Worse. Lots of people have goals and passions at that age that are counterproductive, whether it's focusing on all the wrong things (sports over academics, for example)
...yes, exactly. Sports over academics. Or worse, phys/ed required in order for academics to count. One of the many reasons that quitting (or simply not going to) school and independently pursuing academics, creating, innovating is the sensible choice -- if you are capable of such things. If not, well, society needs pool cleaners and cubicle inhabitants too. I was, if you'll recall, talking about the best and brightest; not the average person.
That might have worked when computer companies were in their infancy. These days, you won't even get an interview if you didn't graduate high school.
The people I'm talking about ("the best" in the post you were replying to) often don't need a job interview; and should they choose to interview, and encounter a company who uses school as a winnowing mechanism, they know to move on. Because just like "only those who are currently employed may apply", it's a meaningless distinction and the companies that apply it are already demonstrating they are operating at cross purposes internally, a sad destination for a truly creative person. You are quite right that most companies do so; what I'm telling you is simply that the best and brightest shouldn't be working for those companies.
As for the rest, you missed the point. Feel free to try again.
Ah. Well, I'm sorry if I offended you by explaining that I was more than a 1-dimensional geek. That can happen when such unwarranted assertions are made in my general direction.
Not everyone has a goal at 15, not everyone has a passion
This is true, although I would tend to lay some of the blame on traditional early schooling for that. However those that do are a lot more likely to be people I'd like to hire. Which goes to the point -- the worth of traditional schooling WRT hiring and subsequent productivity. John McCarthy, a genius by most anyone's standards, and a man with significant achievements under his belt, including the lisp language and more, was dismissed from Caltech for failing to attend physical education classes. This is a good example of how traditional schooling, in a ridiculous attempt to create the "well rounded" (cough), can and will do exactly the wrong thing to the most valuable people. What should have happened there is that whoever decided that phys/ed was a requirement should have been dismissed. McCarthy, of course, went on to succeed regardless. Caltech was wrong, as are all schools that impose the irrelevant in the way of actual productive learning.
Of course if you want to run around in circles or learn basketball or football (or martial arts, in my case), that's perfectly fine. Go do it and good luck to you, and furthermore, by all means see if you can learn things from it you can bring to other areas of your life. But to have some wank forcibly make phys/ed a requirement of your technical education, that thing that you expect and intend to earn a living with and contribute to society with? No. That's just idiocy. And it's not the only idiocy that pervades formal schooling, but it will suffice to make my point.
With regard to who chooses what path, and what they make of it: One of the most pernicious and sexist lies ever foisted off on us is the phrase "all men are created equal." It's not true, it's never been true, and it isn't even really close to what should have been said, which is "all people may justly hope to be afforded equal opportunity, yet what they make of this is, and should be, their own concern." With this in mind, please understand that it isn't my choice to select for people who choose to innovate instead of idle their time away; they really select themselves by demonstrating excellence, innovation, independent thought, disregard for the nay-sayers (very important WRT invention regimes), and other useful characteristics.
Regardless, any code that can be written in ~250 lines of C++ (as is the case in the PDF) is not a hard problem.
Ok, sorry, but I'm just going to call nonsense on that one, lol. Either you have no idea of the scope of problems that can be addressed in 250 lines (and perhaps no idea what a c line *is*), or you're one of the world's worst c programmers.
HARP nothing, it's the Chupacabras that are doing it. With their minds. To communicate with bigfoot... who lives partway down the holes to hell and who are generating EM ghost signatures. With their minds. To confuse the witches that call in to Coast to Coast (formerly with Art Bell) into thinking they are possessed. All of which means NASA has been hiding evidence of life on mars from us. In order to misdirect our attention from the faked moon landings. [runs away, foaming at mouth]
I've wondered if the wonderful things we're creating combined with the overexploited natural resources of Earth must necessarily destroy the middle class and lead to permanent social inequality.
Permanent social inequality was created by a combination of draconian legislation, subsequent imprisonment of 1% (30 million) of the US population, and the transition from rehabilitation to lifetime retribution for those with a criminal record. We already have a permanent underclass, with 30 million more individuals ready to join. They can't get jobs other than ditch digging and McJobs; they can't get credit; they can't get insurance. In some cases they can only live under bridges. This locked-in, highly disadvantaged lower class poses a huge risk to the rest of us; the level of justified frustration created by this kind of arrangement is almost incomprehensible to the rest of us; rest assured that from this huge mass of people, individuals will arise who believe they have lost everything, and therefore have little or nothing left to lose, and they will take out that frustration on those they perceive to be privileged.
Technology is not the threat here. Technology will lead to more people at all levels having more things, more free time, more art, more research. In other words, socially, it is a net benefit all across the board. The threat is a system that has no useful concept of rehabilitation, and that's not about tomorrow; that is here today and operating full steam ahead.
Again, not to put too fine a point on it, but the default terminal, that is, the one that comes with OSX, supports alpha backdrop.
WRT XCode, I just wrote a library for OSX (to be clear, its used in an OSX app developed in XCode... but I never touched XCode because I wanted the library to be portable) using a terminal editor and GCC. XCode is "a" development environment for OSX. It is not the only development environment for OSX. You'd be amazed how close OSX is to linux, when you work with it at the same level.
Finally, wasn't talking about the mouse. Was talking about inter-process communication. App A has the focus; that means app A can't send keystrokes to app B. Only app A can receive keystrokes. If app A tries to send keystrokes to app B, they'll just come right back to app A. It's very annoying.
Learning m68k assembly...aaah. I'll still say it is the most beautiful and elegant machine code out there.
6809 was actually better. But as an 8-bit random logic design, it ran into the performance wall because it couldn't be clocked reasonably, and of course Motorola never went the obvious route of taking it to 32, then 64 bits. Real shame. Best 8-bit microprocessor (keeping comparable clock rates in mind) ever. By leaps and bounds. The 68xxx series was more orthogonal simply by virtue of having more registers, but it did lack some of the things that would have made it truly great, particularly in the area of addressing modes, where the 6809 was the absolute king.
Not that it'll make your day or anything, but semi-transparent terminals work fine under OSX (in 10.5.8 Leopard, anyway.)
Wanna know what *I* hate about OSX? Only GUI one app can take keyboard input at a time. So if, for instance, app A is active, but you want to send keystroke commands from it to app B... you're screwed. I agree with you about the menu at the top, that's seriously inconvenient and wrongheaded, but at least it works if you adjust to it. The keyboard input problem I describe, on the other hand, can't be worked around.
I was in the Commodore booth as a guest developer, at the 1986 (I think) spring COMDEX in Atlanta, just after the machine's debut. We'd produced a Amig based CAD system, and since it was actually shipping, CBM was pretty happy to throw us in the booth with an Amiga. Put us in the brochure for the Amiga too, that was fun. Still have that on the wall, in fact. I had very high hopes for the Amiga, hopes that were very well justified by the original hardware and the OS. And over the next few years, we did well, but CBM... man. We went from hopeful, to worried, to developing for Windows, because... well, those people were seriously misguided. And sure enough, they screwed that pooch till hell wouldn't have it.
We had a saying: Had CBM owned the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, they'd have marketed the product as "lukewarm, dead bird."
Seriously? You think congress wouldn't oppose Ron Paul?
My friend, if Ron Paul gets in there, congress will manage the domestic issues of the country completely without his cooperation. All he'll be able to do will be entirely extra-congress, and that means foreign policy. They'll override his vetos like a kid with a sweet tooth sucking down an ice cream sundae, and they'll outvote him just for fun, because there isn't a single domestic position of his they have any sympathy for.
If you honestly expect people to know that much stuff straight out of high school, then basically you're expecting every one of your employees to be complete nerds who have no extracurricular activities other than eating, breathing, sleeping, and coding.
No, I expect the best to quit high school - it is a far worse time sink than college is. Basically a pen to keep the sheep in. There's plenty of time, opportunity and resources available at zero cost to the inquiring mind. Plenty even in my day (the 1970's, really... I had to make do with books), but today, far, far more, and far more easily acquired. But I agree, it's difficult to pursue real math studies, or electronics, or physics, when some wank is telling you to make laps around the gym, or making you poke a football around for the benefit of the local merchants, or mis-explaining civics, the constitution, or giving you a watered down version of history. Still, we have to keep the left side of the Gaussian off the streets, so high school is, in its own way, important.
No, right there you failed the job interview. Even asking a question like that would result in me slamming the door in your face.
See, here's the thing. Although born into poor circumstance, I quit high school, started my own company, am now wealthy and the outright owner of several more companies, etc. I have numerous commercial products to my credit, both hardware and software. None of them involved investors, angels, etc. My name is in the engineering journals, copper-plated onto many PCBs, found in the ARRL handbook, and so on. I'm also a musician (many decades, in case you're curious... rock and blues), a music studio owner, a writer, an editor, a photographer, delight in a fine family and some lovely pets, all ensconced in a 7,000+ sq ft home on a large lot in the center of the city -- that I bought for cash. I also own several other homes. I am very well read in several areas -- my library accrued thousands of books, all of which I have read, before I went to electronic books -- I paint moderately well, illustrate, create and sell t-shirts just for fun, and I'm a black belt with two books on martial arts to my credit. Among other things. I feel reasonably well rounded, though perhaps you'd disagree, which is fine, as your opinion there is entirely without effect. IMHO, one of the reasons I am well rounded is specifically because I didn't waste years in high school or college, but instead, actively chose learning paths that would accrue real, tangible benefits over time. And I would add that most graduates (of anything) are not "well rounded", they are simply years behind the curve, educated to issues they really don't need to know, while being sadly misinformed about many others -- hence the average American's debt position, many misunderstandings of government, toxic nationalism, pitiful religious wankery, and so on. Critical thinking is rarely found in general, and certainly not as a consequence of traditional schooling.
Anyway... basically, I own all the doors around here outright. Not banks or other credit purveyors. Not my parents. Not stockholders. Not partners. Not the government. And I owe zero for college loans, simply because I didn't bother to waste my time there. I'm a very active business owner. So between the two of us, I wonder who really does more interviewing? And perhaps you'd take a wild guess at the question of which doesn't have to worry about being interviewed - ever?
You benefit by having an educated workforce. You benefit by having more people in science discovering new things. You benefit by having more capable people doing more things to invent new technology to improve everybody's lives.
No. You'd have to demonstrate that without college, these things would not occur. And you can't demonstrate that. There are many creative and inventive and educated people who never went to college -- it simply isn't actually required for the things you're talking about. For instance, I grew up poor and quit high school, yet am wealthy today, bought my home for cash, have numerous inventions and products to my credit, own my own company outright, no investors... these things do not require college. They simply require intelligence and drive, which exist with or without college.
And as for the education level of most Americans... look to the programming on your television, and consider the IQ Gaussian; the answer is right in front of your face. College is a sop and a time-waster in real terms; the primary value it has is social: our society is using degrees as a get-in-the-door metric to cull applicants, consequently locking out the most driven and creative types. We've also lost a great deal of our industry, while the corporations that remain are next-quarter driven and play lawyer games rather than actually innovate. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.
In a free and open society, they will be filled by those who, by choice or circumstance, are at the bottom
Yes, and in US society, which is anything but free and open, they will be filled by those who have been forced to the bottom by the legal system. About 1% of the country is presently incarcerated, many for the "crime" of choosing a non-approved means of intoxication; when they get out, employers won't take them for anything but ditch-digging class jobs for the rest of their lives. The door to opportunity, such as it is, is closed for these folks for the rest of their lives. So don't worry, we'll have plenty of low level workers. There's 30 million of them being prepared for McDonald's employment right now!
We're creating a massive, permanent underclass. Intentionally. By exchanging the idea of rehabilitation for retribution, we bought ourselves a new slave class. Brilliant!
He wants the federal government effectively dissolved.
And as president, he has exactly zero power to get that (or most of the rest of his positions) in place. Congress is in the way, and congress -- either side of the aisle -- isn't with Ron Paul's program. At all. All he can really do by himself as president is adjust foreign policy and the use of the military.
For example, I'm an atheist and I think Ron Paul's religious stance is batshit crazy (just like almost every other politician, I might add.) But I am not worried about it, because as president, he can't do even one single thing about it. Just as Bush's "atheists are not citizens" wankery had zero effect, Paul simply would have no way to affect anything in that area. The president is a figurehead in most areas, lots of hot air, no leverage.
So the important questions are: Do we want our soldiers to continue dying in foreign lands for no particular reason other than "we lied to get in there, it would be embarrassing to pull out", or do we want to break this cycle of wasting our soldier's lives? Do we want to stop spending money being the "policeman" of the world? Or do we want to keep doing the kill-a-kid dance the standard political operators have us committed to?
Despite all of these ostensibly being well outside my job description, they've all been invaluable in doing my job
And every one of them could have been learned without college, and likely faster, in an environment where you were actually aimed at getting something concrete and useful accomplished. The fact that you credit college for teaching you these things makes me ask: Why didn't you already know them???
Good grief. Source control? Seriously? Any competent self-taught person can learn source control in half an hour from a suitable README file. And any competent programmer -- and I'm not in any way implying college here -- can learn any programming language in a matter of days at most.
Unless you're so limited in your mentality that you can't learn up to and including the middle ground of math on your own, or science, etc., college is not required. And if you are that limited... well, I'd really rather not hire you anyway. A sheepskin is not evidence of anything but several years spent doing nothing particularly useful where the subject *could* have been doing something productive AND learning at the same time, only faster. The fact that degrees are used as hiring gates is just a sign that the company doing the hiring is engaged in mediocre work at best.
A degree teaches people how to think critically, boosts intelligence, confidence, ability to self-motivate, how to relate to peers, gives an appreciation of a much wider range of what life has to offer. etc. A university education makes a person better.
Someone's been drinking the koolaid straight from the pitcher.
The best job applicants I have had (in programming and electronic design) have been the self-taught ones. Because they are *already* intelligent, motivated, inventive, creative, critical thinkers. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn't turn it into an Orion slave girl. Neither would teaching it to put the lipstick on itself.
If you're really a high quality engineering type, you'll prove it before a college ever gets its hands on you. And if you're the best, you won't waste your time in college at all. You'll buy books and do research on your own while the college kids waste time muddling through unrelated topics, being inculcated with years-old outlooks on relevant technical topics, and after graduation, are then years behind the really excellent candidates, who've probably already done quite a few useful things, some of which may have been excellent money earners.
But hey... if you're looking for another warm body to fill staff at mangement-driven junkware mills like defense contractors and Big Company Inc., by all means, select only from college graduates. And good luck with that. LOL.
Fine, but as president, he'd have exactly ZERO control over these issues. Sending paper to congress won't work unless congress cooperates. And they won't -- because the lobbyists won't let them, even if their consciences led them in that direction, assuming of course, that any of them aside from Paul himself actually had a conscience, which is going into flaming optimist territory at the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
I disconnected the thermostat years ago.
-- mom
The people I'm talking about ("the best" in the post you were replying to) often don't need a job interview; and should they choose to interview, and encounter a company who uses school as a winnowing mechanism, they know to move on. Because just like "only those who are currently employed may apply", it's a meaningless distinction and the companies that apply it are already demonstrating they are operating at cross purposes internally, a sad destination for a truly creative person. You are quite right that most companies do so; what I'm telling you is simply that the best and brightest shouldn't be working for those companies.
As for the rest, you missed the point. Feel free to try again.
Ah. Well, I'm sorry if I offended you by explaining that I was more than a 1-dimensional geek. That can happen when such unwarranted assertions are made in my general direction.
This is true, although I would tend to lay some of the blame on traditional early schooling for that. However those that do are a lot more likely to be people I'd like to hire. Which goes to the point -- the worth of traditional schooling WRT hiring and subsequent productivity. John McCarthy, a genius by most anyone's standards, and a man with significant achievements under his belt, including the lisp language and more, was dismissed from Caltech for failing to attend physical education classes. This is a good example of how traditional schooling, in a ridiculous attempt to create the "well rounded" (cough), can and will do exactly the wrong thing to the most valuable people. What should have happened there is that whoever decided that phys/ed was a requirement should have been dismissed. McCarthy, of course, went on to succeed regardless. Caltech was wrong, as are all schools that impose the irrelevant in the way of actual productive learning.
Of course if you want to run around in circles or learn basketball or football (or martial arts, in my case), that's perfectly fine. Go do it and good luck to you, and furthermore, by all means see if you can learn things from it you can bring to other areas of your life. But to have some wank forcibly make phys/ed a requirement of your technical education, that thing that you expect and intend to earn a living with and contribute to society with? No. That's just idiocy. And it's not the only idiocy that pervades formal schooling, but it will suffice to make my point.
With regard to who chooses what path, and what they make of it: One of the most pernicious and sexist lies ever foisted off on us is the phrase "all men are created equal." It's not true, it's never been true, and it isn't even really close to what should have been said, which is "all people may justly hope to be afforded equal opportunity, yet what they make of this is, and should be, their own concern." With this in mind, please understand that it isn't my choice to select for people who choose to innovate instead of idle their time away; they really select themselves by demonstrating excellence, innovation, independent thought, disregard for the nay-sayers (very important WRT invention regimes), and other useful characteristics.
I INT(RND(0)*99999)+2 that.
Ok, sorry, but I'm just going to call nonsense on that one, lol. Either you have no idea of the scope of problems that can be addressed in 250 lines (and perhaps no idea what a c line *is*), or you're one of the world's worst c programmers.
HARP nothing, it's the Chupacabras that are doing it. With their minds. To communicate with bigfoot... who lives partway down the holes to hell and who are generating EM ghost signatures. With their minds. To confuse the witches that call in to Coast to Coast (formerly with Art Bell) into thinking they are possessed. All of which means NASA has been hiding evidence of life on mars from us. In order to misdirect our attention from the faked moon landings. [runs away, foaming at mouth]
Also: My aurora shots
http://fyngyrz.com/?page_id=748
Permanent social inequality was created by a combination of draconian legislation, subsequent imprisonment of 1% (30 million) of the US population, and the transition from rehabilitation to lifetime retribution for those with a criminal record. We already have a permanent underclass, with 30 million more individuals ready to join. They can't get jobs other than ditch digging and McJobs; they can't get credit; they can't get insurance. In some cases they can only live under bridges. This locked-in, highly disadvantaged lower class poses a huge risk to the rest of us; the level of justified frustration created by this kind of arrangement is almost incomprehensible to the rest of us; rest assured that from this huge mass of people, individuals will arise who believe they have lost everything, and therefore have little or nothing left to lose, and they will take out that frustration on those they perceive to be privileged.
Technology is not the threat here. Technology will lead to more people at all levels having more things, more free time, more art, more research. In other words, socially, it is a net benefit all across the board. The threat is a system that has no useful concept of rehabilitation, and that's not about tomorrow; that is here today and operating full steam ahead.
Again, not to put too fine a point on it, but the default terminal, that is, the one that comes with OSX, supports alpha backdrop.
WRT XCode, I just wrote a library for OSX (to be clear, its used in an OSX app developed in XCode... but I never touched XCode because I wanted the library to be portable) using a terminal editor and GCC. XCode is "a" development environment for OSX. It is not the only development environment for OSX. You'd be amazed how close OSX is to linux, when you work with it at the same level.
Finally, wasn't talking about the mouse. Was talking about inter-process communication. App A has the focus; that means app A can't send keystrokes to app B. Only app A can receive keystrokes. If app A tries to send keystrokes to app B, they'll just come right back to app A. It's very annoying.
6809 was actually better. But as an 8-bit random logic design, it ran into the performance wall because it couldn't be clocked reasonably, and of course Motorola never went the obvious route of taking it to 32, then 64 bits. Real shame. Best 8-bit microprocessor (keeping comparable clock rates in mind) ever. By leaps and bounds. The 68xxx series was more orthogonal simply by virtue of having more registers, but it did lack some of the things that would have made it truly great, particularly in the area of addressing modes, where the 6809 was the absolute king.
Not that it'll make your day or anything, but semi-transparent terminals work fine under OSX (in 10.5.8 Leopard, anyway.)
Wanna know what *I* hate about OSX? Only GUI one app can take keyboard input at a time. So if, for instance, app A is active, but you want to send keystroke commands from it to app B... you're screwed. I agree with you about the menu at the top, that's seriously inconvenient and wrongheaded, but at least it works if you adjust to it. The keyboard input problem I describe, on the other hand, can't be worked around.
I was in the Commodore booth as a guest developer, at the 1986 (I think) spring COMDEX in Atlanta, just after the machine's debut. We'd produced a Amig based CAD system, and since it was actually shipping, CBM was pretty happy to throw us in the booth with an Amiga. Put us in the brochure for the Amiga too, that was fun. Still have that on the wall, in fact. I had very high hopes for the Amiga, hopes that were very well justified by the original hardware and the OS. And over the next few years, we did well, but CBM... man. We went from hopeful, to worried, to developing for Windows, because... well, those people were seriously misguided. And sure enough, they screwed that pooch till hell wouldn't have it.
We had a saying: Had CBM owned the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, they'd have marketed the product as "lukewarm, dead bird."
Seriously? You think congress wouldn't oppose Ron Paul?
My friend, if Ron Paul gets in there, congress will manage the domestic issues of the country completely without his cooperation. All he'll be able to do will be entirely extra-congress, and that means foreign policy. They'll override his vetos like a kid with a sweet tooth sucking down an ice cream sundae, and they'll outvote him just for fun, because there isn't a single domestic position of his they have any sympathy for.
No, I expect the best to quit high school - it is a far worse time sink than college is. Basically a pen to keep the sheep in. There's plenty of time, opportunity and resources available at zero cost to the inquiring mind. Plenty even in my day (the 1970's, really... I had to make do with books), but today, far, far more, and far more easily acquired. But I agree, it's difficult to pursue real math studies, or electronics, or physics, when some wank is telling you to make laps around the gym, or making you poke a football around for the benefit of the local merchants, or mis-explaining civics, the constitution, or giving you a watered down version of history. Still, we have to keep the left side of the Gaussian off the streets, so high school is, in its own way, important.
See, here's the thing. Although born into poor circumstance, I quit high school, started my own company, am now wealthy and the outright owner of several more companies, etc. I have numerous commercial products to my credit, both hardware and software. None of them involved investors, angels, etc. My name is in the engineering journals, copper-plated onto many PCBs, found in the ARRL handbook, and so on. I'm also a musician (many decades, in case you're curious... rock and blues), a music studio owner, a writer, an editor, a photographer, delight in a fine family and some lovely pets, all ensconced in a 7,000+ sq ft home on a large lot in the center of the city -- that I bought for cash. I also own several other homes. I am very well read in several areas -- my library accrued thousands of books, all of which I have read, before I went to electronic books -- I paint moderately well, illustrate, create and sell t-shirts just for fun, and I'm a black belt with two books on martial arts to my credit. Among other things. I feel reasonably well rounded, though perhaps you'd disagree, which is fine, as your opinion there is entirely without effect. IMHO, one of the reasons I am well rounded is specifically because I didn't waste years in high school or college, but instead, actively chose learning paths that would accrue real, tangible benefits over time. And I would add that most graduates (of anything) are not "well rounded", they are simply years behind the curve, educated to issues they really don't need to know, while being sadly misinformed about many others -- hence the average American's debt position, many misunderstandings of government, toxic nationalism, pitiful religious wankery, and so on. Critical thinking is rarely found in general, and certainly not as a consequence of traditional schooling.
Anyway... basically, I own all the doors around here outright. Not banks or other credit purveyors. Not my parents. Not stockholders. Not partners. Not the government. And I owe zero for college loans, simply because I didn't bother to waste my time there. I'm a very active business owner. So between the two of us, I wonder who really does more interviewing? And perhaps you'd take a wild guess at the question of which doesn't have to worry about being interviewed - ever?
No. You'd have to demonstrate that without college, these things would not occur. And you can't demonstrate that. There are many creative and inventive and educated people who never went to college -- it simply isn't actually required for the things you're talking about. For instance, I grew up poor and quit high school, yet am wealthy today, bought my home for cash, have numerous inventions and products to my credit, own my own company outright, no investors... these things do not require college. They simply require intelligence and drive, which exist with or without college.
And as for the education level of most Americans... look to the programming on your television, and consider the IQ Gaussian; the answer is right in front of your face. College is a sop and a time-waster in real terms; the primary value it has is social: our society is using degrees as a get-in-the-door metric to cull applicants, consequently locking out the most driven and creative types. We've also lost a great deal of our industry, while the corporations that remain are next-quarter driven and play lawyer games rather than actually innovate. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.
Yes, and in US society, which is anything but free and open, they will be filled by those who have been forced to the bottom by the legal system. About 1% of the country is presently incarcerated, many for the "crime" of choosing a non-approved means of intoxication; when they get out, employers won't take them for anything but ditch-digging class jobs for the rest of their lives. The door to opportunity, such as it is, is closed for these folks for the rest of their lives. So don't worry, we'll have plenty of low level workers. There's 30 million of them being prepared for McDonald's employment right now!
We're creating a massive, permanent underclass. Intentionally. By exchanging the idea of rehabilitation for retribution, we bought ourselves a new slave class. Brilliant!
No no no. Don't bring facts into this. You're spoiling their fun!
And as president, he has exactly zero power to get that (or most of the rest of his positions) in place. Congress is in the way, and congress -- either side of the aisle -- isn't with Ron Paul's program. At all. All he can really do by himself as president is adjust foreign policy and the use of the military.
For example, I'm an atheist and I think Ron Paul's religious stance is batshit crazy (just like almost every other politician, I might add.) But I am not worried about it, because as president, he can't do even one single thing about it. Just as Bush's "atheists are not citizens" wankery had zero effect, Paul simply would have no way to affect anything in that area. The president is a figurehead in most areas, lots of hot air, no leverage.
So the important questions are: Do we want our soldiers to continue dying in foreign lands for no particular reason other than "we lied to get in there, it would be embarrassing to pull out", or do we want to break this cycle of wasting our soldier's lives? Do we want to stop spending money being the "policeman" of the world? Or do we want to keep doing the kill-a-kid dance the standard political operators have us committed to?
And every one of them could have been learned without college, and likely faster, in an environment where you were actually aimed at getting something concrete and useful accomplished. The fact that you credit college for teaching you these things makes me ask: Why didn't you already know them???
And right there you failed the job interview.
Good grief. Source control? Seriously? Any competent self-taught person can learn source control in half an hour from a suitable README file. And any competent programmer -- and I'm not in any way implying college here -- can learn any programming language in a matter of days at most.
Unless you're so limited in your mentality that you can't learn up to and including the middle ground of math on your own, or science, etc., college is not required. And if you are that limited... well, I'd really rather not hire you anyway. A sheepskin is not evidence of anything but several years spent doing nothing particularly useful where the subject *could* have been doing something productive AND learning at the same time, only faster. The fact that degrees are used as hiring gates is just a sign that the company doing the hiring is engaged in mediocre work at best.
Someone's been drinking the koolaid straight from the pitcher.
The best job applicants I have had (in programming and electronic design) have been the self-taught ones. Because they are *already* intelligent, motivated, inventive, creative, critical thinkers. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn't turn it into an Orion slave girl. Neither would teaching it to put the lipstick on itself.
If you're really a high quality engineering type, you'll prove it before a college ever gets its hands on you. And if you're the best, you won't waste your time in college at all. You'll buy books and do research on your own while the college kids waste time muddling through unrelated topics, being inculcated with years-old outlooks on relevant technical topics, and after graduation, are then years behind the really excellent candidates, who've probably already done quite a few useful things, some of which may have been excellent money earners.
But hey... if you're looking for another warm body to fill staff at mangement-driven junkware mills like defense contractors and Big Company Inc., by all means, select only from college graduates. And good luck with that. LOL.
Fine, but as president, he'd have exactly ZERO control over these issues. Sending paper to congress won't work unless congress cooperates. And they won't -- because the lobbyists won't let them, even if their consciences led them in that direction, assuming of course, that any of them aside from Paul himself actually had a conscience, which is going into flaming optimist territory at the very least.