Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I've worked in IT support for a couple of decades now, and I know exactly how that goes.
There are two things about that though. First, it's a bit of a fringe case. You have to consider the question, "How many people of that sort are in my target audience?" If the answer is "a lot", then you should think about writing documentation for them specifically, and find a way separate it out from other documentation for those who are more comfortable using a computer. Otherwise, people who know what they're doing are going to be frustrated searching through 100 pages of inane instructions to find actual information.
Second, people like that often also won't read the documentation. If they do, they won't understand it, or else won't feel confident that they understand it. At a certain point, you have to either provide those people with IT support personnel that they can call (your older relative has you). At the very least, you need to provide them with simple step-by-step instructions that never vary, where they don't even need to understand what they're doing. Like "In order to do [x], press the power button on your computer to turn it on (it's located in the top-right-hand corner of the box under your desk). It will flash some things on the screen for a while. Wait for it to ask for a password, and then type 'hunter2'. Wait 2 minutes. Then find the blue "E" on your screen, with "Internet Explorer" written under it. It will be the third little picture on the screen, all the way to the left..."
I've had to write instructions like that before, and some people need it to be that simple. But obviously a web application vendor can't take responsibility for that level of instruction. Even something like Dropbox, which is designed to be extremely simple, has to assume some level of competency.
The act of knowingly installing it contradicts that. If you don't want it, don't make the choice to install it.
See there, you're talking about *actually* unwanted programs. If a program is potentially unwanted, then it's not currently unwanted. It just might become unwanted in the future.
If you've clicked on a link that says "install program X", then program X is no longer potentially unwanted.
I think you mean something like "unwittingly installed program" then. You could knowingly install an application and still retain the potential for not-wanting it.
I know it's started becoming a common terminology, but I don't really like the terms "Potentially Unwanted Program" and "Potentially Unwanted Application". Any program/application is *potentially* unwanted. Whenever someone starts talking about PUP/PUA, I can never figure out where they're drawing the line.
I'm not aware of Odoo, so I'm only speaking generally, but generally speaking, having a simple/intuitive product does *reduce* the need to documentation. For example, I don't need documentation to tell me that I can open a Word document by going to "File", selecting "Open", and then going to "Computer", "Browse"....
Now, come to think of it, the process for even something as simple as that has gotten needlessly complicated. WTF is Microsoft doing these days?
Back on subject, yeah, if you open files by going to an obvious menu button that says, "Open File...", then I don't think you really need to document that. You only need to document the features that aren't completely blindingly obvious.
The need for documentation can also be reduced by having a good help/support system. If you have a procedure for doing something unusual and complicated that's undocumented, you had better have someone standing by that I can call/chat/email who can help me out. And even still, that stuff should be documented at least well enough that you can train your support staff.
If you don't have good support and something is not completely obvious, then yes, it should be documented.
Instead of elections, why not have all representatives be picked from a lottery of all citizens, similar to jury duty. Instead of a jury picking a foreman, they nominate and elect a president.
Well originally, the US was set up to be closer to this. The difference was, instead of being "picked from a lottery", they were elected in small elections all over the country. It was (is) called the Electoral College. Senators for each state also used to be elected by the state's legislature, rather than by popular vote.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), we changed all that to move closer to a direct democracy. People get angry about the Electoral College every once in a while and propose getting rid of it and moving to a direct popular vote, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I think this is tied somewhat to the issue of the issue of self-driving cars. Part of the problem with flying cars is the question of, who do we trust to fly them? What's the process of licensing people to drive/pilot these things? Do we trust people not to fly over protected airspace? Do we trust people not to fly into buildings? Along with everything else, driving/piloting a vehicle designed both for driving and flying might very well be more complicated than learning to drive and learning to fly combined.
However, if you can have self-driving cars, and you can make a self-flying driving car (including take-off and landing), then you could have the whole thing controlled by a computer guided system, adhering to restrictions to traffic and air traffic. Along with everything else, you could have restrictions that say, "When you're in NYC, the car knows that it needs to drive because airspace is restricted. Once you drive X miles outside the city, you can take to the air along certain restricted routes, following certain procedures." All of that could be controlled with computers, disallowing various kinds of abuses.
Of course, that assumes that we have sufficient systems for safe autonomous driving/flight. It also assumes that everything is coded well enough to prevent people from hacking the car to allow them to break the rules. It also assumed that people will be ok with being restricted and tracked. Finally, it assumes that, when you've put all these restrictions in place, you haven't made the idea so un-fun that people don't want a flying car anymore.
Some people assume that totalitarian/hierarchical organizations are simply inherently bad, and "democracy" is inherently good. Really, it's more about the situation and context.
For example, even in our modern "democracy", our military still uses a top-down hierarchy with a rigid chain of command. There are good reasons for this. When you're in dangerous situations, organization and timing can become vital to the survival of the group, and survival tends to trump social justice. If the military commander has a plan that requires a troop of soldiers move to a particular location in a short amount of time, you don't want people standing around debating, or wondering whether the plan is fair. You need people to follow orders immediately, or else a lot of people might die.
There have been situations in humanity's past when this would have been true of social/governmental organizations too. If the chief needs everyone to mobilize in order to avert disaster and keep the entire tribe from being wiped out, then you don't want a lot of debate. The whole setup worked pretty well for a while.
Of course now, things are different. Most of our lives (speaking at least of the people reading Slashdot) are relatively safe and comfortable. We don't need to follow orders immediately and unquestioningly in order to stay alive. Also, our society is larger, and the concentration of power is greater. The danger of taking time for debate is not greater than the danger of a bad ruler with absolute power over a society, so totalitarianism seems like it's not such a great idea.
A) You're saying the iPhone 6 looks like the HTC one, from the back, if you ignore all the details and focus purely on the rough shape of the device, which is roughly the same as the iPhone 4.
B) Apple didn't just put out those pictures touting their "new design approach" and "sophisticated look".
C) I don't have a problem with companies copying each other. I think it's generally a good strategy to copy the best thing out there, and then improve on it. It's just kind of silly to copy and then brag about how your copied product is revolutionary.
D) The Sony Clies didn't have as strong a similarity, so you're not getting any points there.
E) People who complain about fanboys are usually just fanboys for the competitor.
Samsung says a metal frame and curved corners give the Galaxy Alpha a "sophisticated" look. The South Korean company describes the Galaxy Alpha as representing a "new design approach".
I like how the "new design approach" and "sophisticated look" boil down to "making it look more like an iPhone 4."
Where we once walked on tightropes every day doing basic server maintenance, we are now afforded nearly instant undo buttons, as snapshots of virtual servers allow us to roll back server updates and changes with a click.
If he's talking about a production system then he's an idiot.
Why? Is it your contention that the work of sysadmins and support personnel has just been trouble-free for decades, and all the problems were caused by a sysadmin "not knowing what they were doing"?
The article is a rather simplistic hardware-centric viewpoint. It doesn't even begin to touch on the areas where IT has always struggled: design, coding, debugging, and deployment. Instead it completely ignores the issue of software development, and instead bleats about how we can "roll back" servers with the click of a button in a virtual environment.
And now is when we have a long and stupid debate as to whether the term "IT" signifies a grouping of all computer-related work including development, or whether it's limited to workstation/server/network design, deployment, and support. And we go on with this debate for a long time, becoming increasingly irate, arguing about whether developers or sysadmins do more of the 'real' work, and...
Let's just skip to the end and agree that, regardless of whether IT 'really' includes software development, it's pretty clear that the author didn't have software development in mind when he wrote the article.
I have spent years as a hiring manager and I would be quite impressed if such completeness and honesty showed on a resume.
And then other hiring managers would get annoyed and toss your resume because you did something you weren't supposed to. Maybe I'm just cynical, but that seems to be the way it goes with job applications: for anything that one person says, "I would be impressed and that resume would go to the top of my list!" there's at least a few others that say, "I find that unappealing and I would ignore a resume that came in with that."
If you're going to put something on your resume, you had better damn well know about it.
There's a bit of a problem there, given the automated scans and everything.
For example, HR people will do things like filtering out resumes that don't include "Cisco". They might not actually have Cisco equipment, or even if they do, it might not be a vital part of the job. Regardless, Their system is just set up to filter out anything that doesn't include "Cisco". Now, you're a network tech that isn't very experienced with Cisco, but you've done a little work on Cisco equipment here and there, and you understand routers in general. Do you slip "Cisco" into your resume just to get past the scans?
I don't on my resume, but it's a tough issue, and I understand why someone would do that kind of thing. The problem is, by having the automated filtering process, employers/recruiters are providing an incentive for people to throw in buzzwords just to get their resume to be seen by human eyes. I've actually heard recruiters suggest that people put a bunch of small-type white-on-white invisible text at the bottom of their resumes, filled with buzzwords without context, just to get past automated filters.
What I find sad and disturbing is not that people will throw buzzwords in their resume, but that employers have created a system where that's a smart strategy. You'd think someone would come up with a better method.
Well if the message is literally saying, "This call may be recorded for quality assurance," then couldn't you take that as permission. It doesn't specify who should do the recording, it just says it "may be recorded". Like, "Yes, you may go to the bathroom. This phone call also may be recorded."
Also, from what I've come to understand, IQ tests just aren't ultimately that useful for ranking the intelligence of smart people. At least, according to a few different psychologists that I've talked to, the main purpose of IQ tests, the reason they're used and considered valid, is in detecting developmental problems rather than detecting genius.
So if someone scores a 160 as opposed to a 130, it gives some indication that the person is good at certain kinds of mental activity-- for example, spotting patterns in numbers and geometric shapes. That's about all you can really say, and it's ultimately not that meaningful. Of course, people who are really brilliant math/science types will likely do pretty well on these tests, but doing well on these tests does not make you a brilliant mathematician or scientist.
Where the test is helpful is in seeing problems/deficiencies. If you test a child who gets a score of 70, then it's a pretty good indicator that he should be put into a special program. That's what the test is good for, and that's largely why they administer it. If you're an adult, lording your 150 IQ over someone who scored a 145, then you're an idiot. If you're citing your 197 IQ as some sort of qualification for something, it's that much dumber.
Of course, if you can plug that hardware key into your phone somehow, then you can add biometrics, SMS confirmations, or other factors for authentication if you want. Plus, you get your keyboard right there. Plus you can have it communicate with computers via bluetooth without worrying about an extra battery to keep track of. Plus... all kinds of things.
I think I've come around to the idea that smartphones are the right place to put this authentication. It's a device pretty much everyone carries around with them anyway. If you want it to be an unextractable hardware key, then you'd need some kind of swappable chip-- maybe modify the design of SIM cards? There would be a lot of ways to do this, but I think it'd be silly to ignore the fact that most people are carrying around little handheld computers with screens and keyboards and wireless communication already.
why would i want to connect my tablet to my TV via HDMI so it's a PITA to use it while watching TV?
Well, for example, I've used airplay to stream a movie from my iPad to my parents Apple TV when I came to visit. It let us all watch the movie on TV instead of a little iPad, and I just didn't use the iPad while it was streaming.
if anything, i like airplay to my apple tv from my ipads to stream cartoons from the Nickelodeon app
Can you do other things now on an iPad while streaming video? Last I checked, if you were using AirPlay, you couldn't switch applications without it stopping the stream, which would negate your previous objection, "why would i want to connect my tablet to my TV... so it's a PITA to use it while watching TV?" Just don't use your tablet while playing videos on it.
Either way, you know, maybe it's not useful for you, but that doesn't mean that it's not useful for anyone.
Yeah, but you can also play video from your tablet to your TV, through HDMI out if you have it, or else streaming to a set-top box. It may not be an extremely common use for tablets, but I've done it before. And a 13" tablet running a "retina" resolution (~300 dpi) would run over 1080p, for whatever that's worth.
I mean, I'm not sure I care about 4k right now, since 1080p seems to be doing just fine for my purposes. Still, it's not as though the idea is completely stupid.
The one key difference though is that in the private sector one must meet sales expectations.
Well no, not exactly. In the private sector, "sales expectations" can be used as a metric for salespeople or the business as a whole, but it's not a metric used for most jobs. Even so, whole businesses can fail to meet "sales expectations". They just have to be profitable enough to stay in business, or failing that, secure some other method of funding to keep them running.
But can an individual hold a job at a private-sector job while being grossly incompetent and lazy? Yes. It's entirely possible, and it happens.
I think everyone needs to step back and find out, first, what is being claimed, and second, what the scientific basis for those claims are. Without knowing that much, we can't begin to talk about whether those claims are convincing, let alone whether the people who are disagreeing are somehow biased.
Because there are plenty of people who would say, "Behavior is influenced by genes, and a large percentage of people in prison are black, therefore black people are genetically disposed to be criminals." That sort of thing is horribly racist and really bad science.
But is that the sort of thing that Nicholas Wade has done? I haven't read the book, and frankly I might not know the science well enough to judge how well founded his claims are. I'd be interested to hear from someone who has at least read the book.
And this is really why we don't need biometrics, but should be using password-protected public key signing instead. Not only can you change your password, but if you can set up a CA (or trust someone else to do it), then you can revoke your key if it somehow gets compromised.
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Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I've worked in IT support for a couple of decades now, and I know exactly how that goes.
There are two things about that though. First, it's a bit of a fringe case. You have to consider the question, "How many people of that sort are in my target audience?" If the answer is "a lot", then you should think about writing documentation for them specifically, and find a way separate it out from other documentation for those who are more comfortable using a computer. Otherwise, people who know what they're doing are going to be frustrated searching through 100 pages of inane instructions to find actual information.
Second, people like that often also won't read the documentation. If they do, they won't understand it, or else won't feel confident that they understand it. At a certain point, you have to either provide those people with IT support personnel that they can call (your older relative has you). At the very least, you need to provide them with simple step-by-step instructions that never vary, where they don't even need to understand what they're doing. Like "In order to do [x], press the power button on your computer to turn it on (it's located in the top-right-hand corner of the box under your desk). It will flash some things on the screen for a while. Wait for it to ask for a password, and then type 'hunter2'. Wait 2 minutes. Then find the blue "E" on your screen, with "Internet Explorer" written under it. It will be the third little picture on the screen, all the way to the left..."
I've had to write instructions like that before, and some people need it to be that simple. But obviously a web application vendor can't take responsibility for that level of instruction. Even something like Dropbox, which is designed to be extremely simple, has to assume some level of competency.
He gave us both the word "crap" and "ballcock"? What a guy.
The act of knowingly installing it contradicts that. If you don't want it, don't make the choice to install it.
See there, you're talking about *actually* unwanted programs. If a program is potentially unwanted, then it's not currently unwanted. It just might become unwanted in the future.
If you've clicked on a link that says "install program X", then program X is no longer potentially unwanted.
I think you mean something like "unwittingly installed program" then. You could knowingly install an application and still retain the potential for not-wanting it.
I know it's started becoming a common terminology, but I don't really like the terms "Potentially Unwanted Program" and "Potentially Unwanted Application". Any program/application is *potentially* unwanted. Whenever someone starts talking about PUP/PUA, I can never figure out where they're drawing the line.
I'm not aware of Odoo, so I'm only speaking generally, but generally speaking, having a simple/intuitive product does *reduce* the need to documentation. For example, I don't need documentation to tell me that I can open a Word document by going to "File", selecting "Open", and then going to "Computer", "Browse"....
Now, come to think of it, the process for even something as simple as that has gotten needlessly complicated. WTF is Microsoft doing these days?
Back on subject, yeah, if you open files by going to an obvious menu button that says, "Open File...", then I don't think you really need to document that. You only need to document the features that aren't completely blindingly obvious.
The need for documentation can also be reduced by having a good help/support system. If you have a procedure for doing something unusual and complicated that's undocumented, you had better have someone standing by that I can call/chat/email who can help me out. And even still, that stuff should be documented at least well enough that you can train your support staff.
If you don't have good support and something is not completely obvious, then yes, it should be documented.
Instead of elections, why not have all representatives be picked from a lottery of all citizens, similar to jury duty. Instead of a jury picking a foreman, they nominate and elect a president.
Well originally, the US was set up to be closer to this. The difference was, instead of being "picked from a lottery", they were elected in small elections all over the country. It was (is) called the Electoral College. Senators for each state also used to be elected by the state's legislature, rather than by popular vote.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), we changed all that to move closer to a direct democracy. People get angry about the Electoral College every once in a while and propose getting rid of it and moving to a direct popular vote, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I think this is tied somewhat to the issue of the issue of self-driving cars. Part of the problem with flying cars is the question of, who do we trust to fly them? What's the process of licensing people to drive/pilot these things? Do we trust people not to fly over protected airspace? Do we trust people not to fly into buildings? Along with everything else, driving/piloting a vehicle designed both for driving and flying might very well be more complicated than learning to drive and learning to fly combined.
However, if you can have self-driving cars, and you can make a self-flying driving car (including take-off and landing), then you could have the whole thing controlled by a computer guided system, adhering to restrictions to traffic and air traffic. Along with everything else, you could have restrictions that say, "When you're in NYC, the car knows that it needs to drive because airspace is restricted. Once you drive X miles outside the city, you can take to the air along certain restricted routes, following certain procedures." All of that could be controlled with computers, disallowing various kinds of abuses.
Of course, that assumes that we have sufficient systems for safe autonomous driving/flight. It also assumes that everything is coded well enough to prevent people from hacking the car to allow them to break the rules. It also assumed that people will be ok with being restricted and tracked. Finally, it assumes that, when you've put all these restrictions in place, you haven't made the idea so un-fun that people don't want a flying car anymore.
Some people assume that totalitarian/hierarchical organizations are simply inherently bad, and "democracy" is inherently good. Really, it's more about the situation and context.
For example, even in our modern "democracy", our military still uses a top-down hierarchy with a rigid chain of command. There are good reasons for this. When you're in dangerous situations, organization and timing can become vital to the survival of the group, and survival tends to trump social justice. If the military commander has a plan that requires a troop of soldiers move to a particular location in a short amount of time, you don't want people standing around debating, or wondering whether the plan is fair. You need people to follow orders immediately, or else a lot of people might die.
There have been situations in humanity's past when this would have been true of social/governmental organizations too. If the chief needs everyone to mobilize in order to avert disaster and keep the entire tribe from being wiped out, then you don't want a lot of debate. The whole setup worked pretty well for a while.
Of course now, things are different. Most of our lives (speaking at least of the people reading Slashdot) are relatively safe and comfortable. We don't need to follow orders immediately and unquestioningly in order to stay alive. Also, our society is larger, and the concentration of power is greater. The danger of taking time for debate is not greater than the danger of a bad ruler with absolute power over a society, so totalitarianism seems like it's not such a great idea.
A) You're saying the iPhone 6 looks like the HTC one, from the back, if you ignore all the details and focus purely on the rough shape of the device, which is roughly the same as the iPhone 4.
B) Apple didn't just put out those pictures touting their "new design approach" and "sophisticated look".
C) I don't have a problem with companies copying each other. I think it's generally a good strategy to copy the best thing out there, and then improve on it. It's just kind of silly to copy and then brag about how your copied product is revolutionary.
D) The Sony Clies didn't have as strong a similarity, so you're not getting any points there.
E) People who complain about fanboys are usually just fanboys for the competitor.
Samsung says a metal frame and curved corners give the Galaxy Alpha a "sophisticated" look. The South Korean company describes the Galaxy Alpha as representing a "new design approach".
I like how the "new design approach" and "sophisticated look" boil down to "making it look more like an iPhone 4."
If he's talking about a production system then he's an idiot.
Why? Is it your contention that the work of sysadmins and support personnel has just been trouble-free for decades, and all the problems were caused by a sysadmin "not knowing what they were doing"?
The article is a rather simplistic hardware-centric viewpoint. It doesn't even begin to touch on the areas where IT has always struggled: design, coding, debugging, and deployment. Instead it completely ignores the issue of software development, and instead bleats about how we can "roll back" servers with the click of a button in a virtual environment.
And now is when we have a long and stupid debate as to whether the term "IT" signifies a grouping of all computer-related work including development, or whether it's limited to workstation/server/network design, deployment, and support. And we go on with this debate for a long time, becoming increasingly irate, arguing about whether developers or sysadmins do more of the 'real' work, and...
Let's just skip to the end and agree that, regardless of whether IT 'really' includes software development, it's pretty clear that the author didn't have software development in mind when he wrote the article.
I have spent years as a hiring manager and I would be quite impressed if such completeness and honesty showed on a resume.
And then other hiring managers would get annoyed and toss your resume because you did something you weren't supposed to. Maybe I'm just cynical, but that seems to be the way it goes with job applications: for anything that one person says, "I would be impressed and that resume would go to the top of my list!" there's at least a few others that say, "I find that unappealing and I would ignore a resume that came in with that."
If you're going to put something on your resume, you had better damn well know about it.
There's a bit of a problem there, given the automated scans and everything.
For example, HR people will do things like filtering out resumes that don't include "Cisco". They might not actually have Cisco equipment, or even if they do, it might not be a vital part of the job. Regardless, Their system is just set up to filter out anything that doesn't include "Cisco". Now, you're a network tech that isn't very experienced with Cisco, but you've done a little work on Cisco equipment here and there, and you understand routers in general. Do you slip "Cisco" into your resume just to get past the scans?
I don't on my resume, but it's a tough issue, and I understand why someone would do that kind of thing. The problem is, by having the automated filtering process, employers/recruiters are providing an incentive for people to throw in buzzwords just to get their resume to be seen by human eyes. I've actually heard recruiters suggest that people put a bunch of small-type white-on-white invisible text at the bottom of their resumes, filled with buzzwords without context, just to get past automated filters.
What I find sad and disturbing is not that people will throw buzzwords in their resume, but that employers have created a system where that's a smart strategy. You'd think someone would come up with a better method.
Well if the message is literally saying, "This call may be recorded for quality assurance," then couldn't you take that as permission. It doesn't specify who should do the recording, it just says it "may be recorded". Like, "Yes, you may go to the bathroom. This phone call also may be recorded."
Also, from what I've come to understand, IQ tests just aren't ultimately that useful for ranking the intelligence of smart people. At least, according to a few different psychologists that I've talked to, the main purpose of IQ tests, the reason they're used and considered valid, is in detecting developmental problems rather than detecting genius.
So if someone scores a 160 as opposed to a 130, it gives some indication that the person is good at certain kinds of mental activity-- for example, spotting patterns in numbers and geometric shapes. That's about all you can really say, and it's ultimately not that meaningful. Of course, people who are really brilliant math/science types will likely do pretty well on these tests, but doing well on these tests does not make you a brilliant mathematician or scientist.
Where the test is helpful is in seeing problems/deficiencies. If you test a child who gets a score of 70, then it's a pretty good indicator that he should be put into a special program. That's what the test is good for, and that's largely why they administer it. If you're an adult, lording your 150 IQ over someone who scored a 145, then you're an idiot. If you're citing your 197 IQ as some sort of qualification for something, it's that much dumber.
Of course, if you can plug that hardware key into your phone somehow, then you can add biometrics, SMS confirmations, or other factors for authentication if you want. Plus, you get your keyboard right there. Plus you can have it communicate with computers via bluetooth without worrying about an extra battery to keep track of. Plus... all kinds of things.
I think I've come around to the idea that smartphones are the right place to put this authentication. It's a device pretty much everyone carries around with them anyway. If you want it to be an unextractable hardware key, then you'd need some kind of swappable chip-- maybe modify the design of SIM cards? There would be a lot of ways to do this, but I think it'd be silly to ignore the fact that most people are carrying around little handheld computers with screens and keyboards and wireless communication already.
why would i want to connect my tablet to my TV via HDMI so it's a PITA to use it while watching TV?
Well, for example, I've used airplay to stream a movie from my iPad to my parents Apple TV when I came to visit. It let us all watch the movie on TV instead of a little iPad, and I just didn't use the iPad while it was streaming.
if anything, i like airplay to my apple tv from my ipads to stream cartoons from the Nickelodeon app
Can you do other things now on an iPad while streaming video? Last I checked, if you were using AirPlay, you couldn't switch applications without it stopping the stream, which would negate your previous objection, "why would i want to connect my tablet to my TV... so it's a PITA to use it while watching TV?" Just don't use your tablet while playing videos on it.
Either way, you know, maybe it's not useful for you, but that doesn't mean that it's not useful for anyone.
Yeah, but you can also play video from your tablet to your TV, through HDMI out if you have it, or else streaming to a set-top box. It may not be an extremely common use for tablets, but I've done it before. And a 13" tablet running a "retina" resolution (~300 dpi) would run over 1080p, for whatever that's worth.
I mean, I'm not sure I care about 4k right now, since 1080p seems to be doing just fine for my purposes. Still, it's not as though the idea is completely stupid.
So you're saying that Congress has been doing a good job?
The one key difference though is that in the private sector one must meet sales expectations.
Well no, not exactly. In the private sector, "sales expectations" can be used as a metric for salespeople or the business as a whole, but it's not a metric used for most jobs. Even so, whole businesses can fail to meet "sales expectations". They just have to be profitable enough to stay in business, or failing that, secure some other method of funding to keep them running.
But can an individual hold a job at a private-sector job while being grossly incompetent and lazy? Yes. It's entirely possible, and it happens.
I think everyone needs to step back and find out, first, what is being claimed, and second, what the scientific basis for those claims are. Without knowing that much, we can't begin to talk about whether those claims are convincing, let alone whether the people who are disagreeing are somehow biased.
Because there are plenty of people who would say, "Behavior is influenced by genes, and a large percentage of people in prison are black, therefore black people are genetically disposed to be criminals." That sort of thing is horribly racist and really bad science.
But is that the sort of thing that Nicholas Wade has done? I haven't read the book, and frankly I might not know the science well enough to judge how well founded his claims are. I'd be interested to hear from someone who has at least read the book.
And this is really why we don't need biometrics, but should be using password-protected public key signing instead. Not only can you change your password, but if you can set up a CA (or trust someone else to do it), then you can revoke your key if it somehow gets compromised.
In the US at least, the word "elementary" means "elementary school" 95% of the time...
And it's followed by "... my dear Watson," the other 5%.