At a research institution, the primary responsibility of professors is to advance their subject through research and publishing. Teaching is secondary. So it is entirely appropriate and normal for such an institution to fire a professor for not publishing enough.
I started programming professionally about 2 years ago. Before that, my education was all in Philosophy, like your friend.
In general, although businesses SAY that they want someone with a CS degree, it hasn't really stopped me - I apply for the job anyway, and then talk about how I think the philosophy degree actually helps. My first job programming came because I went to a Ruby on Rails conference, and at the end they had a jobs board where employers could write their name if they were looking for someone, and potential employees could write their information if they wanted a job. So I wrote my name on the board, and was contact in a few days and offered a position as a Rails software developer. I had no professional experience doing programming, but I was able to sell the philosophy background as being relevant.
So my advice is twofold:
1) Think about ways his background actually helps (for example, being able to conceptualize well and think through the logic of things are very well trained in a philosophy programming).
2) Go to conferences and programming groups. There are groups in every city, you just have to find them.
If your friend is looking for some other tech job, not necessarily a programming one, I imagine the same advice applies.
I know this is Slashdot and nobody RTFA, but it's a new low if you post an article that you didn't even read, and then comment based on your misinformation.
The government did not infect people with Syphilis in the Tuskegee experiments. The people in the study already had syphilis before they walked in the door. The ethical violation was that the researchers did not tell the participants that they had syphilis, and also did not treat them for that syphilis despite knowing about it and that there was a readily available treatment.
Geni.com is barely free. Once you get to even moderately useful functions like being able to match members of your tree to other trees, they start charging.
This law does not apply to all sex offenders. From TFA:
"The bill applies to anyone who used a computer to help commit the original sex crime. It also may be applied to paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but it exempts work done as part of a job or search for employment."
This is a law restricting people from using the Internet who, in the past, used the Internet in the commission of a sex crime. I'm not saying it is reasonable, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable than the way it is presented in the summary.
I particularly like this argument from Thompson (found on page 3, point 5)
"Recently an Assistant U.S. Attorney, licensed by The Florida Bar, traveled to Michigan to have sex with what he thought was a five-year-old girl. He was able to make that "hook-up" through the Internet, the same Internet through which obscene material is made available to pedophiles. Any person with a brain, lawyer or not, knows that obscene images made available through the same Internet are not only making such encounters more frequent but also more desired."
He provides another source later to show the connection between pornography and sexual crimes, but his argument here seems to be this: One pedophile used the Internet to "hook-up" with children. The Internet also has obscenity on it. Therefore, obscenity causes these "hook-ups" to happen more often and be more desired.
In philosophy, we call this kind of argument a "bad" argument. Less formally, we might say that it sucks.
The only way to be 100 percent certain that you will not be in a car accident is to not drive, but surely that doesn't mean you shouldn't drive. And it wouldn't be evil to suggest wearing a seat belt while driving, which significantly increases your chances of survival, but fails to guarantee it.
What's the difference?
The Lone Wolf books were really good. One of the neat things that set those apart was that choices made in one book impacted later books (usually through you having some item which could be used in a later book). The different powers were just plain cool as well.
Other books like that (with combat/inventory) were fun, but the Lone Wolf books always held a special place in my heart.
Well, sort of. We have to be careful here. That we all make choices and act upon them is, I think, beyond reproach - we are all quite aware that we do these things. On reductionistic models, we still have choice. The interesting question is not whether we have choice (we do), it is about the nature of that choice. Are the choices we make caused? If so, does this mean we do not have 'free will'? If our choices are uncaused, what does that mean? What is this 'free will' thing, and why is it important?
These are the sort of questions to which reductionism will give different answers than functionalism and dualism and other theories. But I think they all agree that we make choices.
Are the Chinese really so starved for research material that Wikipedia would be an appropriate source for writing a thesis? Unless the thesis is about websites or the way information is processed online, or something similar (so that they are using Wikipedia as a paradigm), it just seems bizarre that Wikipedia would actually be used in this way. Maybe it is much worse over there than I had thought.
You bring up good points. I think for a lot of people, plot doesn't matter that much (hell, look at games like Civilization).
However, in making very cheap games, other things we do value would go down the toilet too. The actual "fun" factor probably wouldn't be very good. You can see this if you ever play one of the "adult" games currently out on the market - most of them are not really much fun to play. The notable exception would be the Leisure Suit Larry games, which are pretty fun, and have adult content. That's the sort of thing that can work.
They do, as a whole. Any individual movie doesn't gross that much. But that doesn't matter, because they are still highly profitable. Why? Because they have a low production cost. They're cheaply made, with cheap filming and directing and acting and effects and post-production. The end result is a cheap movie which doesn't take much grossing to make a good profit.
Adult video games, to follow this model, would produce crummy, cheap games. The graphics would be cheaply done, the plot would be nonexistent, etc. But yes, if they did that, the companies could make money, especially if they could get adult bookstores/movie stores to carry the games.
What many of you seem to fail to realize is that the purpose of this has nothing to do with actually damaging computers. Rather, what the recording industry is trying to do is stop people from using P2P. And they do this through fear. That's why they do the suing (your chances of getting sued are minimal, but plenty of people get scared and stop downloading). Now, plenty of morons (for who else would this tactic work on?) will hear that downloading music can give you viruses and adware - rumors will fly wildly.
At least, that's their hope. We'll see whether it works.
The fact of the matter is, it's not very sexy to remove old laws. A politician gets a lot more attention for laws he/she helps to enact rather than those he/she removes. Thus, why would any of them bother?
That being said, you're quite right that there are plenty of outdated laws on the books, but there just isn't much public interest in this issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it is by the same people.
At a research institution, the primary responsibility of professors is to advance their subject through research and publishing. Teaching is secondary. So it is entirely appropriate and normal for such an institution to fire a professor for not publishing enough.
I started programming professionally about 2 years ago. Before that, my education was all in Philosophy, like your friend.
In general, although businesses SAY that they want someone with a CS degree, it hasn't really stopped me - I apply for the job anyway, and then talk about how I think the philosophy degree actually helps. My first job programming came because I went to a Ruby on Rails conference, and at the end they had a jobs board where employers could write their name if they were looking for someone, and potential employees could write their information if they wanted a job. So I wrote my name on the board, and was contact in a few days and offered a position as a Rails software developer. I had no professional experience doing programming, but I was able to sell the philosophy background as being relevant.
So my advice is twofold:
1) Think about ways his background actually helps (for example, being able to conceptualize well and think through the logic of things are very well trained in a philosophy programming).
2) Go to conferences and programming groups. There are groups in every city, you just have to find them.
If your friend is looking for some other tech job, not necessarily a programming one, I imagine the same advice applies.
Oh! That is something - I hadn't known about the Guatemala experiments before.
My apologies for the accusation of misinformation. Now I am the misinformer.
I know this is Slashdot and nobody RTFA, but it's a new low if you post an article that you didn't even read, and then comment based on your misinformation. The government did not infect people with Syphilis in the Tuskegee experiments. The people in the study already had syphilis before they walked in the door. The ethical violation was that the researchers did not tell the participants that they had syphilis, and also did not treat them for that syphilis despite knowing about it and that there was a readily available treatment.
Geni.com is barely free. Once you get to even moderately useful functions like being able to match members of your tree to other trees, they start charging.
It's not a breach of contract. The agreement that Activision had with the developers specifically allows either party to back out of it at any time.
They have the right because the agreement they made with the development team specifically said it could be undone by either party at any time.
And particularly dangerous sex offenders as well (the lifetime supervision kind).
This law does not apply to all sex offenders. From TFA:
"The bill applies to anyone who used a computer to help commit the original sex crime. It also may be applied to paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but it exempts work done as part of a job or search for employment."
This is a law restricting people from using the Internet who, in the past, used the Internet in the commission of a sex crime. I'm not saying it is reasonable, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable than the way it is presented in the summary.
I particularly like this argument from Thompson (found on page 3, point 5) "Recently an Assistant U.S. Attorney, licensed by The Florida Bar, traveled to Michigan to have sex with what he thought was a five-year-old girl. He was able to make that "hook-up" through the Internet, the same Internet through which obscene material is made available to pedophiles. Any person with a brain, lawyer or not, knows that obscene images made available through the same Internet are not only making such encounters more frequent but also more desired." He provides another source later to show the connection between pornography and sexual crimes, but his argument here seems to be this: One pedophile used the Internet to "hook-up" with children. The Internet also has obscenity on it. Therefore, obscenity causes these "hook-ups" to happen more often and be more desired. In philosophy, we call this kind of argument a "bad" argument. Less formally, we might say that it sucks.
The only way to be 100 percent certain that you will not be in a car accident is to not drive, but surely that doesn't mean you shouldn't drive. And it wouldn't be evil to suggest wearing a seat belt while driving, which significantly increases your chances of survival, but fails to guarantee it. What's the difference?
The Lone Wolf books were really good. One of the neat things that set those apart was that choices made in one book impacted later books (usually through you having some item which could be used in a later book). The different powers were just plain cool as well.
Other books like that (with combat/inventory) were fun, but the Lone Wolf books always held a special place in my heart.
These are the sort of questions to which reductionism will give different answers than functionalism and dualism and other theories. But I think they all agree that we make choices.
Are the Chinese really so starved for research material that Wikipedia would be an appropriate source for writing a thesis? Unless the thesis is about websites or the way information is processed online, or something similar (so that they are using Wikipedia as a paradigm), it just seems bizarre that Wikipedia would actually be used in this way. Maybe it is much worse over there than I had thought.
You bring up good points. I think for a lot of people, plot doesn't matter that much (hell, look at games like Civilization). However, in making very cheap games, other things we do value would go down the toilet too. The actual "fun" factor probably wouldn't be very good. You can see this if you ever play one of the "adult" games currently out on the market - most of them are not really much fun to play. The notable exception would be the Leisure Suit Larry games, which are pretty fun, and have adult content. That's the sort of thing that can work.
They do, as a whole. Any individual movie doesn't gross that much. But that doesn't matter, because they are still highly profitable. Why? Because they have a low production cost. They're cheaply made, with cheap filming and directing and acting and effects and post-production. The end result is a cheap movie which doesn't take much grossing to make a good profit. Adult video games, to follow this model, would produce crummy, cheap games. The graphics would be cheaply done, the plot would be nonexistent, etc. But yes, if they did that, the companies could make money, especially if they could get adult bookstores/movie stores to carry the games.
What many of you seem to fail to realize is that the purpose of this has nothing to do with actually damaging computers. Rather, what the recording industry is trying to do is stop people from using P2P. And they do this through fear. That's why they do the suing (your chances of getting sued are minimal, but plenty of people get scared and stop downloading). Now, plenty of morons (for who else would this tactic work on?) will hear that downloading music can give you viruses and adware - rumors will fly wildly.
At least, that's their hope. We'll see whether it works.
The fact of the matter is, it's not very sexy to remove old laws. A politician gets a lot more attention for laws he/she helps to enact rather than those he/she removes. Thus, why would any of them bother? That being said, you're quite right that there are plenty of outdated laws on the books, but there just isn't much public interest in this issue.