That's just because they know it looks cute, and gets them additional food. It's got nothing to do with hunting - otherwise, why would dogs stink so much?
I'm guessing you haven't doubled your money lately?
It is truly exciting that there is a new vehicle for pointless speculation that creates no real economic activity.
Personally, I've been investigating the derivative bitcoin futures market recently. Using my non-existent offshore property portfolio as virtual collateral, I've geared up so that my exposure is greater than the GDP of all but seventeen nations on Earth. One wrong move, and I could cause a New Worldwide Great Depression, but on the flip side by this time next week I could own Apple, outright.
"In America, at least, you can’t avoid taxes by switching to barter, script, or other currencies – it’s fair market value that drives the underlying tax code."
But you can sure as hell evade a significant amount given that you aren't brazen about it.
There are lots of illegal things you can do. You can do cash-in-hand work and pay no tax at all. You can deal drugs and pay no tax at all.
So what? The whole "because you can do something therefore it's OK" argument is ridiculous, unless you simply ignore the concepts of law, justice, society and morality altogether (i.e. you're a Hell's Angel or extreme libertarian).
More proof that the US justice system is fucked up. In the UK, if you get a court order for payment of child mainteance (or anything else) they look at your income and outgoings and decide what you can afford, then it's deducted from your wages. If you haven't got a job, you're not really in a position to pay anything are you?
I know a lot of programmers who, for instance, feel women simply are not suited to programming and will generally be inferior or will just spend all their time sexing up their male coworkers to get them to do their work for them
And THAT is why you have HR and "managerment" doing interviews.
No, what matters more than "passion" (which is just another cheerleading buzzword) is professionalism. You can either do a job well or you can't. I don't care whether you enjoy it or not. Personally, I don't give a toss if my doctor or architect or car mechanic has a huge passion for his work, as long as he does it right.
You people need to get some balance into your life. Coding for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week does not make you a better person. It doesn't even make you a better coder.
I agree that someone who is passionate about what they do and does it in their spare time is on average going to be better than someone who just does it for a day job and then goes home and doesn't touch it. I don't think there's much room to argue that.
There is nothing wrong (except in the minds of chronic workaholics and fuckberries generally) with going home after your day at work and relaxing and/or engaging in some different hobby or intellectual, sporting or cultural activities.
A great doctor or engineer doesn't have to spend their non-working lives purely engaged in reading medical or engineering journals.
There is nothing magical about computer programming as a career.
A person who codes 16 hours a day is most likely pretty good at it.
No, a person who codes 16 hours a day might just be someone who takes twice as long as someone who codes 8 hours a day or four times as long as someone who codes 4 hours a day.
People in the US are far too easily impressed with the number of hours you work. Along with the "I don't take holidays" attitude, I assume it's a hangover from the protestant work ethic.
Many genius level IQ people find highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence.
Maybe, but finding highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence doesn't make you a genius.
I've never understood this slashdot meme. If you're that fucking brilliant you'll be learning/researching in the evenings, weekends, holidays anyway. A bit of enforced socialising with the normal kids, and some studying of subjects that aren't your main interest are both good preparation for real life anyway.
I see this assertion made a lot, but I've never seen anyone back it up with an explanation of why it is not conceptually possible for engineering to be applied to software.
It is entirely possible, but you would need to have a properly constructed professional engineering education route, ending up in an actual certificate allowing you to practise.
I somehow doubt that all the "I dropped out of high school because I was already earning over $100K a year programming at 17" types would be interested in going back to school/training for 5+ years just to get some letters after their name.
It was precisely to get rid of the class system that the UK introduced "socialist" measures after WW2, such as equal access to good schools and universities for those who were intelligent but not rich, as well as attempting to redistribute wealth away from the landed aristocracy through high taxes, death duties, etc.
Now, of course, the Tories and their friends are building all the old divisions back up again. The only difference is that at least in the past the aristocrats had some notion of public duty and charity towards those less well off then themselves. The new breed of billionaires doesn't care about anything except making more money.
These days, when I hire a software developer he's usually someone I've known for several years already, or recommended to me by someone else I've known for a long time.
On the other side of this, I have not had a job that I did not get through a friend or colleague in over 10 years. I have not seen the inside of an HR office in longer than that. If it is a hiring requirement, that is a good clue as to how the company works.
And then you will moan about managers and CEOs just getting jobs through their networking skills.
I have only ever once gone for a job where I knew the person from a previous job, and it didn't help at all.
If you employ people through an old boys' network, you're going to end up with a company full of old boys.
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
I may be missing something, but isn't this just what I call an interview?
Any job selection process that just involves solving a few problems is close to worthless. As with IQ tests, or any sort of exam, it mainly just shows how good you are at IQ tests or exams.
You attitude is why we have abominations like Unity, Gnome3, and Windows8/Metro now.
GUIs are the devil's work. All computer input should be in the form neon green of 0s and 1s on a black screen, like in the Mattrix, but without the two shitty sequels.
I'm really loving this attitude that PhDs are not any different from high school drop outs. This is perhaps true for menial tasks. It says something about the posters who tell these stories. Try assigning that high school dropout to do something non-trivial and highly conceptual, and you are mostly likely completely screwed.
Someone with a PhDd in a particular specialised area will have an advantage if that job is in that particular specialised area, but otherwise, they're just people who have proved they can work hard for three years, exactly as if they had left college and started work straight afterwards.
Some programmers are artists in the same way that some engineers are. "Some" being a small handful in each generation. 99.9% of the rest are just doing a job in the same way that a joiner makes a table.
U.S. spending per student on education is among the highest in the world. Of all the problems which plague our education system, funding is definitely not one of them.
So how come you have people with such large student debts?
Because, in my book, having universities that charge $100K for a degree course doesn't mean that you've spendt $100K on education, it just means you're funnelling money towards wealthy private educational institutions that should, self-evidently, all be nationalised and owned/run by the people.
You're quite right. It's not as if there is any benefit to society from an educated populace. Except maybe with that whole voting thing. Tell you what! Let's get rid of the vote, then we won't need to educate anyone at all! Is that it? Because I can't believe you're seriously endorsing leaving education to those born into wealth?
You'd make an excellent serf young man.
Ah yes, but GP would OF COURSE be one of the rich elite. He's like those past-life fantasists who were always Queen Cleopatra, not a fucking slave building the pyramids.
Slashdot Mirror
Supersaurus sounds like something on Disney, with a teenage American accident.
Notice how clean cats keep themselves?
That's just because they know it looks cute, and gets them additional food. It's got nothing to do with hunting - otherwise, why would dogs stink so much?
I'm guessing you haven't doubled your money lately?
It is truly exciting that there is a new vehicle for pointless speculation that creates no real economic activity.
Personally, I've been investigating the derivative bitcoin futures market recently. Using my non-existent offshore property portfolio as virtual collateral, I've geared up so that my exposure is greater than the GDP of all but seventeen nations on Earth. One wrong move, and I could cause a New Worldwide Great Depression, but on the flip side by this time next week I could own Apple, outright.
"In America, at least, you can’t avoid taxes by switching to barter, script, or other currencies – it’s fair market value that drives the underlying tax code."
But you can sure as hell evade a significant amount given that you aren't brazen about it.
There are lots of illegal things you can do. You can do cash-in-hand work and pay no tax at all. You can deal drugs and pay no tax at all.
So what? The whole "because you can do something therefore it's OK" argument is ridiculous, unless you simply ignore the concepts of law, justice, society and morality altogether (i.e. you're a Hell's Angel or extreme libertarian).
More proof that the US justice system is fucked up. In the UK, if you get a court order for payment of child mainteance (or anything else) they look at your income and outgoings and decide what you can afford, then it's deducted from your wages. If you haven't got a job, you're not really in a position to pay anything are you?
I know a lot of programmers who, for instance, feel women simply are not suited to programming and will generally be inferior or will just spend all their time sexing up their male coworkers to get them to do their work for them
And THAT is why you have HR and "managerment" doing interviews.
You people need to get some balance into your life. Coding for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week does not make you a better person. It doesn't even make you a better coder.
I agree that someone who is passionate about what they do and does it in their spare time is on average going to be better than someone who just does it for a day job and then goes home and doesn't touch it. I don't think there's much room to argue that.
There is nothing wrong (except in the minds of chronic workaholics and fuckberries generally) with going home after your day at work and relaxing and/or engaging in some different hobby or intellectual, sporting or cultural activities.
A great doctor or engineer doesn't have to spend their non-working lives purely engaged in reading medical or engineering journals.
There is nothing magical about computer programming as a career.
A person who codes 16 hours a day is most likely pretty good at it.
No, a person who codes 16 hours a day might just be someone who takes twice as long as someone who codes 8 hours a day or four times as long as someone who codes 4 hours a day.
People in the US are far too easily impressed with the number of hours you work. Along with the "I don't take holidays" attitude, I assume it's a hangover from the protestant work ethic.
Many genius level IQ people find highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence.
Maybe, but finding highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence doesn't make you a genius.
I've never understood this slashdot meme. If you're that fucking brilliant you'll be learning/researching in the evenings, weekends, holidays anyway. A bit of enforced socialising with the normal kids, and some studying of subjects that aren't your main interest are both good preparation for real life anyway.
I see this assertion made a lot, but I've never seen anyone back it up with an explanation of why it is not conceptually possible for engineering to be applied to software.
It is entirely possible, but you would need to have a properly constructed professional engineering education route, ending up in an actual certificate allowing you to practise.
I somehow doubt that all the "I dropped out of high school because I was already earning over $100K a year programming at 17" types would be interested in going back to school/training for 5+ years just to get some letters after their name.
Now, of course, the Tories and their friends are building all the old divisions back up again. The only difference is that at least in the past the aristocrats had some notion of public duty and charity towards those less well off then themselves. The new breed of billionaires doesn't care about anything except making more money.
In the CS program where I was studying, having a degree could just mean that you are good at freeloading on group work.
That is by far the best way to get on in business anyway.
Anyone who believes that the key to success in the real world is (a) being clever and (b) working hard has never had a proper job.
I am more intelligent than all but about a dozen people in the world.
The best thing of all is that you're so modest about it.
When a company gets to the size where covering your ass is more important than success, it is time to start looking for a new job.
That size is somewhere between 20 and 50 people.
These days, when I hire a software developer he's usually someone I've known for several years already, or recommended to me by someone else I've known for a long time.
On the other side of this, I have not had a job that I did not get through a friend or colleague in over 10 years. I have not seen the inside of an HR office in longer than that. If it is a hiring requirement, that is a good clue as to how the company works.
And then you will moan about managers and CEOs just getting jobs through their networking skills.
I have only ever once gone for a job where I knew the person from a previous job, and it didn't help at all.
If you employ people through an old boys' network, you're going to end up with a company full of old boys.
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
I may be missing something, but isn't this just what I call an interview?
Any job selection process that just involves solving a few problems is close to worthless. As with IQ tests, or any sort of exam, it mainly just shows how good you are at IQ tests or exams.
They don't teach anything about electricity in Computer Science classes. Would you expect a Theater or Mathematics or Business major to know better?
But the CS graduate will probably expect people to listen to him when he talks about electricity or actual computers.
I call bullshit: the PhD wouldn't even know how to use a soldering iron.
You attitude is why we have abominations like Unity, Gnome3, and Windows8/Metro now.
GUIs are the devil's work. All computer input should be in the form neon green of 0s and 1s on a black screen, like in the Mattrix, but without the two shitty sequels.
I'm really loving this attitude that PhDs are not any different from high school drop outs. This is perhaps true for menial tasks. It says something about the posters who tell these stories. Try assigning that high school dropout to do something non-trivial and highly conceptual, and you are mostly likely completely screwed.
Someone with a PhDd in a particular specialised area will have an advantage if that job is in that particular specialised area, but otherwise, they're just people who have proved they can work hard for three years, exactly as if they had left college and started work straight afterwards.
Some programmers are artists in the same way that some engineers are. "Some" being a small handful in each generation. 99.9% of the rest are just doing a job in the same way that a joiner makes a table.
That word is so overused, it's lost all meaning - and I don't even know what the meaning was in the first place any more.
Cyber: to have virtual sex with an overweight 48 year old virgin male sysadmin who is pretending to be a blonde 19 year old nymphomaniac cheerleader.
U.S. spending per student on education is among the highest in the world. Of all the problems which plague our education system, funding is definitely not one of them.
So how come you have people with such large student debts?
Because, in my book, having universities that charge $100K for a degree course doesn't mean that you've spendt $100K on education, it just means you're funnelling money towards wealthy private educational institutions that should, self-evidently, all be nationalised and owned/run by the people.
You're quite right. It's not as if there is any benefit to society from an educated populace. Except maybe with that whole voting thing. Tell you what! Let's get rid of the vote, then we won't need to educate anyone at all! Is that it? Because I can't believe you're seriously endorsing leaving education to those born into wealth?
You'd make an excellent serf young man.
Ah yes, but GP would OF COURSE be one of the rich elite. He's like those past-life fantasists who were always Queen Cleopatra, not a fucking slave building the pyramids.