Isn't it interesting that apparently nobody is capable of maintaining attention on anything longer than one paragraph or 30 seconds?
There are some subjects that cannot be properly explained in an elevator pitch. People would be incredulous if they realized the gargantuan amounts of money that are spent on the basis of a 30 second presentation.
Want to know why something sucks? It was probably designed with an elevator pitch. Oh, and middle management was probably involved too.
You'd have a realistic complaint if the operating systems didn't already come with the software required to back up your data.
But they don't. I wouldn't use MS backup for a grocery list. Tar is great if you have a half-terabyte tape. Ghost is great if you're using Windows and only Windows (and nobody has explained adequately how Ghost reinstalls your disk image without Windows, since even Windows can't do that).
There should be a big green button that says PRESS HERE TO BACK UP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM that actually works. There should be a smaller button next to it that says PRESS HERE TO MAKE AN INCREMENTAL BACKUP A hardware device for each would be even better. It's been what, over 20 years since the PC was introduced and this still isn't included as a standard option on all new computers?
I haven't used OSX yet, but I'd guess there is precisely such a feature included with new Macs.
- Only backup your DATA, or better, only backup your irreplaceable data. (Bet you could fit that on a few DVDs, unless you're a multimedia developer.)
Reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system takes weeks, possibly months, during which time little work will get done, if any.
- Tape drives exist for the larger sizes, but they're darn expensive for home use.
But I'd guess they work, unlike the currently available systems.
The amount of actual work that gets done on computers is vanishingly small. I would guess the ratio of productive work units of time compared to [reboot/reinstall/reconfigure/restart/find/lose/fi nd again/corrupted file/driver missing/hardware failure/wrong version/broken fonts/where's the install instructions] units of time is perhaps 1:100 and that's being very, very liberal.
Problem ONE with computers is the total lack of adequate backups. Yeah yeah Norton Ghost and tar and yeah yeah yeah. Back up a 120GB hard drive with Ghost and a CD-R. My ass.
Then try to restore it. BWAAHHAHAHAAAAA!!!
And yeah, I use Linux too. It installs great, and it runs great and then you start configuring things, and about 47 weeks later, you have lost all interest in working on anything.
Every time I'm walking through the computer store looking for some obscure item absolutely necessary to make yet another attempt to get some fucking work done I walk by them Mac G5s...
it could mean the end for Real and Apple, both of which also are infringing Burst patents.
Prediction that Apple will go out of business! Film at 11!
and will undoubtedly take the leadership away from Apple.
Ah, yes. The winners are always losers. Makes everyone really want to win. Why don't we all just sell everything to Wal-Mart and let them rename themselves "Everything Inc.?"
No Apple G6 in 2004, and the company won't sell nearly as many G5s as it hopes.
What is this? The results of success? Why the fuck would Apple want to develop a G6? What's wrong with the G5? Nobody's even COMPILED anything on it yet.
By the way, Apple sells an assload of G5s, because those are the coolest fucking computers ever invented. Period. The Cinema Display? Nothing should ever look that good, and iTunes freezes nitrogen.
Apple has earned some respect and a well-deserved rest. If you want to find failure, this ain't it. Find something else to hype.
it will be the year of VoIP. What does that really mean?
Giant, wheezing, pus-oozing corporations pull themselves up the stairs and through the open door of the "place where great ideas are discussed(tm)" whereupon they recline upon the new technology with their shit-caked, impossibly fat asses and proceed to absorb every last molecule of joy out of the room to the tune of buzzing horseflies the size of dinette sets and ROI estimates.
For most of us computers are just a tool that help us get on with our job, and like most tools they are rarely a career in themselves.
Like automobiles? How many people are directly employed to maintain, sell, design, manufacture and repair automobiles and parts for automobiles? 10 million? 20?
Corporations are groups of folks who get together and come up with an idea for how to make money.
You're kidding.
The corporation exists to make the shareholders money, not so that employees can get or keep a mortgage.
Excuse me. Corporations are artificial business constructs given their status by the states in which they are formed. Corporations should exist to serve the public good, just like the businesses that start them.
It is not the function of business, whether it be a corporation or otherwise, to simply "make money." This is a myth. The function of business is to serve its customers.
Corporations have existed for some 400 years, and it wasn't until just recently that blow-dryed assholes with wire-rimmed glasses, four-figure car payments and aluminum-clad cel phones discovered that they could stuff their own pockets with the proceeds of haphazard, short-term hiring practices designed specifically to obliterate their employee's dignity, and turn people into interchangeable commodities.
It might be smart for a corporation to create a strong incentive for employees to be highly productive (such as a good salary),
It might be smart for a corporation to stop wasting so much shareholder money on churning the org chart every two years too. That costs a fuckload more than whatever meager salaries they might be paying.
and employees may decide to spend that salary on a house, but that doesn't mean that the employee deserves to have that salary paid indefinitely just because of the mortgage.
They do if they are doing a good job. If a business is going to hire someone, they ought to make a fucking commitment. The same FUCKING COMMITMENT they make to the BUILDING OWNER when they SIGN THEIR FUCKING LEASE.
I think what you're looking for is called communism.
Yes, of course. Anyone who thinks employees shouldn't have eight gallons of wet shit dumped on them every couple of months is a communist.
Companies do not have any obligation to employ someone for any length of time.
Completely missed the point.
In the past people did hold jobs longer. I've worked for one company that had a lot of "lifers", and a lot of them should have been let go.
Sure. They've been at their job too long, so throw 'em out and take their houses and retirements.
When seniority becomes more important than merit, then you have a screwed up situation.
Yeah, lots of foreclosures.
The question is, do you think mortgages should exist?
Yes. I think careers should exist too.
BTW, one thing I've learned about people in the workplace: Second rate people hire third rate people because they think it will make them look good. Thus, those second rate people will often avoid hiring a first rate person because they are afraid he/she will make them look bad.
A mortgage company agrees to loan you money because it thinks you will pay it back.
Yep, and they are relying on the exact same promise to pay as the employee is: the income provided by their W-4 job, which is subject to the whims of some lying cheat fuck middle manager.
If something goes wrong and you do not have any other options, there are several varieties of bankruptcy filing that you can move forward with.
The disadvantages of which all fall on the employee: credit destroyed for 10 years, no mortgages, no jobs (they check your credit now), no apartments, no cars, no student loans, no credit cards. The bank gets the house, and the employer doesn't give a fuck.
In fact, some employees do obtain long term contracts.
Sure, and they should. W-4 at will employment is the worst of all possible arrangements for the employee, yet it is by far the most common.
The vast majority of employers would chortle in amusement at the very suggestion of offering a guaranteed contract to an employee, yet the mortgage company gets exactly that, with several hundred thousand dollars worth of collateral as the guarantee. The employer will also insist on guarantees of payment from all of their vendors, customers, associated companies, etc. The only person who gets no guarantee is the employee.
They enable trust to exist in a systematic way where without them nobody would trust anybody.
Which is why I don't trust employers any more, at all.
As another side note, when an employer hires you, it is also a gamble.
Yeah, well at least if the employer loses they don't lose the building, the rest of their employees, their credit and all their money.
See, years ago there used to be an unwritten social contract between employers and the communities they do business in:
If an employee does a good job, they get to keep their job. If a student earns an education, they will have significant opportunities.
Every single person I know in my parents' generation worked the same job for AT LEAST 10 years, and some for 35 years and more.
Not one person I know in my generation has had the same job, earning a living wage, for more than two years.
Not a single one.
In each case, at or near the two year mark they were fired, usually as part of a mass layoff of hundreds of people. I've seen people fired after a few weeks for vague reasons, or, more commonly, for no reason whatsoever.
Now, it's completely backwards: employers proudly discard their obligation to employees (and society) and wantonly destroy people's careers by the dozens or hundreds in pursuit of some short-term dubious benefit to the business.
Hiring managers as a MATTER OF ROUTINE tell employees to "put their degree last" because employers no longer value the decades of education and thousands of dollars employees invest in it.
A college degree should ON ITS FACE be qualification for just about any professional career that doesn't require a license, regardless of the major. Only a third of a baccalaureate degree's units are required by the major. College degrees are far more likely to be used as a DISQUALIFYING factor in a hiring decision, all because the employer either doesn't like or doesn't understand the major.
"What could an Art History major possibly know about real estate?"
Good question. I have a better one: what the fuck does the hiring manager know about Art History? And for that matter, what is so fucking complicated about real estate that a college-educated person couldn't LEARN in a few weeks or months? Oh, I forgot, entry-level people aren't allowed to have jobs any more unless they are mopping floors or stocking shelves.
This has enormously destructive and corrosive consequences in a community. People can't rely on their job, and therefore cannot ever be confident in really settling in a particular community, buying a house, etc. People have no choice but to conclude that if employers do not value their education, they should not either. This is a significant disincentive for people to pursue higher education.
Just because you have specialized skills doesn't mean they are in demand.
Every hiring manager's perfect excuse.
As a side note, if one gets a mortgage and makes lots of plans based on the idea that he'll never lose his/her job then it's simply gambling.
Not for the mortgage company. This is a very basic inequity for employees/customers. The employer can fire an employee anytime they feel like it and for any reason.
The employee STILL HAS TO PAY THE MORTGAGE. They are CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED.
Now why can't an employee expect the same reliable business arrangement as the mortgage company? As a business agreement, it's ridiculous. No manager would ever make an agreement to pay if they weren't ABSOLUTELY SURE there was revenue to cover the payments. Yet employees are REQUIRED to do so every single day, even if they live in an apartment.
People with skills that are in demand do not have trouble finding a paycheck.
Bullshit. I have 20 years of experience in computer programming, networking, project management, business management, computer graphics, accounting, research, technical writing, etc. Only place I'll find a paycheck is stocking shelves somewhere.
It's when someone has highly specialized skills that aren't in demand that there's trouble.
Funny how the requirements of those highly specialized skills change just in time to fuck people out of their careers, and usually right after they sign a mortgage.
But hey, destroyed careers and financial ruin for people who have an education, years of experience and hard work are just a fact of the "free market," right?
to watch for trends that indicate that their current career isn't going anywhere.
"Clear out that desk and get out."
Is that a trend? I worked with a guy who was just about to complete a very complex (read: expensive) project. It had been approved by three levels of management. The week it was about to be completed, he arrives at work at about 8:30AM.
At 11:15 he was unemployed. His four years at the company, family, mortgage, etc. didn't matter at all to management. He wasn't even allowed to ask why he was being fired. He was met at his desk by three security people. They waited quietly until he gathered his stuff, then ALL THREE OF THEM escorted him to the lobby and one shoved him out the front door.
The "trend" at this company cost another 170 people their careers before I left. Is this what we should aspire to as a business and professional community?
"Entry-level" is an interesting notion. By your definition, all Java programmers in 1995 were "entry-level Java programmers"
Can't have it both ways. Either people are skilled or they are not. Do you actually think an employer cares at all about 10 years of programming experience if you don't have comprehensive and exhaustive knowledge of the specific and exacting details of a particular language and specialized skills of the job you're interviewing for? (Hint: no)
The job market is subjective and arbitrary while the employees must have objective and specific skills. It's unfair and inequitable. Period.
I have over 20 years of programming experience and I know eight programming languages. I couldn't RENT a job with a coupon.
People have the idea that a human being should only be required to learn one trade during his lifetime and should be able to earn a decdent wage at that trade, whatever it happens to be. That is rediculous.
Worked fine for thousands of years.
Is it better to have every single employee be in a constant state of entry-level skill when there are no entry-level careers?
individuals most choose to specialize in order to obtain the economic benefits of specialization. This requires a degree of trust and cooperation...which futher emphasizes the importance of rewarding people for investing the time, money and energy to specialize in a highly technical career.
But now it's "eh, you lose. Learn some new skills before you ask for another paycheck."
If you were at all familiar with Japan, you'd know that Japan's massive public works are a huge mess of insider deals and pork-barrel spending that would have US taxpayers revolting in the street.
Nevertheless, their public transportation system is quite simply unmatched, period. Narita Airport is a modern wonder of construction. The Akashi-Kaikyo bridge remains the longest suspension bridge in the world, fully a half-kilometer longer than its nearest competition. And the Maglev and high-speed rail lines are an order of magnitude more advanced than anything even designed here, much less built.
Originality is apparently the wellspring from which creativity and social commentary and everything else flows from.
While sequels and remakes are the basis for guaranteed return on investment and exaggerated budgets. A redundant literature is only a culture of commerce, not a culture of meaning.
Nice straw man you got there. Is it Guy Fawkes day already?
Not the foggiest idea what that has to do with the discussion.
Your point may be that the lack of originality has somehow robbed us of some other, more worthy art, but my point is that there are far better tests of a production's value than a simple question of whether or not it's original.
Points which are not contradictory and can exist independently of each other.
These movies may be "original" by your measure, but tend to have, at the very least in comparison to BSG, poor acting, poor direction, and poor characterization.
Sure, due in no small part to the fact that most original productions, in fact, almost ALL original productions are relentlessly starved of capital while the budgets of remakes and sequels exceed even the most elaborate ambitions of avarice.
Examples abound. Star Wars, the Sims, Everquest, etc. were all turned down flat on numerous occasions prior to begrudging approvals.
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Isn't it interesting that apparently nobody is capable of maintaining attention on anything longer than one paragraph or 30 seconds?
There are some subjects that cannot be properly explained in an elevator pitch. People would be incredulous if they realized the gargantuan amounts of money that are spent on the basis of a 30 second presentation.
Want to know why something sucks? It was probably designed with an elevator pitch. Oh, and middle management was probably involved too.
You'd have a realistic complaint if the operating systems didn't already come with the software required to back up your data.
But they don't. I wouldn't use MS backup for a grocery list. Tar is great if you have a half-terabyte tape. Ghost is great if you're using Windows and only Windows (and nobody has explained adequately how Ghost reinstalls your disk image without Windows, since even Windows can't do that).
There should be a big green button that says PRESS HERE TO BACK UP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM that actually works. There should be a smaller button next to it that says PRESS HERE TO MAKE AN INCREMENTAL BACKUP A hardware device for each would be even better. It's been what, over 20 years since the PC was introduced and this still isn't included as a standard option on all new computers?
I haven't used OSX yet, but I'd guess there is precisely such a feature included with new Macs.
- Only backup your DATA, or better, only backup your irreplaceable data. (Bet you could fit that on a few DVDs, unless you're a multimedia developer.)
Reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system takes weeks, possibly months, during which time little work will get done, if any.
- Tape drives exist for the larger sizes, but they're darn expensive for home use.
But I'd guess they work, unlike the currently available systems.
The amount of actual work that gets done on computers is vanishingly small. I would guess the ratio of productive work units of time compared to [reboot/reinstall/reconfigure/restart/find/lose/fi nd again/corrupted file/driver missing/hardware failure/wrong version/broken fonts/where's the
install instructions] units of time is perhaps 1:100 and that's being very, very liberal.
Problem ONE with computers is the total lack of adequate backups. Yeah yeah Norton Ghost and tar and yeah yeah yeah. Back up a 120GB hard drive with Ghost and a CD-R. My ass.
Then try to restore it. BWAAHHAHAHAAAAA!!!
And yeah, I use Linux too. It installs great, and it runs great and then you start configuring things, and about 47 weeks later, you have lost all interest in working on anything.
Every time I'm walking through the computer store looking for some obscure item absolutely necessary to make yet another attempt to get some fucking work done I walk by them Mac G5s...
it could mean the end for Real and Apple, both of which also are infringing Burst patents.
Prediction that Apple will go out of business! Film at 11!
and will undoubtedly take the leadership away from Apple.
Ah, yes. The winners are always losers. Makes everyone really want to win. Why don't we all just sell everything to Wal-Mart and let them rename themselves "Everything Inc.?"
No Apple G6 in 2004, and the company won't sell nearly as many G5s as it hopes.
What is this? The results of success? Why the fuck would Apple want to develop a G6? What's wrong with the G5? Nobody's even COMPILED anything on it yet.
By the way, Apple sells an assload of G5s, because those are the coolest fucking computers ever invented. Period. The Cinema Display? Nothing should ever look that good, and iTunes freezes nitrogen.
Apple has earned some respect and a well-deserved rest. If you want to find failure, this ain't it. Find something else to hype.
it will be the year of VoIP. What does that really mean?
Giant, wheezing, pus-oozing corporations pull themselves up the stairs and through the open door of the "place where great ideas are discussed(tm)" whereupon they recline upon the new technology with their shit-caked, impossibly fat asses and proceed to absorb every last molecule of joy out of the room to the tune of buzzing horseflies the size of dinette sets and ROI estimates.
Thank you.
why spend billions on pursuing goals that don't do anybody a lot of real good, when we could spend it on helping humanity
Because hope is more valuable than the billions, and helps humanity immensely.
Notice how quality is never discussed in these articles? It's always "cheaper" when everyone gets their ass fired, but we never hear why it fails.
There are hidden cost that the bigger companies didn't think of!
Middle management was WRONG AGAIN! TELL 'EM WHAT THEY'VE WON, BOB!!
Sweatshops may suck, but they're better than making a living picking through garbage dumps, and that's often the alternative people face.
And this is what we should aspire to: the object of an honest day's work is either a sweatshop or a garbage dump.
Now let's all sing the company song...
The point is rather obvious. There are 130 million PCs and no careers.
For most of us computers are just a tool that help us get on with our job, and like most tools they are rarely a career in themselves.
Like automobiles? How many people are directly employed to maintain, sell, design, manufacture and repair automobiles and parts for automobiles? 10 million? 20?
Some programmers might actually stop wasting time reinstalling and reconfiguring crashware, buy a Mac and get some fucking work done for a change.
Practically the entirety of business now relies on computers for just about everything, yet few, if any, can find careers working with computers?
Corporations are groups of folks who get together and come up with an idea for how to make money.
You're kidding.
The corporation exists to make the shareholders money, not so that employees can get or keep a mortgage.
Excuse me. Corporations are artificial business constructs given their status by the states in which they are formed. Corporations should exist to serve the public good, just like the businesses that start them.
It is not the function of business, whether it be a corporation or otherwise, to simply "make money." This is a myth. The function of business is to serve its customers.
Corporations have existed for some 400 years, and it wasn't until just recently that blow-dryed assholes with wire-rimmed glasses, four-figure car payments and aluminum-clad cel phones discovered that they could stuff their own pockets with the proceeds of haphazard, short-term hiring practices designed specifically to obliterate their employee's dignity, and turn people into interchangeable commodities.
It might be smart for a corporation to create a strong incentive for employees to be highly productive (such as a good salary),
It might be smart for a corporation to stop wasting so much shareholder money on churning the org chart every two years too. That costs a fuckload more than whatever meager salaries they might be paying.
and employees may decide to spend that salary on a house, but that doesn't mean that the employee deserves to have that salary paid indefinitely just because of the mortgage.
They do if they are doing a good job. If a business is going to hire someone, they ought to make a fucking commitment. The same FUCKING COMMITMENT they make to the BUILDING OWNER when they SIGN THEIR FUCKING LEASE.
I think what you're looking for is called communism.
Yes, of course. Anyone who thinks employees shouldn't have eight gallons of wet shit dumped on them every couple of months is a communist.
Companies do not have any obligation to employ someone for any length of time.
Completely missed the point.
In the past people did hold jobs longer. I've worked for one company that had a lot of "lifers", and a lot of them should have been let go.
Sure. They've been at their job too long, so throw 'em out and take their houses and retirements.
When seniority becomes more important than merit, then you have a screwed up situation.
Yeah, lots of foreclosures.
The question is, do you think mortgages should exist?
Yes. I think careers should exist too.
BTW, one thing I've learned about people in the workplace: Second rate people hire third rate people because they think it will make them look good. Thus, those second rate people will often avoid hiring a first rate person because they are afraid he/she will make them look bad.
Imagine that!
A mortgage company agrees to loan you money because it thinks you will pay it back.
Yep, and they are relying on the exact same promise to pay as the employee is: the income provided by their W-4 job, which is subject to the whims of some lying cheat fuck middle manager.
If something goes wrong and you do not have any other options, there are several varieties of bankruptcy filing that you can move forward with.
The disadvantages of which all fall on the employee: credit destroyed for 10 years, no mortgages, no jobs (they check your credit now), no apartments, no cars, no student loans, no credit cards. The bank gets the house, and the employer doesn't give a fuck.
In fact, some employees do obtain long term contracts.
Sure, and they should. W-4 at will employment is the worst of all possible arrangements for the employee, yet it is by far the most common.
The vast majority of employers would chortle in amusement at the very suggestion of offering a guaranteed contract to an employee, yet the mortgage company gets exactly that, with several hundred thousand dollars worth of collateral as the guarantee. The employer will also insist on guarantees of payment from all of their vendors, customers, associated companies, etc. The only person who gets no guarantee is the employee.
They enable trust to exist in a systematic way where without them nobody would trust anybody.
Which is why I don't trust employers any more, at all.
As another side note, when an employer hires you, it is also a gamble.
Yeah, well at least if the employer loses they don't lose the building, the rest of their employees, their credit and all their money.
See, years ago there used to be an unwritten social contract between employers and the communities they do business in:
If an employee does a good job, they get to keep their job. If a student earns an education, they will have significant opportunities.
Every single person I know in my parents' generation worked the same job for AT LEAST 10 years, and some for 35 years and more.
Not one person I know in my generation has had the same job, earning a living wage, for more than two years.
Not a single one.
In each case, at or near the two year mark they were fired, usually as part of a mass layoff of hundreds of people. I've seen people fired after a few weeks for vague reasons, or, more commonly, for no reason whatsoever.
Now, it's completely backwards: employers proudly discard their obligation to employees (and society) and wantonly destroy people's careers by the dozens or hundreds in pursuit of some short-term dubious benefit to the business.
Hiring managers as a MATTER OF ROUTINE tell employees to "put their degree last" because employers no longer value the decades of education and thousands of dollars employees invest in it.
A college degree should ON ITS FACE be qualification for just about any professional career that doesn't require a license, regardless of the major. Only a third of a baccalaureate degree's units are required by the major. College degrees are far more likely to be used as a DISQUALIFYING factor in a hiring decision, all because the employer either doesn't like or doesn't understand the major.
"What could an Art History major possibly know about real estate?"
Good question. I have a better one: what the fuck does the hiring manager know about Art History? And for that matter, what is so fucking complicated about real estate that a college-educated person couldn't LEARN in a few weeks or months? Oh, I forgot, entry-level people aren't allowed to have jobs any more unless they are mopping floors or stocking shelves.
This has enormously destructive and corrosive consequences in a community. People can't rely on their job, and therefore cannot ever be confident in really settling in a particular community, buying a house, etc. People have no choice but to conclude that if employers do not value their education, they should not either. This is a significant disincentive for people to pursue higher education.
Just because you have specialized skills doesn't mean they are in demand.
Every hiring manager's perfect excuse.
As a side note, if one gets a mortgage and makes lots of plans based on the idea that he'll never lose his/her job then it's simply gambling.
Not for the mortgage company. This is a very basic inequity for employees/customers. The employer can fire an employee anytime they feel like it and for any reason.
The employee STILL HAS TO PAY THE MORTGAGE. They are CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED.
Now why can't an employee expect the same reliable business arrangement as the mortgage company? As a business agreement, it's ridiculous. No manager would ever make an agreement to pay if they weren't ABSOLUTELY SURE there was revenue to cover the payments. Yet employees are REQUIRED to do so every single day, even if they live in an apartment.
Unfair and inequitable. Period.
People with skills that are in demand do not have trouble finding a paycheck.
Bullshit. I have 20 years of experience in computer programming, networking, project management, business management, computer graphics, accounting, research, technical writing, etc. Only place I'll find a paycheck is stocking shelves somewhere.
It's when someone has highly specialized skills that aren't in demand that there's trouble.
Funny how the requirements of those highly specialized skills change just in time to fuck people out of their careers, and usually right after they sign a mortgage.
But hey, destroyed careers and financial ruin for people who have an education, years of experience and hard work are just a fact of the "free market," right?
to watch for trends that indicate that their current career isn't going anywhere.
"Clear out that desk and get out."
Is that a trend? I worked with a guy who was just about to complete a very complex (read: expensive) project. It had been approved by three levels of management. The week it was about to be completed, he arrives at work at about 8:30AM.
At 11:15 he was unemployed. His four years at the company, family, mortgage, etc. didn't matter at all to management. He wasn't even allowed to ask why he was being fired. He was met at his desk by three security people. They waited quietly until he gathered his stuff, then ALL THREE OF THEM escorted him to the lobby and one shoved him out the front door.
The "trend" at this company cost another 170 people their careers before I left. Is this what we should aspire to as a business and professional community?
"Entry-level" is an interesting notion. By your definition, all Java programmers in 1995 were "entry-level Java programmers"
Can't have it both ways. Either people are skilled or they are not. Do you actually think an employer cares at all about 10 years of programming experience if you don't have comprehensive and exhaustive knowledge of the specific and exacting details of a particular language and specialized skills of the job you're interviewing for? (Hint: no)
The job market is subjective and arbitrary while the employees must have objective and specific skills. It's unfair and inequitable. Period.
I have over 20 years of programming experience and I know eight programming languages. I couldn't RENT a job with a coupon.
People have the idea that a human being should only be required to learn one trade during his lifetime and should be able to earn a decdent wage at that trade, whatever it happens to be. That is rediculous.
Worked fine for thousands of years.
Is it better to have every single employee be in a constant state of entry-level skill when there are no entry-level careers?
Those who can't or won't work to remain on the cutting edge, well, there's no helping them.
Somewhat convenient for management who arbitrarily decides which skills are important at any given time.
"Well, got my MSCS!!"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. You needed an EE degree. Back to stocking shelves!"
individuals most choose to specialize in order to obtain the economic benefits of specialization. This requires a degree of trust and cooperation ...which futher emphasizes the importance of rewarding people for investing the time, money and energy to specialize in a highly technical career.
But now it's "eh, you lose. Learn some new skills before you ask for another paycheck."
If you were at all familiar with Japan, you'd know that Japan's massive public works are a huge mess of insider deals and pork-barrel spending that would have US taxpayers revolting in the street.
Nevertheless, their public transportation system is quite simply unmatched, period. Narita Airport is a modern wonder of construction. The Akashi-Kaikyo bridge remains the longest suspension bridge in the world, fully a half-kilometer longer than its nearest competition. And the Maglev and high-speed rail lines are an order of magnitude more advanced than anything even designed here, much less built.
By the way, I'm somewhat familiar with Japan.
Originality is apparently the wellspring from which creativity and social commentary and everything else flows from.
While sequels and remakes are the basis for guaranteed return on investment and exaggerated budgets. A redundant literature is only a culture of commerce, not a culture of meaning.
Nice straw man you got there. Is it Guy Fawkes day already?
Not the foggiest idea what that has to do with the discussion.
Your point may be that the lack of originality has somehow robbed us of some other, more worthy art, but my point is that there are far better tests of a production's value than a simple question of whether or not it's original.
Points which are not contradictory and can exist independently of each other.
These movies may be "original" by your measure, but tend to have, at the very least in comparison to BSG, poor acting, poor direction, and poor characterization.
Sure, due in no small part to the fact that most original productions, in fact, almost ALL original productions are relentlessly starved of capital while the budgets of remakes and sequels exceed even the most elaborate ambitions of avarice.
Examples abound. Star Wars, the Sims, Everquest, etc. were all turned down flat on numerous occasions prior to begrudging approvals.