The truth is, every scientist in industry (ie: making products to sell) wants all of the animals in their experiments to come out completely safe and healthy.
Why? Because the company has already spent a LOT of money in development by the time it gets to animal testing. Animal testing is expensive (but required by law) and it only comes after everything else has been tried. At this point, the company believes the product to be safe. It then becomes the toxicologist's job to make sure it's absolutely safe on actual living beings.
There is a difference between your first and second paragraph. Let me expand. Many scientists (I have known a couple involved in animal testing) in the actual testing want as many animals to come out safely as they can. They are human after all and unless they have a mental problem get no joy out of inflicting suffering on other beings. The company however has no such issues. The bean counters at the top both never have contact with the experiments and are only interested in the money and have no human interest in suffering minimisation. If anything they do not want to have personal contact with the experiments because then they can go on TV and say their company inflicts no suffering on animals etc and claim plausible deniability. Anybody representing a testing lab who makes a statement that their test animals go through little to no suffering is either ignorant of what happens or lying.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of these experiments are truly shocking in the pain they inflict. The one I know who worked in a commercial lab ended up leaving the industry and turning vegetarian it had that much of an impact on him. Some pet store owners who couldn't sell their animals would sell them to the lab for testing to make a few $. These animals were subjected to things ranging from having deadly diseases injected into them to having commercial products tested on their skin and eyes. There is no happy ending - if the animal survives they are killed anyway. In some instances an animal with a lot of "character" would come along and one of the scientists would take them home rather than test on them. In many cases the medical experiments are justified and the only way to do something. That doesn't explain why thousands of animals need their eyes burnt out so a slightly differently scented shampoo can go on the shelves.
Just because someone loves working with technology does not mean they are good at it. Just because someone works just to pay their bills (and hopefully a bit extra) doesn't mean they are bad at what they do. This is true in some instances, however I have also come across some people who love technology who I would hate working with and quite a number of others who wouldn't spend any extra time in front of a computer than they had to but who are fantastic at their job.
Sounds like my workplace (also in Australia). Half of them go long distance cycling every weekend and ride to work.
In a previous position I remember going to the USA to head office and the difference between their engineers and ours was amazing. Theirs would code away in a dark room isolated from the world. In our Aus office everyone had to turn up in business atire and were all well socially adjusted. My theory is that in Australia quite often we are predominately satellite sales offices for the vendors from the USA. This means there is a very sales, rather than dev, focus in the office. Us geeks are still good at what we do however we are never isolated from sales / marketing / business which keeps us relatively "normal".
In my experience, the 'paper on the wall' Bachelors is typically viewed as worth 3-5 years of experience. A Masters in the same technical field usually counts as an additional 2-3 years. (An MBA is usually just counted for a foot in the door for management positions. Same for a lot of Certifications for technical positions.)
So, the paper usually lets someone start a bit higher up the chain. But, as you say, years of experience outweigh all else.
I wouldn't even go that far. In development as an example, the paper on the wall will get you into a junior dev position while without that paper you will have to spend a couple of years doing stuff like support or other such tasks and have to prove that you have some development knowledge. Once in the workforce after 5 years it means virtually nothing. I would choose a good applicant with 5 years experience over a new graduate with a masters any day. Not because there is something wrong with the graduate, it's just that the experienced candidate knows how to deal with customers, competing deadlines, scope creep and how to handle situations where things go balls up at the worst possible time. One of my favourite interview questions is to ask "how would you handle a situation where you are working on 2 projects and an urgent task comes up which will prevent you from completing at least one, if not both, of these tasks by the due time?" The experienced candidates will usually give some derivative of "escalate to manager, contact customers asap to negotiate deadlines" and the such. The new graduates will invariably come back with either "I will work back to make sure I meet all deadlines" or "I manage my time effectively so will never be in this position". They technically know their stuff, possibly on a pure technical scale even better than the experienced candidate, it is just that they don't know how to handle all the things that go on that are not of a technical nature.
I should be paid an infinite amount of money for doing nothing.
When my father was "on call" for Michigan Bell he got his regular wages for his regular 40 hours plus double-time for the time he put in when actually called out (but of course he had a contract).
I think too many people don't take enough ownership for the situation they end up in. I would change the bolded part to "Whatever is in the contract I negotiated". Just because a potential employer presents you with a contract does not mean that it is final and if you want to change something they will go elsewhere. You are offered a contract because the company believes you can do a better job than the other people applying (same goes for if you are contracting). As long as you do not ask for wholesale changes to the fundamentals of the contract they usually will not go somewhere else just because you want to negotiate some of the smaller terms and conditions. I cannot recall the last contract I signed where I did not at least ask for clarification over a few concerns I had. If it was a big concern then I would want written clarification or in some instances a change to the contract. Why are people so scared of negotiating contracts?
No, there's not, unless that is a part of your contract. Usually you would be expected to work extra hours for free when required, but that doesn't include being on call.
Which is why I always ask when it comes to negotiating time if there is an on-call component. I also ask how many extra hours will come up on average / what an average working week will be and base my initial number on that. I totally agree, there is absolutely no expectation of being on call just because you are on salary. In my personal experience salary usually means to expect to work longer than 40 hours / week, which is why I negotiate my rate based on the expectation of working those extra hours. However 50+ hours / week is not the same thing as having to have your phone on at all times and being expected to drop whatever you are doing at 2am on Sunday morning to fix something. On salary I accept that I MIGHT get a call once or twice a year if something goes seriously wrong but also there will be no repercussions if I say "It's Saturday night and I'm at a party, I'm drunk so you really need to contact the next guy".
I just can't comprehend working somewhere that paid me for a 40 hour 9-5 job and yet expected me to be on-call 24x7x365. In that situation they are effectively getting you to work for free after hours. Why would anyone ever agree to those terms?? Inexperience I'm guessing?
Same situation - been at it for years, good at it, paid quite well but well and truly over it. To accelerate the issue it's wrecking my eyesight - too many hours staring at the screen. Also looking at getting back into uni - doing something of interest like maths or applied physics and seeing where that takes me.
When was the last time you heard of someone crashing their car due to mechanical failure, in or out of warranty? And I mean actual failure ('the suspension arm broke', or 'brakes failed' or whatever) rather than just "I need something to blame for my incompetence". I'm trying but I can't think of any real examples. The only case that comes to mind is that one time that the wheel came off dad's car because the garage only finger-tightened the nuts...
Read up on the Ford Explorer / Firestone issues...
...Do you really think that LiveLeaks has the breadth of content that YouTube has?...
I always find it interesting when people refer to Youtube as great Google innovation. Youtube was bought by Google after it had become successful, hardly a product of the Google r+d department.
If it's truly a new idea, then there are no established competitors. He will be the first, and the competition will follow.
Of course, this entire discussion hinges on the ridiculous belief that ideas are worth something. They're not. Every moron has a million ideas. Implementation is everything. If he can't/won't implement the idea, then he doesn't have anything of any value anyway.
Every moron may have a million ideas but there is a big difference between saying "I think a flying car would be a great idea" and "I think a flying car would be a great idea and here is a way I have used the earth's electromagnetic fields to power the car and here are the plans for a prototype". Now the developer of the prototype may not have the capital to go to market with their idea but there is nothing immoral about them making some money from their groundbreaking work.
I'm having trouble following the logic here. How would he not be able to profit off of an idea that others are able to profit from? Can he not do the same thing with that idea that the others would do, and compete with them?
Ideas aren't physical objects. When you give it away, you still have it.
Simple - there is no imaginable way he would be able to compete with a large multi-national with massive marketing, sales and development budgets with established customers.
If you patent, it'll be expensive. If you don't patent, but end up making it, someone else will patent it and sue you, that will be more expensive. However, if it'll never really be marketable, publish, someone might think oooo nifty, and hire you because it sounds great.
Great idea. Put all the time, effort and money into creating the technology. Then upon completion give it away to someone else so they can make money from it. If you are lucky they might hire you to work some menial job for them and spit you out when it's convenient.
I have never understood the attitude on here that just the act of getting a job somewhere is considered some amazing feat. Please correct me if I have mis-interpreted your post.
I was going to post something similar - I am always puzzled by this attitude of "getting a job" as being the big goal of doing r+d. I am guessing (would love someone not fitting the description to chime in and say where my thinking is flawed) mainly from either students or researchers who think getting a decently paying job is something that only happens to the lucky few. Many of us who work in industry already have decent paying jobs, we don't need to create some new invention to be hired. So if we create something, the goal is not just to get a job, it would either be advancement of society as a whole or to make money. However I can't see why it can't be both - it is a concept foreign to slashdot but there is nothing wrong with an individual making money from their own hard work. There - I said it. A possible way to do both would be to license for free to any not-for-profit organisation so that further research can be performed but if someone wants to make money for themselves from something I have invented they better be prepared to pay for it.
Hint: the very first line of the summary is "iTnews reports the patent battle between Australia's CSIRO and 14 of the world's largest technology companies has gained the research organization $200 million from out of court settlements." Now how much US taxpayer funds do you think have been involved in this?
Can someone please justify why we should consider the CSIRO to be a patent troll? They are an actual research organisation (a taxpayer-funded one at that); they don't exist just to file patents and make claims on them. Why are people dismissing them as trolls?
Because it's slashdot. You would be lucky for the majority of posters to read the the summary let alone any background info. Congratulations to the CSIRO for their success on this - in spite of having their funding savaged. Though the technology was patented in 96 so the r+d was possibly done before it became a target of budget cuts.
I am no Linux fanboi by any stretch of the imagination however I have to agree with the parent. In my personal experience, regardless of hardware configuration, even a brand spanking new build will slow to a dead crawl (for all intents and purposes unuseable) when performing updates.
This may or may not appeal to regular gamers but it would certainly appeal to people playing competitively to iron out errors in their strategy and tactics. As an example, as a poker player I would pay good money for a strong AI to play against that would adapt to my playing style and force me to become less predictable and intentionally target my weaknesses. "Rigging" the deck would be useless and AI that just gets stronger as time progresses would only be useful to a point. An ideal opponent would be an adaptive one.
You make a good point - then cheapen it by calling dissenting opinion a strawman argument. Let's refrain from the name calling shall we?:)
I totally agree with you that there is a lot of gray in between the extremes. I also don't believe that the points: 1) if a teacher wanted more they should have chosen a different career - a point I agree with and 2) teachers are underpaid as are a lot of essential services to society - a point I also agree with. The two points above are not mutually exclusive. If someone aims to make a lot of money in their career it can hardly be argued that choosing teaching would be a smart move - that's just an unfortunate fact of life. However this is not mutually exclusive from the idea that teachers are underpaid and should be paid more - not Ferrari more but certainly more so as to attract the best quality. I personally believe essential services should be owned by the government and staff should be paid according to their value to society, thus attracting quality people for positions that require them. I also believe that on the free market outside essential services the sky should be the limit.
To achieve superior financial success eg. owning a Ferrari, requires far above average work and risk to the average person (leaving out people who inherited the money or won it in a lottery). So it is fitting that they should be rewarded well above and beyond the averge person. Also not all financially successful people are corrupt - a generalisation just as nonsensical as saying all teachers are paedophiles. Many people did become successful (when using the term I am talking about financial success in this context) through extreme hard work, a fact the leftists tend to overlook and instead emphasise only the bad ones, who you will find most people on either side of the fence would prefer we did without.
I rest my case. The first reply had an interesting point that could raise some discussions - I personally don't agree with him or her but there is merit to their point of view. You on the other hand are a perfect match for the socialist in the example - trying to pull down anyone more successful than you are because they "almost certainly didn't work for the money".
Slashdot Mirror
This is a common misconception.
The truth is, every scientist in industry (ie: making products to sell) wants all of the animals in their experiments to come out completely safe and healthy.
Why? Because the company has already spent a LOT of money in development by the time it gets to animal testing. Animal testing is expensive (but required by law) and it only comes after everything else has been tried. At this point, the company believes the product to be safe. It then becomes the toxicologist's job to make sure it's absolutely safe on actual living beings.
There is a difference between your first and second paragraph. Let me expand. Many scientists (I have known a couple involved in animal testing) in the actual testing want as many animals to come out safely as they can. They are human after all and unless they have a mental problem get no joy out of inflicting suffering on other beings. The company however has no such issues. The bean counters at the top both never have contact with the experiments and are only interested in the money and have no human interest in suffering minimisation. If anything they do not want to have personal contact with the experiments because then they can go on TV and say their company inflicts no suffering on animals etc and claim plausible deniability. Anybody representing a testing lab who makes a statement that their test animals go through little to no suffering is either ignorant of what happens or lying.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of these experiments are truly shocking in the pain they inflict. The one I know who worked in a commercial lab ended up leaving the industry and turning vegetarian it had that much of an impact on him. Some pet store owners who couldn't sell their animals would sell them to the lab for testing to make a few $. These animals were subjected to things ranging from having deadly diseases injected into them to having commercial products tested on their skin and eyes. There is no happy ending - if the animal survives they are killed anyway. In some instances an animal with a lot of "character" would come along and one of the scientists would take them home rather than test on them. In many cases the medical experiments are justified and the only way to do something. That doesn't explain why thousands of animals need their eyes burnt out so a slightly differently scented shampoo can go on the shelves.
Just because someone loves working with technology does not mean they are good at it. Just because someone works just to pay their bills (and hopefully a bit extra) doesn't mean they are bad at what they do. This is true in some instances, however I have also come across some people who love technology who I would hate working with and quite a number of others who wouldn't spend any extra time in front of a computer than they had to but who are fantastic at their job.
Sounds like my workplace (also in Australia). Half of them go long distance cycling every weekend and ride to work.
In a previous position I remember going to the USA to head office and the difference between their engineers and ours was amazing. Theirs would code away in a dark room isolated from the world. In our Aus office everyone had to turn up in business atire and were all well socially adjusted. My theory is that in Australia quite often we are predominately satellite sales offices for the vendors from the USA. This means there is a very sales, rather than dev, focus in the office. Us geeks are still good at what we do however we are never isolated from sales / marketing / business which keeps us relatively "normal".
In my experience, the 'paper on the wall' Bachelors is typically viewed as worth 3-5 years of experience. A Masters in the same technical field usually counts as an additional 2-3 years. (An MBA is usually just counted for a foot in the door for management positions. Same for a lot of Certifications for technical positions.)
So, the paper usually lets someone start a bit higher up the chain. But, as you say, years of experience outweigh all else.
I wouldn't even go that far. In development as an example, the paper on the wall will get you into a junior dev position while without that paper you will have to spend a couple of years doing stuff like support or other such tasks and have to prove that you have some development knowledge. Once in the workforce after 5 years it means virtually nothing. I would choose a good applicant with 5 years experience over a new graduate with a masters any day. Not because there is something wrong with the graduate, it's just that the experienced candidate knows how to deal with customers, competing deadlines, scope creep and how to handle situations where things go balls up at the worst possible time. One of my favourite interview questions is to ask "how would you handle a situation where you are working on 2 projects and an urgent task comes up which will prevent you from completing at least one, if not both, of these tasks by the due time?" The experienced candidates will usually give some derivative of "escalate to manager, contact customers asap to negotiate deadlines" and the such. The new graduates will invariably come back with either "I will work back to make sure I meet all deadlines" or "I manage my time effectively so will never be in this position". They technically know their stuff, possibly on a pure technical scale even better than the experienced candidate, it is just that they don't know how to handle all the things that go on that are not of a technical nature.
Edit: "me" == "men"
There are professions openly hostile to me, childcare amongst them. Sexism works both ways.
> What on call policies are you used to...
Whatever is in the contract I agreed to.
> ...how should it work in an ideal world?
I should be paid an infinite amount of money for doing nothing.
When my father was "on call" for Michigan Bell he got his regular wages for his regular 40 hours plus double-time for the time he put in when actually called out (but of course he had a contract).
I think too many people don't take enough ownership for the situation they end up in. I would change the bolded part to "Whatever is in the contract I negotiated". Just because a potential employer presents you with a contract does not mean that it is final and if you want to change something they will go elsewhere. You are offered a contract because the company believes you can do a better job than the other people applying (same goes for if you are contracting). As long as you do not ask for wholesale changes to the fundamentals of the contract they usually will not go somewhere else just because you want to negotiate some of the smaller terms and conditions. I cannot recall the last contract I signed where I did not at least ask for clarification over a few concerns I had. If it was a big concern then I would want written clarification or in some instances a change to the contract. Why are people so scared of negotiating contracts?
No, there's not, unless that is a part of your contract. Usually you would be expected to work extra hours for free when required, but that doesn't include being on call.
Which is why I always ask when it comes to negotiating time if there is an on-call component. I also ask how many extra hours will come up on average / what an average working week will be and base my initial number on that. I totally agree, there is absolutely no expectation of being on call just because you are on salary. In my personal experience salary usually means to expect to work longer than 40 hours / week, which is why I negotiate my rate based on the expectation of working those extra hours. However 50+ hours / week is not the same thing as having to have your phone on at all times and being expected to drop whatever you are doing at 2am on Sunday morning to fix something. On salary I accept that I MIGHT get a call once or twice a year if something goes seriously wrong but also there will be no repercussions if I say "It's Saturday night and I'm at a party, I'm drunk so you really need to contact the next guy".
I just can't comprehend working somewhere that paid me for a 40 hour 9-5 job and yet expected me to be on-call 24x7x365. In that situation they are effectively getting you to work for free after hours. Why would anyone ever agree to those terms?? Inexperience I'm guessing?
So you would have no issues if Microsoft released a new browser called, let's say, Chrome?
Then go forth and get your PC. Nobody here is stopping you.
Same situation - been at it for years, good at it, paid quite well but well and truly over it. To accelerate the issue it's wrecking my eyesight - too many hours staring at the screen. Also looking at getting back into uni - doing something of interest like maths or applied physics and seeing where that takes me.
When was the last time you heard of someone crashing their car due to mechanical failure, in or out of warranty? And I mean actual failure ('the suspension arm broke', or 'brakes failed' or whatever) rather than just "I need something to blame for my incompetence". I'm trying but I can't think of any real examples. The only case that comes to mind is that one time that the wheel came off dad's car because the garage only finger-tightened the nuts...
Read up on the Ford Explorer / Firestone issues...
Just gives an empty box, what do I type?
Frist p1ss!!!1!
...Do you really think that LiveLeaks has the breadth of content that YouTube has?...
I always find it interesting when people refer to Youtube as great Google innovation. Youtube was bought by Google after it had become successful, hardly a product of the Google r+d department.
If it's truly a new idea, then there are no established competitors. He will be the first, and the competition will follow.
Of course, this entire discussion hinges on the ridiculous belief that ideas are worth something. They're not. Every moron has a million ideas. Implementation is everything. If he can't/won't implement the idea, then he doesn't have anything of any value anyway.
Every moron may have a million ideas but there is a big difference between saying "I think a flying car would be a great idea" and "I think a flying car would be a great idea and here is a way I have used the earth's electromagnetic fields to power the car and here are the plans for a prototype". Now the developer of the prototype may not have the capital to go to market with their idea but there is nothing immoral about them making some money from their groundbreaking work.
I'm having trouble following the logic here. How would he not be able to profit off of an idea that others are able to profit from? Can he not do the same thing with that idea that the others would do, and compete with them?
Ideas aren't physical objects. When you give it away, you still have it.
Simple - there is no imaginable way he would be able to compete with a large multi-national with massive marketing, sales and development budgets with established customers.
If you patent, it'll be expensive.
If you don't patent, but end up making it, someone else will patent it and sue you, that will be more expensive.
However, if it'll never really be marketable, publish, someone might think oooo nifty, and hire you because it sounds great.
Great idea. Put all the time, effort and money into creating the technology. Then upon completion give it away to someone else so they can make money from it. If you are lucky they might hire you to work some menial job for them and spit you out when it's convenient.
I have never understood the attitude on here that just the act of getting a job somewhere is considered some amazing feat. Please correct me if I have mis-interpreted your post.
I was going to post something similar - I am always puzzled by this attitude of "getting a job" as being the big goal of doing r+d. I am guessing (would love someone not fitting the description to chime in and say where my thinking is flawed) mainly from either students or researchers who think getting a decently paying job is something that only happens to the lucky few. Many of us who work in industry already have decent paying jobs, we don't need to create some new invention to be hired. So if we create something, the goal is not just to get a job, it would either be advancement of society as a whole or to make money. However I can't see why it can't be both - it is a concept foreign to slashdot but there is nothing wrong with an individual making money from their own hard work. There - I said it. A possible way to do both would be to license for free to any not-for-profit organisation so that further research can be performed but if someone wants to make money for themselves from something I have invented they better be prepared to pay for it.
Could you tell me who manufactured that computer of yours?
If the manufacturer gave it away for free there would be a point, otherwise that company can pay for the technology they are happy to charge us for.
Hint: the very first line of the summary is "iTnews reports the patent battle between Australia's CSIRO and 14 of the world's largest technology companies has gained the research organization $200 million from out of court settlements." Now how much US taxpayer funds do you think have been involved in this?
Can someone please justify why we should consider the CSIRO to be a patent troll? They are an actual research organisation (a taxpayer-funded one at that); they don't exist just to file patents and make claims on them. Why are people dismissing them as trolls?
Because it's slashdot. You would be lucky for the majority of posters to read the the summary let alone any background info. Congratulations to the CSIRO for their success on this - in spite of having their funding savaged. Though the technology was patented in 96 so the r+d was possibly done before it became a target of budget cuts.
I am no Linux fanboi by any stretch of the imagination however I have to agree with the parent. In my personal experience, regardless of hardware configuration, even a brand spanking new build will slow to a dead crawl (for all intents and purposes unuseable) when performing updates.
This may or may not appeal to regular gamers but it would certainly appeal to people playing competitively to iron out errors in their strategy and tactics. As an example, as a poker player I would pay good money for a strong AI to play against that would adapt to my playing style and force me to become less predictable and intentionally target my weaknesses. "Rigging" the deck would be useless and AI that just gets stronger as time progresses would only be useful to a point. An ideal opponent would be an adaptive one.
You make a good point - then cheapen it by calling dissenting opinion a strawman argument. Let's refrain from the name calling shall we? :)
I totally agree with you that there is a lot of gray in between the extremes. I also don't believe that the points:
1) if a teacher wanted more they should have chosen a different career - a point I agree with
and
2) teachers are underpaid as are a lot of essential services to society - a point I also agree with.
The two points above are not mutually exclusive. If someone aims to make a lot of money in their career it can hardly be argued that choosing teaching would be a smart move - that's just an unfortunate fact of life. However this is not mutually exclusive from the idea that teachers are underpaid and should be paid more - not Ferrari more but certainly more so as to attract the best quality. I personally believe essential services should be owned by the government and staff should be paid according to their value to society, thus attracting quality people for positions that require them. I also believe that on the free market outside essential services the sky should be the limit.
To achieve superior financial success eg. owning a Ferrari, requires far above average work and risk to the average person (leaving out people who inherited the money or won it in a lottery). So it is fitting that they should be rewarded well above and beyond the averge person. Also not all financially successful people are corrupt - a generalisation just as nonsensical as saying all teachers are paedophiles. Many people did become successful (when using the term I am talking about financial success in this context) through extreme hard work, a fact the leftists tend to overlook and instead emphasise only the bad ones, who you will find most people on either side of the fence would prefer we did without.
I rest my case. The first reply had an interesting point that could raise some discussions - I personally don't agree with him or her but there is merit to their point of view. You on the other hand are a perfect match for the socialist in the example - trying to pull down anyone more successful than you are because they "almost certainly didn't work for the money".