I don't think any rational person is discounting the accomplishment and the awesomeness, but let's not dismiss the endless stories we've seen over the years about "ten year old does awesome thing in technology" and "fifteen year old makes scientific discovery" and "seventeen year old founds awesome tech darling" where their parents are always established in the same field themselves. Where are all the stories of these kids from single parent families who live in the part of town where you don't go out at night and are elementary teachers or work in retail?
I don't think that pointing out "you almost never hear about these stories where the kid didn't have the benefit of parents in the field and with some resources" is wrong, unfair, or discounting the individual's accomplishment. You'd especially be a fool not to make the most of opportunities and circumstances, if they're beneficial to you.
I don't think we can make any assumptions about the wealth of the family, but you absolutely can't dismiss the fact that if his dad had a completely different career or wasn't even in the picture, he would not have gone beyond the "expressed an interested in" stage. You see, expressing an interest in something at a very early age doesn't magically provide you with a computer, educational resources for using it and programming with it, internet access, encouragement, guidance, advice, resources, connections and everything else that a parent like his was likely able to help him benefit from. Without those things, he's just another nine year old kid saying "i wanna be an astronaut when I grow up" whose parents respond to him with "that's nice" and a pat on the head.
However, without a parent in the field with the connections and resources, any interest such a child might show in a particular field would probably not be very fruitful. Take this same kid and take his dad out of the picture, make his mom a nurse or waitress, and put them in a low end two bedroom apartment and this kid's great accomplishment becomes graduating highschool and possibly attending community college against the odds.
Companies don't want to compete on a level playing field. They want more people so it'll be cheaper, but they don't want to entice those people by paying more, right now. It's the same reason that they cry "there aren't enough engineers, so we need H1Bs", when the real answer should be that the market decides the value, by forcing them to pay more money to entice engineers, which in turn would lure more people into engineering who want to make that sweet money. They just want to skip the whole process by artificial means so they don't have to go through the "supply and demand increases value of supply" part. The whole "free market" thing only applies to the corporation when they want it to, but it isn't a benefit or philosophy allowed the employee.
It's hard to believe that anyone really gives a shit about "growing more engineers" domestically, when they keep pushing things like H1Bs, because "it's too expensive". If the supposed scarcity of engineers is real, then engineers would be paid a whole lot more, which would entice more people to go into engineering. Instead, they "artificially" deflate the price of an engineer by just saying "fuck it, we'll bring more in" and then when fewer people want to become engineers as a result, they bitch about that, too.
It's an inevitable result of the whole "engineers have to live within the costs of living in the region they reside, but their employers can pick over the entire globe of labor, including places where the entire cost of living for one engineer is less than the cost of groceries, for another".
Who is more likely to get into a tech field early on, have the support and guidance from an adult, early on, and have the encouragement, connections, and resources so early on? The kid with the dad who is a robotics and AI scientist or the kid with the dad who works at a concessions stand at a ballpark?
Agreed. I'm sure they're really depending on the success of their child to keep the family above water, what with his dad only being a measly AI/Robotics researcher.
Don't be too hard on yourself. Was your dad a robotics and AI researcher with all sorts of resources and connections to help you do something more than mow lawns? Probably not.
I didn't need to read the article to assume that was the case. You hear a lot of stories every year about genius children who discover something fantastic or start a company or a major project that makes them wealthy and/or famous and their parents are almost exclusively professionals in the same field that their child is "excelling" in. The lesson being that it's not some independent kid coming up from scratch doing something amazing - it's almost always a kid (probably smart and ambitious, still) who had a parent get them into the stuff in the first place, then support them, guide them, advise them, help them make contacts, help them find resources, have their friends and colleagues chip in where needed.
It's not to diminish the success, but to point out that the reason THIS kid did this and YOUR kid won't is that YOU probably don't have all the resources and connections to give your child from early on to guide them into this.
If you have a pair of tits, are under 40, and have a facebook and twitter account, you can make a living marketing yourself out to the media and businesses as a "social media expert".
I wouldn't care if mine was. I'm a male under the age of 100. Guess what - I like naked chicks, porn, and all sorts of freaky sexual stuff. What a fucking shock!
Or you get an email from GoodVibrations that says "Hi, we noticed your bottle of lube is about to run out. Please click the instant-order button below, to be taken to our website and purchase a fresh bottle.!"
That's why corporations and government are busy trying to make friends with China. We'll be the third world producing things for other nations where people can afford to live well and buy things.
That is a fucking awful idea. Go research the MPAA and ESRB and other "voluntary ratings systems" and how they inform and impact the final resulting content and product. Content and products that are consumed by those who do not need things censored or controlled for them and are not children, but are none-the-less impacted by these "voluntary" and usually completely corrupt ratings organizations.
I almost find it offensive in a deviant almost criminal sort of way that parents would say "I want my child to think this certain way, so I will control all content that they consume so I can shape the way they think about everything". That sounds like brainwashing, to me. We seem to accept it, if you want your child to hate gay people and think sex is dirty, but acknowledge how vile it is if you want your child to subscribe to the whole "white power" and 'teh baby jesus" bullshit.
I am so grateful that I never had anything filtered from me as I grew up. The library and BBSes and anything I could get my eyes or hands on was fair game with no real oversight by anyone and there were more than a couple adults in my life that would readily answer any weird questions or confusions that I might ask about, as a result. I somehow never got into the BBSes full of scat porn or hate speech and I somehow also never turned into some warped fucking deviant (well, more or less).
That, I can get behind. Guide your children in the content they encounter; don't control the content they encounter. At least, after a certain age. Obviously, you wouldn't give a three year old a loaded internet-gun. But if you're leaving your three or five or six year old sitting in front of the internet 24x7, then you're a shitty parent anyway, so . . .
So the shitty solution to one supposed problem should be the shitty solution to two supposed problems.
Look into the MPAA and ESRB and find out how those "voluntary" ratings impact the finished result that the rest of us who are adults and don't care about ratings consume.
First, I entirely agree that society all too readily discounts concerns about censoring content for people who are under eighteen years old. Just because people are chronologically children doesn't mean we should be so ready to say "then filter the shit out of everything!".
Second, being a child in the modern world has to suck so fucking much. Everything is filtered, controlled, dumbed-down. Every moment of your life is controlled. By parents. Baby Einstein. The school system. Every attempt to be creative or have fun is stomped down by the school or parents or special interest groups. There was a time when you were free to be crazy and do stupid things and learn from them.
Third, I'm pretty sure you are not being taxed at twelve years old, so there's not really an issue of representation.:)
You wouldn't let your 6 year old wander the street, why let them wander the internet?
If you read the news more often, you would know that the first half of that sentence occurs fairly often, which entirely informs the second half of your comment.
If I had children, I wouldn't care if they wanted to look into things like various forms of government and religion and atheism and rational thinking and the human body and video games. I *would* care if they were force-fed "child appropriate" things like a KRAFT FOODS website that peddles their product to the child by means of a goofy flash game or if they were stuffed with idiotic religious ignorance and inspired hatred of their fellow man.
However, other people would be sickened by the idea that their child could find out what marxism is, what atheism is, what a breast is, or how to think for themselves while finding a blog espousing hatred of people for sexual preference or skin color entirely age-appropriate.
I have to agree. People who talk about how they can't be expected to have the time to watch over their child's shoulder 24x7 are being willfully naive.
You don't have to watch over your child's shoulder 24x7. You just have to watch over their shoulder while they're using the internet, up until the age when they no longer need the babysitting. They likely could use your guidance until they're ten years old or so and it's reasonable to provide it up until then, in a very direct way. After that, it's very reasonable to let them go it on their own, coming to you as they feel appropriate. Just like the rest of us did when we grew up online, while our parents had no clue BBSes or anything even existed and were a part of our lives.
If you are saying that your child has unlimited access to the internet 24x7 at their whim from the age of 0-10, then that is YOUR problem and YOUR fault. They should be allowed online when you decide they are allowed online and can provide them with the guidance they need during that time. And once they've reached the age you don't think that's necessary any longer, you can back the hell off and let them use it when they want and without you having to spend every minute looking over their shoulder.
Seriously, parents keep having this willfully stupid attitude that you see in an infomercial. You know, the ones where they're selling a jar opener and to prove their point, they show some woman who fails to open a jar and has a look of intense consternation on her face as it falls out of her hands and smashes to the floor.
If you have kids, then you have a right to talk. Otherwise, take your attitude and STFU.
Another selfish, self-involved, better-than-thou parent who thinks that the act of breeding (something that billions have done before and trillions of other species of done before) makes them wise sages above and beyond the rest of society. Sounds like a drug user who says "unless you've had a meth addiction, you aren't allowed to say that drugs are awful!".
Guess what, chuckles. I subsidize your inability to jimmy-up when you knocked up that random chick that you then had to follow through having children with every time I pay a rather significant tax-bill, so I have every right to comment. So take your attitude and STFU.
Oh - and I don't have a problem with children. I helped raise my siblings and I really dig Halloween, because there's something really great about seeing a little kid with his parents coming up to the door in their adorable little pumpkin costume for a couple pieces of candy, with a giant smile that most of us probably haven't had on our faces since *we* were in adorable little costumes in our first couple Halloweens.
I just have a problem with shit-ass parents and the often shit-ass children that they produce. And I kind of feel bad for those shit-ass offspring of shit-ass parents.
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Or a disgruntled former PERL developer, is my guess. :P
I don't think any rational person is discounting the accomplishment and the awesomeness, but let's not dismiss the endless stories we've seen over the years about "ten year old does awesome thing in technology" and "fifteen year old makes scientific discovery" and "seventeen year old founds awesome tech darling" where their parents are always established in the same field themselves. Where are all the stories of these kids from single parent families who live in the part of town where you don't go out at night and are elementary teachers or work in retail?
I don't think that pointing out "you almost never hear about these stories where the kid didn't have the benefit of parents in the field and with some resources" is wrong, unfair, or discounting the individual's accomplishment. You'd especially be a fool not to make the most of opportunities and circumstances, if they're beneficial to you.
I don't think we can make any assumptions about the wealth of the family, but you absolutely can't dismiss the fact that if his dad had a completely different career or wasn't even in the picture, he would not have gone beyond the "expressed an interested in" stage. You see, expressing an interest in something at a very early age doesn't magically provide you with a computer, educational resources for using it and programming with it, internet access, encouragement, guidance, advice, resources, connections and everything else that a parent like his was likely able to help him benefit from. Without those things, he's just another nine year old kid saying "i wanna be an astronaut when I grow up" whose parents respond to him with "that's nice" and a pat on the head.
However, without a parent in the field with the connections and resources, any interest such a child might show in a particular field would probably not be very fruitful. Take this same kid and take his dad out of the picture, make his mom a nurse or waitress, and put them in a low end two bedroom apartment and this kid's great accomplishment becomes graduating highschool and possibly attending community college against the odds.
Companies don't want to compete on a level playing field. They want more people so it'll be cheaper, but they don't want to entice those people by paying more, right now. It's the same reason that they cry "there aren't enough engineers, so we need H1Bs", when the real answer should be that the market decides the value, by forcing them to pay more money to entice engineers, which in turn would lure more people into engineering who want to make that sweet money. They just want to skip the whole process by artificial means so they don't have to go through the "supply and demand increases value of supply" part. The whole "free market" thing only applies to the corporation when they want it to, but it isn't a benefit or philosophy allowed the employee.
It's hard to believe that anyone really gives a shit about "growing more engineers" domestically, when they keep pushing things like H1Bs, because "it's too expensive". If the supposed scarcity of engineers is real, then engineers would be paid a whole lot more, which would entice more people to go into engineering. Instead, they "artificially" deflate the price of an engineer by just saying "fuck it, we'll bring more in" and then when fewer people want to become engineers as a result, they bitch about that, too.
It's an inevitable result of the whole "engineers have to live within the costs of living in the region they reside, but their employers can pick over the entire globe of labor, including places where the entire cost of living for one engineer is less than the cost of groceries, for another".
It seems kind of obvious what DBIx::Class does.
Who is more likely to get into a tech field early on, have the support and guidance from an adult, early on, and have the encouragement, connections, and resources so early on? The kid with the dad who is a robotics and AI scientist or the kid with the dad who works at a concessions stand at a ballpark?
Agreed. I'm sure they're really depending on the success of their child to keep the family above water, what with his dad only being a measly AI/Robotics researcher.
Don't be too hard on yourself. Was your dad a robotics and AI researcher with all sorts of resources and connections to help you do something more than mow lawns? Probably not.
I didn't need to read the article to assume that was the case. You hear a lot of stories every year about genius children who discover something fantastic or start a company or a major project that makes them wealthy and/or famous and their parents are almost exclusively professionals in the same field that their child is "excelling" in. The lesson being that it's not some independent kid coming up from scratch doing something amazing - it's almost always a kid (probably smart and ambitious, still) who had a parent get them into the stuff in the first place, then support them, guide them, advise them, help them make contacts, help them find resources, have their friends and colleagues chip in where needed.
It's not to diminish the success, but to point out that the reason THIS kid did this and YOUR kid won't is that YOU probably don't have all the resources and connections to give your child from early on to guide them into this.
If you have a pair of tits, are under 40, and have a facebook and twitter account, you can make a living marketing yourself out to the media and businesses as a "social media expert".
I wouldn't care if mine was. I'm a male under the age of 100. Guess what - I like naked chicks, porn, and all sorts of freaky sexual stuff. What a fucking shock!
Yeah, I don't get what the big fucking deal is, either. Oh noes, I enjoy porn. It's the end of the world.
Or you get an email from GoodVibrations that says "Hi, we noticed your bottle of lube is about to run out. Please click the instant-order button below, to be taken to our website and purchase a fresh bottle.!"
That's why corporations and government are busy trying to make friends with China. We'll be the third world producing things for other nations where people can afford to live well and buy things.
That is a fucking awful idea. Go research the MPAA and ESRB and other "voluntary ratings systems" and how they inform and impact the final resulting content and product. Content and products that are consumed by those who do not need things censored or controlled for them and are not children, but are none-the-less impacted by these "voluntary" and usually completely corrupt ratings organizations.
I almost find it offensive in a deviant almost criminal sort of way that parents would say "I want my child to think this certain way, so I will control all content that they consume so I can shape the way they think about everything". That sounds like brainwashing, to me. We seem to accept it, if you want your child to hate gay people and think sex is dirty, but acknowledge how vile it is if you want your child to subscribe to the whole "white power" and 'teh baby jesus" bullshit.
I am so grateful that I never had anything filtered from me as I grew up. The library and BBSes and anything I could get my eyes or hands on was fair game with no real oversight by anyone and there were more than a couple adults in my life that would readily answer any weird questions or confusions that I might ask about, as a result. I somehow never got into the BBSes full of scat porn or hate speech and I somehow also never turned into some warped fucking deviant (well, more or less).
That, I can get behind. Guide your children in the content they encounter; don't control the content they encounter. At least, after a certain age. Obviously, you wouldn't give a three year old a loaded internet-gun. But if you're leaving your three or five or six year old sitting in front of the internet 24x7, then you're a shitty parent anyway, so . . .
So the shitty solution to one supposed problem should be the shitty solution to two supposed problems.
Look into the MPAA and ESRB and find out how those "voluntary" ratings impact the finished result that the rest of us who are adults and don't care about ratings consume.
First, I entirely agree that society all too readily discounts concerns about censoring content for people who are under eighteen years old. Just because people are chronologically children doesn't mean we should be so ready to say "then filter the shit out of everything!".
Second, being a child in the modern world has to suck so fucking much. Everything is filtered, controlled, dumbed-down. Every moment of your life is controlled. By parents. Baby Einstein. The school system. Every attempt to be creative or have fun is stomped down by the school or parents or special interest groups. There was a time when you were free to be crazy and do stupid things and learn from them.
Third, I'm pretty sure you are not being taxed at twelve years old, so there's not really an issue of representation. :)
You wouldn't let your 6 year old wander the street, why let them wander the internet?
If you read the news more often, you would know that the first half of that sentence occurs fairly often, which entirely informs the second half of your comment.
If I had children, I wouldn't care if they wanted to look into things like various forms of government and religion and atheism and rational thinking and the human body and video games. I *would* care if they were force-fed "child appropriate" things like a KRAFT FOODS website that peddles their product to the child by means of a goofy flash game or if they were stuffed with idiotic religious ignorance and inspired hatred of their fellow man.
However, other people would be sickened by the idea that their child could find out what marxism is, what atheism is, what a breast is, or how to think for themselves while finding a blog espousing hatred of people for sexual preference or skin color entirely age-appropriate.
I have to agree. People who talk about how they can't be expected to have the time to watch over their child's shoulder 24x7 are being willfully naive.
You don't have to watch over your child's shoulder 24x7. You just have to watch over their shoulder while they're using the internet, up until the age when they no longer need the babysitting. They likely could use your guidance until they're ten years old or so and it's reasonable to provide it up until then, in a very direct way. After that, it's very reasonable to let them go it on their own, coming to you as they feel appropriate. Just like the rest of us did when we grew up online, while our parents had no clue BBSes or anything even existed and were a part of our lives.
If you are saying that your child has unlimited access to the internet 24x7 at their whim from the age of 0-10, then that is YOUR problem and YOUR fault. They should be allowed online when you decide they are allowed online and can provide them with the guidance they need during that time. And once they've reached the age you don't think that's necessary any longer, you can back the hell off and let them use it when they want and without you having to spend every minute looking over their shoulder.
Seriously, parents keep having this willfully stupid attitude that you see in an infomercial. You know, the ones where they're selling a jar opener and to prove their point, they show some woman who fails to open a jar and has a look of intense consternation on her face as it falls out of her hands and smashes to the floor.
If you have kids, then you have a right to talk. Otherwise, take your attitude and STFU.
Another selfish, self-involved, better-than-thou parent who thinks that the act of breeding (something that billions have done before and trillions of other species of done before) makes them wise sages above and beyond the rest of society. Sounds like a drug user who says "unless you've had a meth addiction, you aren't allowed to say that drugs are awful!".
Guess what, chuckles. I subsidize your inability to jimmy-up when you knocked up that random chick that you then had to follow through having children with every time I pay a rather significant tax-bill, so I have every right to comment. So take your attitude and STFU.
Oh - and I don't have a problem with children. I helped raise my siblings and I really dig Halloween, because there's something really great about seeing a little kid with his parents coming up to the door in their adorable little pumpkin costume for a couple pieces of candy, with a giant smile that most of us probably haven't had on our faces since *we* were in adorable little costumes in our first couple Halloweens.
I just have a problem with shit-ass parents and the often shit-ass children that they produce. And I kind of feel bad for those shit-ass offspring of shit-ass parents.