trees makes the whole search faster" are things you can (A) brag about, and (B) get done in an afternoon. On the other hand, "I spent 2 months making a good usable GUI for it, and another month writing a good manual" is neither. It's just plain old work and no bragging rights. Not many will do it.
3. They're invariably newbies, and the results are invariably of very limited scope, complexity and quality. Sad to say, I haven't found any professional project that was made purely for fame and glory.
To put it otherwise, yeah, writing a monolythic 0.01 kernel is something a bored hacker might do just for fame and recognition. Turning it into an enterprise multi-platform OS, on the other hand, that involved a helluva lot of paid people.
But even that 0.01 kernel is already something _way_ over the level of usual works made purely for fame and glory. Most of them are barely at the level of "hey, look, I too made a buggy Windows or X calculator."
So to cut an already long story short, I really wouldn't fancy a future where everyone is done just for recognition. I very much prefer being able to go to the shop and buy a good program, than wait for a bored hacker to make a piss-poor approximation of it in his free time.
What I find all wrong about copyright, as it is right now, is that it also gives the right to _kill_ a work of art or a program. You can buy the copyright to something for the _sole_ purpose of burying it 6 ft deep. I.e., making sure no more copies of it will be made.
Which was _not_ the purpose of copyright in the first place. The idea was to secure a source of income for those publishing books, _but_ that was only a means to another end: having those books available to society. Using copyright as a way to make them UNavailable, is IMHO contrary to the whole spirit and idea of copyright.
And just for the sake of a wanton comparison with Soviet Russia, I find it stupid that while we all were/are outraged when a dictatorship tries to suppress a book, we all shrug and find it normal when a corporation does the same via copyright. I mean, geesh, Stalin could have just bought the exclusive distribution rights in the USSR of the exact same works, and killed them via copyright, and we'd all suddenly no longer find it abhominable. It would be just normal business. Think about it.
So IMHO the copyright should only last as long as people can still order that book or program or music from you, for no more than the original price (i.e., no "yeah, it's still available, but we'll charge 10,000,000$ for it" scams), and have it delivered within a reasonable time frame. The moment that's no longer possible, the copyright should become public domain.
It would also be a self-regulating kinda thing. It's up to the company in case to decide when it's no longer profitable to keep that stock of old books, just for the 1-2 people per year still ordering it. When they decide it's no longer profitable to play that game, sure, make it public domain. But ffs, don't bury it.
Personally I have no problem with "copyright as enforced monopoly", because frankly that was the whole idea with copyright to start with. You give them a temporary "monopoly", in exchange for getting those works from them in the first place.
Thing is, most people only work for money. Yeah, in open source too. Check out the email addresses of contributors to all major components of Linux. Most work _is_ done by people paid to do so, even if they're paid by some OSS company.
So copyright is a way to say "ok, if you do publish a book, here's how we'll allow you to make money out of it."
I see nothing wrong with that. I _am_ willing to buy a good book, or a movie, or a music CD, rather than not have it available at all.
"Why your work should be available for free" demagogue theories are good and fine, but in practice it never works that way: practically _noone_ works for free nowadays. The freeloaders actually get something paid for by someone else, not for free. E.g., everyone who downloaded a SuSE Linux ISO for free, rest assured that SuSE's work was paid for by people like me who bought the boxed distro repeatedly. E.g., everyone who has some free Linux distro installed on ReiserFS, can know that ReiserFS was sponsored by SuSE, so again, it was people like me whose money went into making that.
So, again, I have nothing against copyright as a way for authors to make money. Beats not having those works available in the first place. Maybe it's not the perfect system, but it's the best we have so far.
Well, from my experience it's not as much "not having the foresight to [...] secure the rights to the code", but thinking they're soo smart and save so much money for explicitly not wanting the code to start with. Maybe (probably?) even explicitly negotiating a lower cost to get the program without source code, or without rights to do much with that source code.
It happens more often than you'd think, and it's not as much lack of foresight, as some beancounter having no fucking clue about maintenance or development. So they negotiated a contract that came back and bit them in the ass. And probably were proud of negotiating it that way, and I wouldn't be too surprised if they got a bonus for saving the big bucks.
And, to be honest, it's not just the beancounters: I'd say some 90%+ of programmers have no clue about maintenance either, and think write-only code is cool and l33t. Hey, looky, I coded it in half the time! I'm teh greatest programmer evar! And if you ever need any changes or bug fixes, hey, you only need to throw it all away and start from scratch. (What that means by the 3'rd change, is left as an exercise to the reader.)
And sometimes later they thought they'd be "smart" and shaft the company, by sharing code that they didn't buy the rights to in the first place. I mean, eh, Company B says they'll do the maintenance for less money than Company A, so let's just give them Company A's code that we didn't pay for. And probably patted themselves on the back for saving the big bucks again. Hey, stealing someone's code beats buying it, right?
And before someone comes and pipes up the usual "see, that's why OSS is better", think about it. These guys, yeah, _could_ have paid to have an OSS version designed from the ground up. But that would have probably just cost more. They just wanted the cheapest thing they could buy, even at the expense of not having any rights to the code. As I've said, they probably were _proud_ that they saved money by not wanting the source code.
It's not about OSS-vs-closed-source. It's just a story of one particularly greedy and stupid customer breaking a contract to save a buck.
I know you were probably just joking, but here goes just in case: all the data on google is becoming increasingly _useless_ without a human expert filtering the good from the bullshit.
Take any topic from politics to computing to medicine to god-knows-what. You'll get some tens to hundreds of thousands of hits, 90% of them written by bloggers talking out of the ass, and 90% of the rest obsolete.
E.g., I kid you not, on the German-language wikipedia there was a comprehensive article about cloned _didgeridoos_. Including pictures of little didgeridoos in test tubes.
E.g., if you google for Java techniques, you still find such Java 1.0 "optimizations" (and debatably not even true back in Java 1.0) as using exceptions instead of a loop counter. E.g., that to iterate through an array you should write a monstrosity like:
try {
for (i = 0;; i++) {
do_something(array[i]);
} } catch (Exception e) { }
On account that, meh, Java checks the bounds for you at each array indexing every time (and throws an exception if accessing beyond the end) anyway, so no point in checking the value of "i" yourself too. Makes sense, right?
Too bad it's false. Any modern Java JIT compiler will optimize away the index bounds check, if the value of "i" was already compared to the array length. So there is no speed gain from the above "optimization". Au contraire, because of the exception, it will actually be orders of magnitude slower.
And I'm not getting into the maintenance problems there. E.g., what if sometime in the future the do_something() method will use internally another array, and be able to throw the same exception itself for a real error? Oops, the exception was silently swallowed, and only maybe a quarter of the actual data was actually processed. I'm sure everyone will be pleased, for example, when only a quarter of the bank accounts get interest, or only a quarter of a company's orders are processed.
That's the whole problem and answer to your "who needs to learn" question. Without some actual knowledge, filtering the good data from such bullshit is plain impossible.
The reason you can still filter such crap is that you did already learn some stuff, and can discern what sounds plausible (i.e., matches what you've already learned) from what doesn't. E.g., when you find some scam ad for a magical sticker that can extend a battery's life by just being glued to the outside of the case, if you already know _some_ physics, you'll know why it's bullshit.
On the other hand, people who _didn't_ learn much, they're the ones falling prey to such scams. If you also wire them to Google and encourge them to not even try to learn anything ever... well, I _really_ pity them.
Re:You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men?
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· Score: 1
Well, I rode the dot-con wave like everyone else, and made nice money out of it. Arguably, I _still_ make money out of it. That stuff did count on the resume, so the next job after the dot-con went bust, actually pays better.
So I guess I shouldn't be complaining.
Still, dunno, I can't shake the feeling that the whole thing is one ludicrious drain of society's resources. Never before have so many people been paid so much for... nothing. And that's before including the expenses for hardware, software, buildings, etc, to go with them.
Computers _could_ have done so much for society. Except they got in the hands of people who hadn't got a clue what to do with them. So they rarely got used for more than corporate ego-stroking and entertainment. I don't even mean "video games" when I say "entertainment". I mean making some PHB feel good that his dick... err... department is bigger than yours. Ludicrious numbers of huge projects are started not because of some need, or not then used to actually help that need, but because someone had no clue. They didn't really understand what computers can do for them, but they know that they have to use computers somehow.
The dot-con was just the apex of that. The visible tip of the iceberg. But below the waves, lies ten times as much waste, for just as little benefits.
And, dunno, I just can't stop wondering whether that massive waste of resources is really good for society as a whole. A lot more good could have been done with that money and effort. Like opening a few new factories. Or doing some real research. Or if we're to dump hundreds of billions into it, might as well do it in a way that benefits everyone: e.g., raising the minimum wage. Those people at the bottom need the money more than the resume fraudsters.
But that's probably just me. Shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that.
actually, it doesn't work that way
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If you think that being discriminated against means being given a comfy office job, you're waay off the mark.
It more like means that is that you'll be pushed in a stereotypical, but crap paid job.
Like receptionist. Nothing says "equality" to some companies like having a black and/or woman as receptionist. It's right in the front, so, hey, everyone can see how equal they are to women and minorities.
Or like waitress, dish washer, supermarket cashier, etc. I think you'll find more women pegged in that kind of low-pay jobs than in offices.
And outcry about shortage of men in _crap_ high-stress low-pay jobs like teaching? Well, gee, that's so discriminated. I soo feel sorry for poor you, being denied that job and having to do with a high-paid office job instead.
Or nurses. Well, gee, males are so unfairly discriminated. They get to be the well paid doctors, while those lucky women get to change bedsheets and bedpans for a fraction of the pay.
I mean, gee, that must be as discriminated against as the whites were on the southern plantations. I mean, all those lucky blacks got dream jobs like picking cotton, while the poor whites were pegged into roles like plantation owners and merchants;)
That was some heavy sarcasm, if anyone can tell. And disgust.
Now seriously: If you think there's some sexist conspiracy that keeps you from teaching as a male, go apply for that job at some inner-city school. You might find that they'll take you in an instant, and noone will start harrassing you because you're male. And noone will ask stupid gender-related questions. Nor ask you to work twice as much as a woman teacher to be considered equal, in spite of your "obvious" gender handicap.
Dunno, whenever I see this kind of "waah, but they have all the (insert crap low-pay work) jobs" and "why don't they also take the (insert other crap line of work) jobs, then?" demagogue rhetoric, it just makes me wanna puke. I've heard it about women, I've heard it about blacks, I've heard it about foreigners, etc.
It invariably just means "but I really want to keep getting an undeserved privilege, not for any personal merits, but just because I happened to be born the right gender/race/nationality/whatever. And I'll scream and moan against any comparison of _merits_ and _skills_, instead of that undeserved privilege." Which is just disgusting.
Actually, I don't buy it
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· Score: 2, Informative
Lemme tell you why I also don't believe the problem is as clear cut and biologic as you seem to think.
You see, as I've mentioned several times before, I happen to have some first hand experience with Eastern Europe during communism and the cold war. The funny thing about Soviet-style communism is that, at least in theory, they were really hammering on the gender equality idea. (Of course, theory and practice still often diverged nevertheless.)
And you know what? They had a _ton_ of good programmers that were women. Damn good programmers, in fact. Also a ton of physicsts, doctors, mathematicians, engineers, etc. And an almost 50-50 distribution in college students. Including, yes, in CS and electronics.
So the problem _is_ a social one, not some biologic/genetic pre-destination. (Unless you're willing to tell me that they had some rare genetic strain of women;) It's also a complex one. It can't be reduced strictly to "males are sexist", either.
For a start, there was no stigma in being good at maths or science. It was a pride. The whole social system artiffically put nerds at the top, and made sure they're much better paid than, say, plumbers are.
So there was a helluva lot of an economic incentive to actually become a doctor or an engineer, as opposed to just a pretty and popular airhead.
And the whole school system was a rather brutal exercise in selecting who can learn, from who can't. They didn't have some watered-down "science" class in school. They did physics, chemistry, and maths in high school at a level comparable to what you'd get in the USA only in a college of that profile. E.g., they actually learned quantum physics in high school.
The idea was not to have it all at a level where everyone can understand it. The idea was to filter those maybe 10% who can, from those who can't. Being among those who did, was seen as a thing of _pride_.
Also, their education really hammered on the idea of equality. E.g., in the USSR they had even books about female military heroes of WW2. The whole message was, "yes, you too can do everything that the guys can!"
So, on the whole, what we have here is a massive difference in social- and peer-pressure.
The girlfriend you base your generalization on, was told by society that _the_ way to go is to forget those childhood dreams of being a chemist or doctor, and just be a popular skinny airhead. That's the message we give to kids in the west.
On the other hand, the message they got back then and there, was the exact opposite. "Hang on to that dream. Fight your way uphil through the education system, and actually become that engineer or scientist or doctor. Being an intellectual is _good_."
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Soviet-style society and enforcing an unnatural social structure, was viable. Their system did go bankrupt, after all.
But incidentally it also did show that, if given the proper motivation and peer-pressure, their women could and did make just as good programmers, engineers and scientists as the men.
Re:You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men?
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Women Leaving I.T.
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· Score: 1
The studies are real. My personal experience just seems to "confirm" them. As in, you know, looking around the office I can really believe that number.
Re:You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men?
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Women Leaving I.T.
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Heh. So then it's just an exercise in sexism, eh?
No, I stand by what I wrote there. From personal experience, 3 out of 4 men I've worked with, were utterly and totally incompetent.
Thing is, men really _aren't_ natural-born tech experts they try to sound like. (And I'm one, so I think I'm allowed to say that.) Maybe a bit more interested in tech stuff, but definitely _not_ naturally inclined to actually be competent at it.
We've just received an idiotic education where if you have a dick, you _must_ do the macho thing and fix your own car/computer/radio/whatever. Most men seem to have had the idiotic notion hammered into their head that if they don't open their car's hood (and ruin the car in the process), it's like admitting sexual impotence or worse. That you have to _prove_ you have a dick, by doing all sorts of stupid or dangerous stuff personally.
But as I've said, that doesn't actually make them competent. They just use massive selective confirmation to promote minor trivial achievements into meaning some technical expertise. "W00t, I changed the oil! I'm such a total expert in car mechanics! I know all about cars!" Not.
And when it _doesn't_ go well, it's selective confirmation to the rescue again. It's quickly shoved behind an excuse and discarded. In 2-3 days it's back to the old, "Hey, I'm still the greatest technology expert ever! I never made a mistake!" (Except those dozens of times which got conveniently "forgotten.")
E.g., dear old dad almost zapped himself to death about a dozen times, rather than just call an electrician. And lemme tell you, getting zapped by a 230V socked it bad enough. Getting zapped by the TV he opened to try to fix himself, now that muscle spasm smashed him into a wall, and left him there for a while. There's some really high voltage inside those. But that, of course, wouldn't stop him from thinking that he's God's gift to any tech device. 'Cause if he wasn't, he'd be like, you know, not man enough.
E.g., every Real Man knows that men are perfect drivers, unlike those women who can't even steer in a straight line. Too bad it's actually false. Insurance company statistics say that, per 100 km driven, a man is _twice_ as likely to cause an accident as a woman is. Unlike the popular myth, according to actual accident statistics, being a macho testosterone machine doesn't make one an expert driver... quite au contraire. It makes one more likely to drive in a reckless and dangerous manner.
E.g., the same pre-conception and selective confirmation goes for computers too. Any idiot who can write 5 lines in BASIC on their parent's computer, or launch someone else's compile script, thinks that his Y chromosome makes him God's gift to computers. W00t, typing those few lines was such a major achievement and surely making him the greatest expert to ever walk the Earth.
Sorry, nope. Being able to "emerge KDE" does _not_ make one a computer expert. And writing a "hello world" does _not_ make one a programmer.
Actual competence starts around the point where your team did a project worth at _least_ 100,000 lines, and which didn't fail miserably. (Of course, that means divided into modules, programs, whatever.) And where your contribution was actually a substantial enough slice of that. (Not like some Wally instances here that just inherited someone else's module and refused to do any changes for _3_ _years_ straight, for fear of breaking code that's well beyond their skill or knowledge.)
Hmm... kinda makes me wonder
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· Score: 4, Insightful
You know, I sorta wonder about the generalization that everyone who left, was in it just for the money, and everyone who stayed is passionate about it.
I personally know people who left a field or a job precisely _because_ they were passionate about it... and it had turned into something they disliked. E.g., we have at least 3 people here alone, who used to program assembly since the days of mainframes and long before dot-coms, and then left for other completely unrelated jobs (2 of them became marketters and 1 trained to be a usability expert) when basically the job was no longer what they liked to do.
Loving computers and programming is sometimes _the_ best way to _hate_ an IT or programming job, respectively.
People liked coding a smart algorithm or maybe a cute game at home, they had their peer recognition for being good with computer in university, and... then moved into a real world that doesn't even vaguely resemble that. In the real world they:
- got bogged in hundreds of hours of verbal-masturbation meetings,
- were forced to do overtime for someone _else's_ mistake (e.g., the boss being too weak to tell the customer that completely changing the program needs more time and budget),
- were asked to implement blatantly wrong specs, or use the blatantly wrong tools, just because a PHB (own or client's) said so and wasn't gonna take feedback from a lowly peon. (The nice salesman says it's the perfect "solution" for anything, so now go make it work. If it doesn't work, it's your fault, not the nice salesman's.)
- had to wrestle with systems that wouldn't have been the wrong tools as such, but were wrongly configured and piss-poorly adminned by some other corporate department that's above the law,
- had to deal with co-workers that were annoying in a miriad of ways (ranging from the 400 pound stinking geek, to office backstabbers, to people who are utterly incompetent and lazy but awesome at selling snake oil to the boss, to whatever else),
- were forced to do stuff that really had nothing to do with the job they had signed for, such as being the poor-man's marketer instead of a programmer,
- were asked to do blatantly unethical stuff, like to actively lie to a customer,
Etc.
And some of us just learned to shrug and deal with it. Some left the job. And I think it's a bit unfair to just lump them into the same category as those who were in it just for the dot-com's money.
You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
E.g., according to real studies, 3 out of 4 "programmers" just can't program. E.g., about 2 out of 3 don't even know the basics of the language they're paid to program in. Yes, males included. Doesn't really have anything to do with gender.
The dot-con fraud attracted a _lot_ of frauds in this field. The dot-cons were throwing other people's money out the window with both hands, just to show that they can. People with less brains or economic sense than a garden snail, had found themselves in a bunch of money, and had no idea what to do with them... other than show the Joneses that they too can spend like the big boys. Fast cars, huge headquarters, corporate airplanes for a tiny startup, or expensive programmers, it was just conspicuous consumption. (I.e., same as having a massive gold watch, just to show the neighbours who's rich. Doesn't even have to be a good watch: it just has to look blatantly expensive.)
And they hired _anyone_. Literally _any_ drooling ex-burger-flipper was suddenly employable in IT or programming. People who were too stupid to operate a cash register, were ok as "web application developpers" or whatever.
Lots of them, preferrably. Having 20 programmers and 30 artists for a 3 page web site was _cool_. Made the PHB feel like he too can play with the big boys' corporations.
And unsurprisingly, a lot did fake a resume and move into IT or programming. A whole caste of fraudsters was created whose _only_ skill was marketting themselves. They too "deserved" the big bucks, a sports car and a plasma TV, and were not gonna let utter lack of skill and knowledge get in the way of their American Dream.
It had nothing to do with liking to use a computer, or having any skill or inclination. Most not only had none, they didn't even try to learn either. They just "deserved" the money, they didn't actually want to start working for them.
And I don't think that being male or female played that big a role there. If there weren't 50% females there, if anything, makes me suspect they're more honest. Because anything to do with skill or liking computers, it sure didn't have.
Actually, probably more like the yet other way around:
Michael Dell calls Intel and says, "You know, we're sorta considering AMD... again. How much of a discount do you give us not to?"
Big customers do that kind of thing all the time.
_And_ witness the recurring joke of Dell dropping hints, or outright shooting its mouth off, that it considers using AMD for a change. No, really. This time they mean it.
At one point they even went as far as to let you order a replacement Athlon on their site, in case you had a (non-existent) Dell system with an Athlon in it. Got all the AMD fans sure that Dell will actually launch such a system in the next month.
Except invariably it doesn't actually happen. And next year the exact same joke starts all over again.
In case you were wondering WTF that's all about, or worse yet if you ever took that seriously or though "oh well, maybe next year, when AMD has enough fabs/MHz/dual-core/whatever", you now know what really happened there: Dell was about to negotiate their discount from Intel. So they first put up the "if we don't get enough of it, this time we might actually use AMD" racket.
I know that you're not the one advocating censorship, but I hope you'll excuse me if nitpick on your blaming it on the Internet anyway. Because while you don't advocate censorship, it's _the_ kind of rationalization that gets others to advocate it.
I find the "I am quite confident that I would never have attempted suicide if I didn't have access to the Internet" statement to be at best a particular case. Wouldn't you? If you were at the depression stage where you curled up on the floor, and found relief in visualizing your own suicide, I don't think you were that far from making that step. With or without Internet. Maybe _you_ wouldn't have nevertheless, but a lot of other people snap at _much_ lower stress levels. Again, with or without Internet.
Thing is, people haven't started committing suicide when they got Internet. It has happened for thousands of years before computers. It also happened just as well in countries in Eastern Europe during communism, where noone had Internet and only a handful had computers at home at all.
What's different? A lot of those did it all wrong, and ended up crippled. And more depressed than before, typically. Dunno if that counts as an improvement.
Look at your own first paragraph. _How_ and _why_ did you know, for example, that slitting your wrists can destroy your tendons? I'll tell you why: because information about suicide was freely available.
Now picture a perfectly policed society, where noone's allowed to talk about what works and what doesn't in a suicide, and noone does. Will that stop people from trying? Nope. But they'll pick their "info" from movies and novels, and end up crippled.
Like they'll think that cutting one's wrists is some 100% effective thing, because some novel has a suicide like that in it. (A certain Dean Koontz novel comes to mind.) Except they'll just cripple their hands, and have trouble even finding work after that. (Picture having to type like that. Heck, even operating a cash register at McDonalds would be a pain.)
Or they'll jump off the house and just end up in a wheelchair. One of mom's co-workers was crippled because he jumped off a window, and not even a high enough one.
Or they'll shoot themselves in the head, and just end up paralyzed. Very conscious, just paralyzed. And if that doesn't get one more depressed than they started, I don't know what will.
So basically I think that there is a lot of good too in that abbundance of information. It keeps people from doing it all wrong.
That's the thing I wish more people would understand already. That being depressed doesn't mean being an irrational retard all of a sudden.
Now I haven't ever received a "don't suicide" talk, but I was on the receiving end of more than one canned ISO-standard "no need to be depressed" talk. You don't even need to whine about depression to get one out of some people. Just mentioning something like "this is sorta depressing" or "I feel kinda depressed today" causes a knee-jerk reaction in some people to mechanically give you a "no need to be depressed" talk.
And those talks are soo stupid, they usually just eventually get me from "sorta depressed" to "enraged homicidal psycho".
I mean, yeah, no shit that I don't _need_ to be depressed. I sooo needed them to tell me that. I mean, geesh. It's not like I sat there, had a rational analysis of the situation, and decided "yep, the only rational thing to do there is to have a jolly good depression."
Well, either way, thanks. It made my day that someone somewhere knows better than to do that.
Well, that's exactly the point I was trying to make: if they want help, they can always just ask for help.
But on the other hand, it's also that I think everyone should be free to do whatever they damn please with their own life. I think the world would be a lot better a place, including yes less reasons to end up with enough pain to want to suicide, if everyone stopped trying to rule everyone else's life and trying to tell them how (or if) to live it.
So if they ask for help, I'll help. If they want to talk, I'll listen. But if they decided to end their life, hey, it's their decision to make. Could be for some really stupid reason (like wanting attention), or a rational decision that it's not worth continuing it all, it's their life, their decision. I'm not gonna try to override it.
Dunno, personally I've made it a point to tell some variant of "yeah, go do it" to anyone playing the suicidal role.
Thing is, I don't believe that they actually want to die. They just want to get saved and get attention. If you will, a rather extreme RL variant of what we call "trolling" on the net: causing grief to get attention.
E.g., sorry, I don't believe that a school mate "suiciding" on sleeping pills while her mom and family were at home can count as a honest suicide attempt. And for such a blatant reason as that she thought her mom loves her sisters more than her. It just says "please save me and cry".
And much as I'm tempted to apply Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"), we're not talking the village idiot here. We're talking an _extremely_ intelligent girl.
So to cut a long story short, my theory is that they're either:
A) trolling for attention, in which case I'm just applying the "don't feed the troll" principle. If they actually get enough attention with the "waah, I want to commit suicide" act, they might actually talk themselves into doing it. On the other hand, "yeah, go do it, noone gives a damn if you do. And here's some good ways to do it, btw" will usually lose a friend, but might well keep them from actually doing it.
And if they still do, might as well have enough info to succeed. Think of it as the Darwin Awards. Anyone stupid enough to actually try a suicide for attention, well, I see no real problem with helping them remove themselves from the gene pool.
B) actually honestly want to end it all. In which case, I can't see any reason to keep them from doing it. It's their life, it's entirely their decision how to live it. Or whether to live it or not.
Keeping them uninformed is gonna solve... what? Get them to do something extremely stupid and end up _crippled_ instead? Yeah, that sooo solves their problems;)
I fail to see why it's excusable to advertise false (lower)prices, just because it's on the Internet.
Here's a novel idea: If they didn't plan to update the prices on the site, how about not writing any prices on the site to start with? Prices are _not_ static constant content by any stretch of imagination. If they run a shop, mom-and-pop or not, they already know this.
I don't think they'd print a huge batch of menus/posters/fliers/whatever and keep using them for years after the prices changed, either. So they already _knew_ that prices change.
So sorry to rain on your parrade, but I don't see it as an excuse. Anyone who got made a web site by a web master, and saw _prices_ on that page, should have at least asked "well, what if those prices change"? Again, anyone who owns a shop or ever _worked_ in one even as a temp, that's the _first_ thing they learned about prices.
So here's a novel idea: if they werent malicious, they're complete cretins. And I fail to see why idiocy should be an excuse.
The whole article seems to be more of an exercise in faith and wishful thinking, than anything, you know, review-like. It all goes in circles around basically the same kind of leaps of faith.
E.g., yeah, after a week they're still slower with it in photoshop, but they have faith that with more use it would be as good as a mouse.
E.g., yeah, after a week they still keep running out of roller space before reaching the edge of the screen with the cursor, but they have faith that with enough use they'd be as good with it as with a mouse.
Etc.
I'd be willing to believe something like "hey, we used it for a month and we finally _are_ better with it than with a mouse." But that's not what they said. They keep just having faith that sometime in the future it'll happen.
Sorry, that's not a review, that's bullshit. It's not saying what does happen, it's taking wild guesses at what might eventually happen. And if I wanted to base a purchase on wild guesses, I'd take my own.
Actually, the employers can and do give you a recommendation at the end. Or call the previous employer to ask. So yes, they _are_ telling other employers (the only ones interested) what they thought about you.
Blogs aren't the alpha and omega, much as some of their proponents like to pretend that they're the most important ones to walk the Earth since Jesus. Just because the employer doesn't egg you in a blog, or because the office backstabbing you might have received and not even know about, wasn't on a blog, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
So I fail to see why that relationship should be uni-directional.
And I do think that work conditions at a company should be publicly available knowledge. If this reduces the number of candidates, tough shit, they should work at solving the problem, not at stopping everyone from talking about it.
I'm not against companies or agains capitalism in any way, but I think that one side already has far more power than it should in job negotiations. I don't think they need or deserve a sacred right to lie there too. When you sign a contract, any contract, I do believe that both sides have a right to know what they're getting there. I don't thing con schemes based on outright lies are the kind of contract that (theoretical) capitalism was supposed to be based on.
I believe that, for example, those EA slaves should have had a right to know in advance that they're signing to be used, abused, chewed and spit out on a slave farm. Answering "yes" to some massive euphemism like "are you willing to occasionally do overtime" and then finding out it really then means being overworked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with occasional sundays off for good behavious, is nothing short of a con. Those people should have had a right to know what work conditions are they signing for.
But I really mean _both_ sides. On the flip side, I also do think that a company should have the right to know when they're hiring just a liar with a faked resume and no willingness to learn.
E.g., I've mentioned before the co-worker that couldn't even write code that compiled. At all. So he first begged some co-workers to help, and then tried to backstab them.
Well, that one was such a master of resume faking. According to his resume before working for us, he was chief architect and/or top programmer for a dozen projects before. Never mind that he couldn't code at all. And after he got fired, some co-workers found his new resume online, where he claimed to be the chief architect and programming team leader for the project here too. Never mind that in reality he was just a nobody that never produced any working code or design, and got fired for it after 3 months. Nah, not according to his resume.
So, yes, I wouldn't mind it if companies would start a blog about such employees.
Slashdot Mirror
1. I never said only some should live by those rules. I do want them to apply to _everyone_, not just a subset. Doesn't matter if I like them or not. Doesn't matter if they're a corporation, or a country, or a garage band publishing their own MP3s on the Internet.
Once something is published, copyright should _not_ be a way to "unpublish" it. For anyone. Ever. That's my whole point.
2. I'm not saying that government should come to your house, raid your diary, and post it on the web. In fact, the government shouldn't do anything whatsoever.
But if you did publish an embarassing story or novel or song with your high school band, you shouldn't be allowed to "unpublish" it. If people still want to buy that story or song or novel, they should be able to either buy it or legally copy it.
Again, that is assuming that you did publish it once to start with.
True, you have a very good point there. Allowing for inflation seems only fair. I don't intend to rip those people off, after all.
In Java: Because you do a comparison like "i array.length", that's why. Java arrays already contain the length. In C terms, a Java array is really an object containing the actual array _and_ the length.
That's why Java:
1. Can throw an Exception when you address out of bounds, instead of having a buffer overflow exploit.
2. Can know when you've already compared that variable to the bounds, so it doesn't have to again. A "for (i = 0; i arrayVariable.length; i++)", and no other touching "i" inside the loop, already tells the compiler that "i" is never less than zero, and never can exceed the array length.
In C: Because C arrays don't.
In other words, nothing personal, but you just confirmed my point. Those who don't have some prior knowledge, don't know how to filter what works and what doesn't.
If the company isn't selling those old comics any more, how is it profitting from them any more to start with? What would the income lost there? The exactly zero dollars that they're losing there?
And if re-printing old comics would be so profitable for you, what's keeping the copyright owner from doing the same? I mean, they don't even have the scanning costs in that equation?
Basically all I'm saying is that I _do_ support the idea that "ok, you're allowed to make money from creating something." But then comes the moment they're _not_, in fact, either making any money or even trying to make any money out of it. Then it seems to me like we're way past the point and the scope of what copyright was supposed to solve.
But I'm also for keeping in mind what copyright was supposed to solve: making those works _available_. The moment that's no longer happening, it seems to me like the copyright no longer fulfills its _main_ role and function.
As I've said: as long as it's still profitable to print those old comics (again, they don't have the scanning costs, so it's easier for them to be profitable than it is for you), sure, let them keep the copyright.
You'll also notice that I didn't really put any limits there on _how_ it is to be delivered. I just said I should be able to order it, for no more than the original price. It can be a PDF, if it's a book, or it can be printed-to-order on a nearby color laser printer for comics, or whatever. They just have to keep making it _available_ to keep the copyright.
Because, as I've said, that was the whole idea of copyright to start with. It was _not_ just supposed to support corporate money. So I hardly think it's that unreasonable to expect it to actually fulfill that promise.
Well, I never said I want it to be unlimited or anything. So we can easily aggree upon that part.
;)
But on the issue of taxes:
<sarcasm type="heavy">
Yes, and _my_ taxes are used to protect your car from burglars and thieves. Hey, I don't own a car, so I shouldn't pay for it. Right?
_My_ taxes are used for government AIDS cure research. Hey, I don't screw everyone in sight, so why the heck should I have to pay for that? Let them just die, I say
_My_ taxes are used to build highways. Maybe even the one you drive on to work. WTF? I always get a flat very near the company, so I don't have to commute. Why the heck should I pay for all those commuters? No, really.
_My_ taxes go into funding the school system. Piss-poor and under-funded as it is. Or to give a tax break to people with kids. Blah. I have no kids. Why should I pay for that? No, really? Did anyone even ask me if I want to subsidize everyone who's too stupid to use a condom? And let them pay out of their own pocket for their kid's schooling.
</sarcasm>
Again, that was sarcasm, if anyone can't tell. I am _not_ really advocating any of that.
I'm sure you probably get the idea already. Yes, society sometimes must use taxes to enforce things that are considered beneficial for society as a _whole_. Yes, there might be people who do not _directly_ get a ROI on their money, but the idea is that on the whole you get more good than bad out of it.
In this case, the whole copyright thing actually costs you _very_ little. Other than the copyright office itself, most other things are handled by lawsuits between companies. Or between companies and individuals.
You might notice, for example, that even the much villified RIAA lawsuits didn't involve the FBI taking the suspects into custody, nor a DA doing a criminal style prosecution. So that part has cost you exactly nothing.
So, well, I hope you'll excuse me if you're not getting much compassion out of me, over the fact that a couple of cents out of your taxes (and mine) go into sponsoring the common good. I do believe that on the whole the benefits far outweight those few cents.
The _only_ people publishing stuff purely for recognition seem to be newbie programmers.
Everyone else is paid for it, even if their work is then included in an OSS project. E.g., OpenOffice is paid for by Sun. So is NetBeans. E.g., Eclipse is mostly IBM's work. E.g., as I've said, check some of the submissions in your average Linux distro. Check out how many of them are paid employees of IBM, Novell, Sun, RedHat, etc.
But let's get back to the actual ones that publish stuff actually written 100% unpaid for, and 100% for recognition. The problem is that invariably they're (1) _only_ the programmers, (2) never polish their work to any degree of usability, and (3) newbies.
1. E.g., one problem most OSS software projects have is the utter lack of usability specialists, good graphics artists, technical writers, etc. Sure, you might find some newbie CS student publishing his newest Pac-Man clone for peer-recognition. You almost _never_ however find also some graphics artist involved to make the graphics, nor someone who could write a good manual, nor more than 1-2 simple levels for their games because good level designers never joined. (E.g., try Pingus someday. Great game engine, but it never got more than the tutorial levels.)
And that also means that other domains would be practically non-existant, because they're not software hacks. E.g., good luck finding someone who'll come over and take professional photos at your wedding, just for fame and recognition. E.g., while every teen dreams of being a famous novelist, I can't remember any good novels that were just posted on the Internet for fame and recognition. E.g., good luck waiting for a good movie to be made purely for fame and recognition: those cost quite a bit to make, even if you don't go for overpaid stars, so everyone will want to recoup their investment one way or another.
2. An invariable problem of projects made purely for fame and recognition, is the lack of polish. And I mean above and beyond the fact that they couldn't find a usability expert that wants to work for free.
See, everyone wants to code great hacks or great algorithms for fame and recognition. "W00t, my clever BitFlipSort works 3 times faster" or "W00t, my clever use of B-trees makes the whole search faster" are things you can (A) brag about, and (B) get done in an afternoon. On the other hand, "I spent 2 months making a good usable GUI for it, and another month writing a good manual" is neither. It's just plain old work and no bragging rights. Not many will do it.
3. They're invariably newbies, and the results are invariably of very limited scope, complexity and quality. Sad to say, I haven't found any professional project that was made purely for fame and glory.
To put it otherwise, yeah, writing a monolythic 0.01 kernel is something a bored hacker might do just for fame and recognition. Turning it into an enterprise multi-platform OS, on the other hand, that involved a helluva lot of paid people.
But even that 0.01 kernel is already something _way_ over the level of usual works made purely for fame and glory. Most of them are barely at the level of "hey, look, I too made a buggy Windows or X calculator."
So to cut an already long story short, I really wouldn't fancy a future where everyone is done just for recognition. I very much prefer being able to go to the shop and buy a good program, than wait for a bored hacker to make a piss-poor approximation of it in his free time.
What I find all wrong about copyright, as it is right now, is that it also gives the right to _kill_ a work of art or a program. You can buy the copyright to something for the _sole_ purpose of burying it 6 ft deep. I.e., making sure no more copies of it will be made.
Which was _not_ the purpose of copyright in the first place. The idea was to secure a source of income for those publishing books, _but_ that was only a means to another end: having those books available to society. Using copyright as a way to make them UNavailable, is IMHO contrary to the whole spirit and idea of copyright.
And just for the sake of a wanton comparison with Soviet Russia, I find it stupid that while we all were/are outraged when a dictatorship tries to suppress a book, we all shrug and find it normal when a corporation does the same via copyright. I mean, geesh, Stalin could have just bought the exclusive distribution rights in the USSR of the exact same works, and killed them via copyright, and we'd all suddenly no longer find it abhominable. It would be just normal business. Think about it.
So IMHO the copyright should only last as long as people can still order that book or program or music from you, for no more than the original price (i.e., no "yeah, it's still available, but we'll charge 10,000,000$ for it" scams), and have it delivered within a reasonable time frame. The moment that's no longer possible, the copyright should become public domain.
It would also be a self-regulating kinda thing. It's up to the company in case to decide when it's no longer profitable to keep that stock of old books, just for the 1-2 people per year still ordering it. When they decide it's no longer profitable to play that game, sure, make it public domain. But ffs, don't bury it.
Personally I have no problem with "copyright as enforced monopoly", because frankly that was the whole idea with copyright to start with. You give them a temporary "monopoly", in exchange for getting those works from them in the first place.
Thing is, most people only work for money. Yeah, in open source too. Check out the email addresses of contributors to all major components of Linux. Most work _is_ done by people paid to do so, even if they're paid by some OSS company.
So copyright is a way to say "ok, if you do publish a book, here's how we'll allow you to make money out of it."
I see nothing wrong with that. I _am_ willing to buy a good book, or a movie, or a music CD, rather than not have it available at all.
"Why your work should be available for free" demagogue theories are good and fine, but in practice it never works that way: practically _noone_ works for free nowadays. The freeloaders actually get something paid for by someone else, not for free. E.g., everyone who downloaded a SuSE Linux ISO for free, rest assured that SuSE's work was paid for by people like me who bought the boxed distro repeatedly. E.g., everyone who has some free Linux distro installed on ReiserFS, can know that ReiserFS was sponsored by SuSE, so again, it was people like me whose money went into making that.
So, again, I have nothing against copyright as a way for authors to make money. Beats not having those works available in the first place. Maybe it's not the perfect system, but it's the best we have so far.
Well, from my experience it's not as much "not having the foresight to [...] secure the rights to the code", but thinking they're soo smart and save so much money for explicitly not wanting the code to start with. Maybe (probably?) even explicitly negotiating a lower cost to get the program without source code, or without rights to do much with that source code.
It happens more often than you'd think, and it's not as much lack of foresight, as some beancounter having no fucking clue about maintenance or development. So they negotiated a contract that came back and bit them in the ass. And probably were proud of negotiating it that way, and I wouldn't be too surprised if they got a bonus for saving the big bucks.
And, to be honest, it's not just the beancounters: I'd say some 90%+ of programmers have no clue about maintenance either, and think write-only code is cool and l33t. Hey, looky, I coded it in half the time! I'm teh greatest programmer evar! And if you ever need any changes or bug fixes, hey, you only need to throw it all away and start from scratch. (What that means by the 3'rd change, is left as an exercise to the reader.)
And sometimes later they thought they'd be "smart" and shaft the company, by sharing code that they didn't buy the rights to in the first place. I mean, eh, Company B says they'll do the maintenance for less money than Company A, so let's just give them Company A's code that we didn't pay for. And probably patted themselves on the back for saving the big bucks again. Hey, stealing someone's code beats buying it, right?
And before someone comes and pipes up the usual "see, that's why OSS is better", think about it. These guys, yeah, _could_ have paid to have an OSS version designed from the ground up. But that would have probably just cost more. They just wanted the cheapest thing they could buy, even at the expense of not having any rights to the code. As I've said, they probably were _proud_ that they saved money by not wanting the source code.
It's not about OSS-vs-closed-source. It's just a story of one particularly greedy and stupid customer breaking a contract to save a buck.
Take any topic from politics to computing to medicine to god-knows-what. You'll get some tens to hundreds of thousands of hits, 90% of them written by bloggers talking out of the ass, and 90% of the rest obsolete.
E.g., I kid you not, on the German-language wikipedia there was a comprehensive article about cloned _didgeridoos_. Including pictures of little didgeridoos in test tubes.
E.g., if you google for Java techniques, you still find such Java 1.0 "optimizations" (and debatably not even true back in Java 1.0) as using exceptions instead of a loop counter. E.g., that to iterate through an array you should write a monstrosity like:On account that, meh, Java checks the bounds for you at each array indexing every time (and throws an exception if accessing beyond the end) anyway, so no point in checking the value of "i" yourself too. Makes sense, right?
Too bad it's false. Any modern Java JIT compiler will optimize away the index bounds check, if the value of "i" was already compared to the array length. So there is no speed gain from the above "optimization". Au contraire, because of the exception, it will actually be orders of magnitude slower.
And I'm not getting into the maintenance problems there. E.g., what if sometime in the future the do_something() method will use internally another array, and be able to throw the same exception itself for a real error? Oops, the exception was silently swallowed, and only maybe a quarter of the actual data was actually processed. I'm sure everyone will be pleased, for example, when only a quarter of the bank accounts get interest, or only a quarter of a company's orders are processed.
That's the whole problem and answer to your "who needs to learn" question. Without some actual knowledge, filtering the good data from such bullshit is plain impossible.
The reason you can still filter such crap is that you did already learn some stuff, and can discern what sounds plausible (i.e., matches what you've already learned) from what doesn't. E.g., when you find some scam ad for a magical sticker that can extend a battery's life by just being glued to the outside of the case, if you already know _some_ physics, you'll know why it's bullshit.
On the other hand, people who _didn't_ learn much, they're the ones falling prey to such scams. If you also wire them to Google and encourge them to not even try to learn anything ever... well, I _really_ pity them.
Well, I rode the dot-con wave like everyone else, and made nice money out of it. Arguably, I _still_ make money out of it. That stuff did count on the resume, so the next job after the dot-con went bust, actually pays better.
So I guess I shouldn't be complaining.
Still, dunno, I can't shake the feeling that the whole thing is one ludicrious drain of society's resources. Never before have so many people been paid so much for... nothing. And that's before including the expenses for hardware, software, buildings, etc, to go with them.
Computers _could_ have done so much for society. Except they got in the hands of people who hadn't got a clue what to do with them. So they rarely got used for more than corporate ego-stroking and entertainment. I don't even mean "video games" when I say "entertainment". I mean making some PHB feel good that his dick... err... department is bigger than yours. Ludicrious numbers of huge projects are started not because of some need, or not then used to actually help that need, but because someone had no clue. They didn't really understand what computers can do for them, but they know that they have to use computers somehow.
The dot-con was just the apex of that. The visible tip of the iceberg. But below the waves, lies ten times as much waste, for just as little benefits.
And, dunno, I just can't stop wondering whether that massive waste of resources is really good for society as a whole. A lot more good could have been done with that money and effort. Like opening a few new factories. Or doing some real research. Or if we're to dump hundreds of billions into it, might as well do it in a way that benefits everyone: e.g., raising the minimum wage. Those people at the bottom need the money more than the resume fraudsters.
But that's probably just me. Shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that.
If you think that being discriminated against means being given a comfy office job, you're waay off the mark.
;)
It more like means that is that you'll be pushed in a stereotypical, but crap paid job.
Like receptionist. Nothing says "equality" to some companies like having a black and/or woman as receptionist. It's right in the front, so, hey, everyone can see how equal they are to women and minorities.
Or like waitress, dish washer, supermarket cashier, etc. I think you'll find more women pegged in that kind of low-pay jobs than in offices.
And outcry about shortage of men in _crap_ high-stress low-pay jobs like teaching? Well, gee, that's so discriminated. I soo feel sorry for poor you, being denied that job and having to do with a high-paid office job instead.
Or nurses. Well, gee, males are so unfairly discriminated. They get to be the well paid doctors, while those lucky women get to change bedsheets and bedpans for a fraction of the pay.
I mean, gee, that must be as discriminated against as the whites were on the southern plantations. I mean, all those lucky blacks got dream jobs like picking cotton, while the poor whites were pegged into roles like plantation owners and merchants
That was some heavy sarcasm, if anyone can tell. And disgust.
Now seriously: If you think there's some sexist conspiracy that keeps you from teaching as a male, go apply for that job at some inner-city school. You might find that they'll take you in an instant, and noone will start harrassing you because you're male. And noone will ask stupid gender-related questions. Nor ask you to work twice as much as a woman teacher to be considered equal, in spite of your "obvious" gender handicap.
Dunno, whenever I see this kind of "waah, but they have all the (insert crap low-pay work) jobs" and "why don't they also take the (insert other crap line of work) jobs, then?" demagogue rhetoric, it just makes me wanna puke. I've heard it about women, I've heard it about blacks, I've heard it about foreigners, etc.
It invariably just means "but I really want to keep getting an undeserved privilege, not for any personal merits, but just because I happened to be born the right gender/race/nationality/whatever. And I'll scream and moan against any comparison of _merits_ and _skills_, instead of that undeserved privilege." Which is just disgusting.
Lemme tell you why I also don't believe the problem is as clear cut and biologic as you seem to think.
You see, as I've mentioned several times before, I happen to have some first hand experience with Eastern Europe during communism and the cold war. The funny thing about Soviet-style communism is that, at least in theory, they were really hammering on the gender equality idea. (Of course, theory and practice still often diverged nevertheless.)
And you know what? They had a _ton_ of good programmers that were women. Damn good programmers, in fact. Also a ton of physicsts, doctors, mathematicians, engineers, etc. And an almost 50-50 distribution in college students. Including, yes, in CS and electronics.
So the problem _is_ a social one, not some biologic/genetic pre-destination. (Unless you're willing to tell me that they had some rare genetic strain of women;) It's also a complex one. It can't be reduced strictly to "males are sexist", either.
For a start, there was no stigma in being good at maths or science. It was a pride. The whole social system artiffically put nerds at the top, and made sure they're much better paid than, say, plumbers are.
So there was a helluva lot of an economic incentive to actually become a doctor or an engineer, as opposed to just a pretty and popular airhead.
And the whole school system was a rather brutal exercise in selecting who can learn, from who can't. They didn't have some watered-down "science" class in school. They did physics, chemistry, and maths in high school at a level comparable to what you'd get in the USA only in a college of that profile. E.g., they actually learned quantum physics in high school.
The idea was not to have it all at a level where everyone can understand it. The idea was to filter those maybe 10% who can, from those who can't. Being among those who did, was seen as a thing of _pride_.
Also, their education really hammered on the idea of equality. E.g., in the USSR they had even books about female military heroes of WW2. The whole message was, "yes, you too can do everything that the guys can!"
So, on the whole, what we have here is a massive difference in social- and peer-pressure.
The girlfriend you base your generalization on, was told by society that _the_ way to go is to forget those childhood dreams of being a chemist or doctor, and just be a popular skinny airhead. That's the message we give to kids in the west.
On the other hand, the message they got back then and there, was the exact opposite. "Hang on to that dream. Fight your way uphil through the education system, and actually become that engineer or scientist or doctor. Being an intellectual is _good_."
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Soviet-style society and enforcing an unnatural social structure, was viable. Their system did go bankrupt, after all.
But incidentally it also did show that, if given the proper motivation and peer-pressure, their women could and did make just as good programmers, engineers and scientists as the men.
The studies are real. My personal experience just seems to "confirm" them. As in, you know, looking around the office I can really believe that number.
Heh. So then it's just an exercise in sexism, eh?
No, I stand by what I wrote there. From personal experience, 3 out of 4 men I've worked with, were utterly and totally incompetent.
Thing is, men really _aren't_ natural-born tech experts they try to sound like. (And I'm one, so I think I'm allowed to say that.) Maybe a bit more interested in tech stuff, but definitely _not_ naturally inclined to actually be competent at it.
We've just received an idiotic education where if you have a dick, you _must_ do the macho thing and fix your own car/computer/radio/whatever. Most men seem to have had the idiotic notion hammered into their head that if they don't open their car's hood (and ruin the car in the process), it's like admitting sexual impotence or worse. That you have to _prove_ you have a dick, by doing all sorts of stupid or dangerous stuff personally.
But as I've said, that doesn't actually make them competent. They just use massive selective confirmation to promote minor trivial achievements into meaning some technical expertise. "W00t, I changed the oil! I'm such a total expert in car mechanics! I know all about cars!" Not.
And when it _doesn't_ go well, it's selective confirmation to the rescue again. It's quickly shoved behind an excuse and discarded. In 2-3 days it's back to the old, "Hey, I'm still the greatest technology expert ever! I never made a mistake!" (Except those dozens of times which got conveniently "forgotten.")
E.g., dear old dad almost zapped himself to death about a dozen times, rather than just call an electrician. And lemme tell you, getting zapped by a 230V socked it bad enough. Getting zapped by the TV he opened to try to fix himself, now that muscle spasm smashed him into a wall, and left him there for a while. There's some really high voltage inside those. But that, of course, wouldn't stop him from thinking that he's God's gift to any tech device. 'Cause if he wasn't, he'd be like, you know, not man enough.
E.g., every Real Man knows that men are perfect drivers, unlike those women who can't even steer in a straight line. Too bad it's actually false. Insurance company statistics say that, per 100 km driven, a man is _twice_ as likely to cause an accident as a woman is. Unlike the popular myth, according to actual accident statistics, being a macho testosterone machine doesn't make one an expert driver... quite au contraire. It makes one more likely to drive in a reckless and dangerous manner.
E.g., the same pre-conception and selective confirmation goes for computers too. Any idiot who can write 5 lines in BASIC on their parent's computer, or launch someone else's compile script, thinks that his Y chromosome makes him God's gift to computers. W00t, typing those few lines was such a major achievement and surely making him the greatest expert to ever walk the Earth.
Sorry, nope. Being able to "emerge KDE" does _not_ make one a computer expert. And writing a "hello world" does _not_ make one a programmer.
Actual competence starts around the point where your team did a project worth at _least_ 100,000 lines, and which didn't fail miserably. (Of course, that means divided into modules, programs, whatever.) And where your contribution was actually a substantial enough slice of that. (Not like some Wally instances here that just inherited someone else's module and refused to do any changes for _3_ _years_ straight, for fear of breaking code that's well beyond their skill or knowledge.)
You know, I sorta wonder about the generalization that everyone who left, was in it just for the money, and everyone who stayed is passionate about it.
I personally know people who left a field or a job precisely _because_ they were passionate about it... and it had turned into something they disliked. E.g., we have at least 3 people here alone, who used to program assembly since the days of mainframes and long before dot-coms, and then left for other completely unrelated jobs (2 of them became marketters and 1 trained to be a usability expert) when basically the job was no longer what they liked to do.
Loving computers and programming is sometimes _the_ best way to _hate_ an IT or programming job, respectively.
People liked coding a smart algorithm or maybe a cute game at home, they had their peer recognition for being good with computer in university, and... then moved into a real world that doesn't even vaguely resemble that. In the real world they:
- got bogged in hundreds of hours of verbal-masturbation meetings,
- were forced to do overtime for someone _else's_ mistake (e.g., the boss being too weak to tell the customer that completely changing the program needs more time and budget),
- were asked to implement blatantly wrong specs, or use the blatantly wrong tools, just because a PHB (own or client's) said so and wasn't gonna take feedback from a lowly peon. (The nice salesman says it's the perfect "solution" for anything, so now go make it work. If it doesn't work, it's your fault, not the nice salesman's.)
- had to wrestle with systems that wouldn't have been the wrong tools as such, but were wrongly configured and piss-poorly adminned by some other corporate department that's above the law,
- had to deal with co-workers that were annoying in a miriad of ways (ranging from the 400 pound stinking geek, to office backstabbers, to people who are utterly incompetent and lazy but awesome at selling snake oil to the boss, to whatever else),
- were forced to do stuff that really had nothing to do with the job they had signed for, such as being the poor-man's marketer instead of a programmer,
- were asked to do blatantly unethical stuff, like to actively lie to a customer,
Etc.
And some of us just learned to shrug and deal with it. Some left the job. And I think it's a bit unfair to just lump them into the same category as those who were in it just for the dot-com's money.
E.g., according to real studies, 3 out of 4 "programmers" just can't program. E.g., about 2 out of 3 don't even know the basics of the language they're paid to program in. Yes, males included. Doesn't really have anything to do with gender.
The dot-con fraud attracted a _lot_ of frauds in this field. The dot-cons were throwing other people's money out the window with both hands, just to show that they can. People with less brains or economic sense than a garden snail, had found themselves in a bunch of money, and had no idea what to do with them... other than show the Joneses that they too can spend like the big boys. Fast cars, huge headquarters, corporate airplanes for a tiny startup, or expensive programmers, it was just conspicuous consumption. (I.e., same as having a massive gold watch, just to show the neighbours who's rich. Doesn't even have to be a good watch: it just has to look blatantly expensive.)
And they hired _anyone_. Literally _any_ drooling ex-burger-flipper was suddenly employable in IT or programming. People who were too stupid to operate a cash register, were ok as "web application developpers" or whatever.
Lots of them, preferrably. Having 20 programmers and 30 artists for a 3 page web site was _cool_. Made the PHB feel like he too can play with the big boys' corporations.
And unsurprisingly, a lot did fake a resume and move into IT or programming. A whole caste of fraudsters was created whose _only_ skill was marketting themselves. They too "deserved" the big bucks, a sports car and a plasma TV, and were not gonna let utter lack of skill and knowledge get in the way of their American Dream.
It had nothing to do with liking to use a computer, or having any skill or inclination. Most not only had none, they didn't even try to learn either. They just "deserved" the money, they didn't actually want to start working for them.
And I don't think that being male or female played that big a role there. If there weren't 50% females there, if anything, makes me suspect they're more honest. Because anything to do with skill or liking computers, it sure didn't have.
Actually, probably more like the yet other way around:
Michael Dell calls Intel and says, "You know, we're sorta considering AMD... again. How much of a discount do you give us not to?"
Big customers do that kind of thing all the time.
_And_ witness the recurring joke of Dell dropping hints, or outright shooting its mouth off, that it considers using AMD for a change. No, really. This time they mean it.
At one point they even went as far as to let you order a replacement Athlon on their site, in case you had a (non-existent) Dell system with an Athlon in it. Got all the AMD fans sure that Dell will actually launch such a system in the next month.
Except invariably it doesn't actually happen. And next year the exact same joke starts all over again.
In case you were wondering WTF that's all about, or worse yet if you ever took that seriously or though "oh well, maybe next year, when AMD has enough fabs/MHz/dual-core/whatever", you now know what really happened there: Dell was about to negotiate their discount from Intel. So they first put up the "if we don't get enough of it, this time we might actually use AMD" racket.
I know that you're not the one advocating censorship, but I hope you'll excuse me if nitpick on your blaming it on the Internet anyway. Because while you don't advocate censorship, it's _the_ kind of rationalization that gets others to advocate it.
I find the "I am quite confident that I would never have attempted suicide if I didn't have access to the Internet" statement to be at best a particular case. Wouldn't you? If you were at the depression stage where you curled up on the floor, and found relief in visualizing your own suicide, I don't think you were that far from making that step. With or without Internet. Maybe _you_ wouldn't have nevertheless, but a lot of other people snap at _much_ lower stress levels. Again, with or without Internet.
Thing is, people haven't started committing suicide when they got Internet. It has happened for thousands of years before computers. It also happened just as well in countries in Eastern Europe during communism, where noone had Internet and only a handful had computers at home at all.
What's different? A lot of those did it all wrong, and ended up crippled. And more depressed than before, typically. Dunno if that counts as an improvement.
Look at your own first paragraph. _How_ and _why_ did you know, for example, that slitting your wrists can destroy your tendons? I'll tell you why: because information about suicide was freely available.
Now picture a perfectly policed society, where noone's allowed to talk about what works and what doesn't in a suicide, and noone does. Will that stop people from trying? Nope. But they'll pick their "info" from movies and novels, and end up crippled.
Like they'll think that cutting one's wrists is some 100% effective thing, because some novel has a suicide like that in it. (A certain Dean Koontz novel comes to mind.) Except they'll just cripple their hands, and have trouble even finding work after that. (Picture having to type like that. Heck, even operating a cash register at McDonalds would be a pain.)
Or they'll jump off the house and just end up in a wheelchair. One of mom's co-workers was crippled because he jumped off a window, and not even a high enough one.
Or they'll shoot themselves in the head, and just end up paralyzed. Very conscious, just paralyzed. And if that doesn't get one more depressed than they started, I don't know what will.
So basically I think that there is a lot of good too in that abbundance of information. It keeps people from doing it all wrong.
But, alas, I've already posted in this thread.
That's the thing I wish more people would understand already. That being depressed doesn't mean being an irrational retard all of a sudden.
Now I haven't ever received a "don't suicide" talk, but I was on the receiving end of more than one canned ISO-standard "no need to be depressed" talk. You don't even need to whine about depression to get one out of some people. Just mentioning something like "this is sorta depressing" or "I feel kinda depressed today" causes a knee-jerk reaction in some people to mechanically give you a "no need to be depressed" talk.
And those talks are soo stupid, they usually just eventually get me from "sorta depressed" to "enraged homicidal psycho".
I mean, yeah, no shit that I don't _need_ to be depressed. I sooo needed them to tell me that. I mean, geesh. It's not like I sat there, had a rational analysis of the situation, and decided "yep, the only rational thing to do there is to have a jolly good depression."
Well, either way, thanks. It made my day that someone somewhere knows better than to do that.
Well, that's exactly the point I was trying to make: if they want help, they can always just ask for help.
But on the other hand, it's also that I think everyone should be free to do whatever they damn please with their own life. I think the world would be a lot better a place, including yes less reasons to end up with enough pain to want to suicide, if everyone stopped trying to rule everyone else's life and trying to tell them how (or if) to live it.
So if they ask for help, I'll help. If they want to talk, I'll listen. But if they decided to end their life, hey, it's their decision to make. Could be for some really stupid reason (like wanting attention), or a rational decision that it's not worth continuing it all, it's their life, their decision. I'm not gonna try to override it.
Dunno, personally I've made it a point to tell some variant of "yeah, go do it" to anyone playing the suicidal role.
;)
Thing is, I don't believe that they actually want to die. They just want to get saved and get attention. If you will, a rather extreme RL variant of what we call "trolling" on the net: causing grief to get attention.
E.g., sorry, I don't believe that a school mate "suiciding" on sleeping pills while her mom and family were at home can count as a honest suicide attempt. And for such a blatant reason as that she thought her mom loves her sisters more than her. It just says "please save me and cry".
And much as I'm tempted to apply Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"), we're not talking the village idiot here. We're talking an _extremely_ intelligent girl.
So to cut a long story short, my theory is that they're either:
A) trolling for attention, in which case I'm just applying the "don't feed the troll" principle. If they actually get enough attention with the "waah, I want to commit suicide" act, they might actually talk themselves into doing it. On the other hand, "yeah, go do it, noone gives a damn if you do. And here's some good ways to do it, btw" will usually lose a friend, but might well keep them from actually doing it.
And if they still do, might as well have enough info to succeed. Think of it as the Darwin Awards. Anyone stupid enough to actually try a suicide for attention, well, I see no real problem with helping them remove themselves from the gene pool.
B) actually honestly want to end it all. In which case, I can't see any reason to keep them from doing it. It's their life, it's entirely their decision how to live it. Or whether to live it or not.
Keeping them uninformed is gonna solve... what? Get them to do something extremely stupid and end up _crippled_ instead? Yeah, that sooo solves their problems
I fail to see why it's excusable to advertise false (lower)prices, just because it's on the Internet.
Here's a novel idea: If they didn't plan to update the prices on the site, how about not writing any prices on the site to start with? Prices are _not_ static constant content by any stretch of imagination. If they run a shop, mom-and-pop or not, they already know this.
I don't think they'd print a huge batch of menus/posters/fliers/whatever and keep using them for years after the prices changed, either. So they already _knew_ that prices change.
So sorry to rain on your parrade, but I don't see it as an excuse. Anyone who got made a web site by a web master, and saw _prices_ on that page, should have at least asked "well, what if those prices change"? Again, anyone who owns a shop or ever _worked_ in one even as a temp, that's the _first_ thing they learned about prices.
So here's a novel idea: if they werent malicious, they're complete cretins. And I fail to see why idiocy should be an excuse.
The whole article seems to be more of an exercise in faith and wishful thinking, than anything, you know, review-like. It all goes in circles around basically the same kind of leaps of faith.
E.g., yeah, after a week they're still slower with it in photoshop, but they have faith that with more use it would be as good as a mouse.
E.g., yeah, after a week they still keep running out of roller space before reaching the edge of the screen with the cursor, but they have faith that with enough use they'd be as good with it as with a mouse.
Etc.
I'd be willing to believe something like "hey, we used it for a month and we finally _are_ better with it than with a mouse." But that's not what they said. They keep just having faith that sometime in the future it'll happen.
Sorry, that's not a review, that's bullshit. It's not saying what does happen, it's taking wild guesses at what might eventually happen. And if I wanted to base a purchase on wild guesses, I'd take my own.
Actually, the employers can and do give you a recommendation at the end. Or call the previous employer to ask. So yes, they _are_ telling other employers (the only ones interested) what they thought about you.
Blogs aren't the alpha and omega, much as some of their proponents like to pretend that they're the most important ones to walk the Earth since Jesus. Just because the employer doesn't egg you in a blog, or because the office backstabbing you might have received and not even know about, wasn't on a blog, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
So I fail to see why that relationship should be uni-directional.
And I do think that work conditions at a company should be publicly available knowledge. If this reduces the number of candidates, tough shit, they should work at solving the problem, not at stopping everyone from talking about it.
I'm not against companies or agains capitalism in any way, but I think that one side already has far more power than it should in job negotiations. I don't think they need or deserve a sacred right to lie there too. When you sign a contract, any contract, I do believe that both sides have a right to know what they're getting there. I don't thing con schemes based on outright lies are the kind of contract that (theoretical) capitalism was supposed to be based on.
I believe that, for example, those EA slaves should have had a right to know in advance that they're signing to be used, abused, chewed and spit out on a slave farm. Answering "yes" to some massive euphemism like "are you willing to occasionally do overtime" and then finding out it really then means being overworked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with occasional sundays off for good behavious, is nothing short of a con. Those people should have had a right to know what work conditions are they signing for.
But I really mean _both_ sides. On the flip side, I also do think that a company should have the right to know when they're hiring just a liar with a faked resume and no willingness to learn.
E.g., I've mentioned before the co-worker that couldn't even write code that compiled. At all. So he first begged some co-workers to help, and then tried to backstab them.
Well, that one was such a master of resume faking. According to his resume before working for us, he was chief architect and/or top programmer for a dozen projects before. Never mind that he couldn't code at all. And after he got fired, some co-workers found his new resume online, where he claimed to be the chief architect and programming team leader for the project here too. Never mind that in reality he was just a nobody that never produced any working code or design, and got fired for it after 3 months. Nah, not according to his resume.
So, yes, I wouldn't mind it if companies would start a blog about such employees.