The state I live in has weak labor laws, and the company believes it can do as it pleases. My fellow co-workers and I have been looking for other jobs for a few years now, but the market sucks. (BTW, all of us have at least a bachelors degree, mine is in engineering). There are thousands of jobs around here that pay minimum wage, but almost nothing paying any more than that.
I have an obvious solution for you. MOVE.
That's what I've had to do for years, just to stay employed. My last move was 200 miles. The one before that was 650 miles.
I see my family a week at Thanksgiving and a week at Christmas. Sure that sucks, but it's what I had to do in order to avoid what you're going through.
What drives the smart guys to keep focused and interested working for a long time on hard problems? After a hour of intensive STEM stuff I already feel quite exhausted and need a good break.
Me too. My secret...recreational levels of caffeine. God bless the person that invented chocolate-covered coffee beans.
Someone once asked Linus Pauling what his secret was to having good ideas. He answered that it was having lots of ideas and throwing away the bad ones.
Here's my personal list of genius traits:
1) Read Stand on the shoulders of giants as much as possible. No point rediscovering the wheel.
2) Work hard Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
3) Intellectual cross-training Learn as much as you can about as many different subjects as you can. You'll be stunned how often principles from one subject will apply in a completely unrelated subject.
Some years back, one of the former department heads at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (whose reputation for innovation is nearly unmatched in history) wrote a book on this subject. I recently read it and enjoyed it greatly. It's called Breakthrough: stories and strategies of radical innovation. I highly recommend it.
When I was but a teen, and saw the movie Spies Like Us in the theater, I recognized the "decrypted transmission" shown by Dan Ackroyd's character as a hex dump from the Apple//e's monitor program (i.e. what you got by typing "CALL -151" at the prompt).
Since most people would rather live in a civilized society, it behooves us to take steps to keep society civilized. That basically requires brainwashing everybody from childhood into not doing anything you think you can get away with.
I believe this idea was explored pretty thoroughly in a famous novel. I also remember trying to argue in favor of such a society with my high school English teacher. She thought I was a horrible person for even thinking that and refused to discuss it. She educated me that day...just not in the way she intended.
Why would anyone trust Microsoft security software when it was Microsoft Windows' own pathetic security that created the need for all this whack-a-mole virus-scanning in the first place?
[Y]ou do know that was a Hollywood production, yes? When have that bunch *ever* portrayed an actual event with any degree approaching accuracy?
Primary Colors? Granted, the real Bill Clinton seems fictional.
Wag The Dog? We live that every day.
Sneakers? Surprisingly accurate about real hacking.
Max Headroom? Just around the corner...about twenty minutes from now, in fact.
Robocop? Could be shot in present-day Detroit. No need for expensive sets!
I could go on. Hollywood gets it right occasionally.
the collapse of building 7 was way too shady in my opinion. Add to that the fact that the news of its collapse were reported 20 minutes prior to it actually happening.
Didn't you know? The NWO/Illuminati/Bilderburg/whatever conspiracy goes back in time in order to cover up their activities! That's why there's no evidence! And the lack of evidence is proof that it happened!
There are tons of stateless actors (and not an insignificant number of nation-states) whom are clearly enemies of the United States that benefit from his disclosures of our SIGINT sources and methods.
Oh, please. Our real enemies have known for a long time to avoid electronic communications. That's why it took so long to find Bin Laden — he communicated with the outside world through a network of trusted, non-electronic couriers.
The only point of the panopticon's activities these days is to (1) catch really dumb terrorists, and (2) serve their unidentified masters in the creation of a totalitarian surveillance state.
Can the techie community please lose the ridiculous overblown hostility to any woman who dares to suggest that there are real problems in our society stemming from a history of thousands of years of male domination of it. It actually just makes us look fucking stupid.
I would hazard to guess that most techie geeks don't dominate anybody. We tend to be put-upon. We're not the problem.
It seems like that would make feminists more attracted to geeks...but all we get is "Nerds? Ewww! Gross!"
Slashdot Mirror
Lady Gaga is the evidence. She is not from this planet.
Neither is Mariah Carey. She sings higher than dolphins can hear, and has no nose.
The state I live in has weak labor laws, and the company believes it can do as it pleases. My fellow co-workers and I have been looking for other jobs for a few years now, but the market sucks. (BTW, all of us have at least a bachelors degree, mine is in engineering). There are thousands of jobs around here that pay minimum wage, but almost nothing paying any more than that.
I have an obvious solution for you. MOVE.
That's what I've had to do for years, just to stay employed. My last move was 200 miles. The one before that was 650 miles.
I see my family a week at Thanksgiving and a week at Christmas. Sure that sucks, but it's what I had to do in order to avoid what you're going through.
When men get power, they abuse it.
That's strange...whenever I get power, I just end up with current and voltage. I must be doing something wrong.
Then we must currently live in anarchy because it's still about having bigger bombs, biceps, knives and guns.
Indeed...viewed internationally, we live in an anarchy of nation-states.
The U.N. has no real enforcement powers...the General Assembly is little more than a forum for expressing hatred.
Even if you *are* being hired to implement Version Control, what would your opinion be of a company who, in 2014, doesn't yet use version control?
I recently had a job where I had to institute version control, and even encountered a lot of resistance to the idea initially.
Unfortunately, it was a department of the U.S. Army.
What drives the smart guys to keep focused and interested working for a long time on hard problems? After a hour of intensive STEM stuff I already feel quite exhausted and need a good break.
Me too. My secret...recreational levels of caffeine. God bless the person that invented chocolate-covered coffee beans.
Someone once asked Linus Pauling what his secret was to having good ideas. He answered that it was having lots of ideas and throwing away the bad ones.
Here's my personal list of genius traits:
Stand on the shoulders of giants as much as possible. No point rediscovering the wheel.
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Learn as much as you can about as many different subjects as you can. You'll be stunned how often principles from one subject will apply in a completely unrelated subject.
Some years back, one of the former department heads at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (whose reputation for innovation is nearly unmatched in history) wrote a book on this subject. I recently read it and enjoyed it greatly. It's called Breakthrough: stories and strategies of radical innovation. I highly recommend it.
Whatever you do, don't use Sony's stupid "web" thing as your media server.
I had to do low-level programming of Sony video-game console hardware for several years. I found this video positively cathartic.
When I was but a teen, and saw the movie Spies Like Us in the theater, I recognized the "decrypted transmission" shown by Dan Ackroyd's character as a hex dump from the Apple //e's monitor program (i.e. what you got by typing "CALL -151" at the prompt).
Time to repost an eerily prescient article from the L.A. Times, way back in 1993, about smart homes.
Since most people would rather live in a civilized society, it behooves us to take steps to keep society civilized. That basically requires brainwashing everybody from childhood into not doing anything you think you can get away with.
I believe this idea was explored pretty thoroughly in a famous novel. I also remember trying to argue in favor of such a society with my high school English teacher. She thought I was a horrible person for even thinking that and refused to discuss it. She educated me that day...just not in the way she intended.
Thank you. I thought I was the only one that noticed this.
Why would anyone trust Microsoft security software when it was Microsoft Windows' own pathetic security that created the need for all this whack-a-mole virus-scanning in the first place?
[Y]ou do know that was a Hollywood production, yes? When have that bunch *ever* portrayed an actual event with any degree approaching accuracy?
Primary Colors? Granted, the real Bill Clinton seems fictional.
Wag The Dog? We live that every day.
Sneakers? Surprisingly accurate about real hacking.
Max Headroom? Just around the corner...about twenty minutes from now, in fact.
Robocop? Could be shot in present-day Detroit. No need for expensive sets!
I could go on. Hollywood gets it right occasionally.
That's a bunch of crap. There have to be a couple of million Jesuses running around in Mexico alone.
You think that's bad...think of all the Mohammeds running around in the middle east.
That sort of oversupply is sure to lower their value.
The Onion already did a great "exposé" of this...Are Tests Biased Against Students That Don't Give A...?
"I was furiously vagina" does not make sense.
Good! More furiously vagina for me!
It's not that you have ADD, it's that...LOOK! A SQUIRREL!
...who are like the scary talking doll in some nameless horror flick I once saw whose line was:
"Hi. My name's Tiny Tina, and you better be nice to me".
It was "Talky Tina", and it was an episode of Twilight Zone.
the collapse of building 7 was way too shady in my opinion. Add to that the fact that the news of its collapse were reported 20 minutes prior to it actually happening.
Didn't you know? The NWO/Illuminati/Bilderburg/whatever conspiracy goes back in time in order to cover up their activities! That's why there's no evidence! And the lack of evidence is proof that it happened!
With my level of insane paranoia, I easily qualify to work for the government intelligence services.
There are tons of stateless actors (and not an insignificant number of nation-states) whom are clearly enemies of the United States that benefit from his disclosures of our SIGINT sources and methods.
Oh, please. Our real enemies have known for a long time to avoid electronic communications. That's why it took so long to find Bin Laden — he communicated with the outside world through a network of trusted, non-electronic couriers.
The only point of the panopticon's activities these days is to (1) catch really dumb terrorists, and (2) serve their unidentified masters in the creation of a totalitarian surveillance state.
Just yesterday, Slashdot posted an article about how Boston police had plenty of information about a stolen motorcycle yet did nothing. So fighting crime obviously isn't high up on the list of priorities for our panopticon. So what is?
The American people is the BOSS of the NSA; it's in the Constitution.
But the government's argument is that the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction over the NSA's activities. How much more unconstitutional can you get?
Dropping nukes on Japan was about two things :
1) revenge
and
2) Showing the rest of the world what they could expect if they messed with the US.
It's too bad the U.S. didn't try dropping a nuke on Detroit -- there's a chance that Detroit would look as good as Hiroshima does these days.
Can the techie community please lose the ridiculous overblown hostility to any woman who dares to suggest that there are real problems in our society stemming from a history of thousands of years of male domination of it. It actually just makes us look fucking stupid.
I would hazard to guess that most techie geeks don't dominate anybody. We tend to be put-upon. We're not the problem.
It seems like that would make feminists more attracted to geeks...but all we get is "Nerds? Ewww! Gross!"
Just sayin'.