And you didn't even mention the most egregious police state set up: constitution-free zones manned by ICE and various other border agencies. California, for example, has nearly 100% of its population living there. Other states have 100% of the entire state covered by it. Fun times: http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map
I find it shocking and disturbing how few people know the difference between legal and legitimate. What they hell do they teach in High School right now? People rag on liberal studies, but that's where you pick up these important bits of information.
AC has it right. The guy asking the original question is on the right path to salvation: he realizes that maybe, just maybe, it's not a requirement to be an arrogant dick to graduate from college. The gp though is lost for all time.
You might start by dialing back the flowery and mostly unnecessary vocab. Eschew obfuscation!
Which is also something he'll learn in college.
The best thing that I ever learned in college was that there are people far more brilliant than me in pretty much every area, and people write complex prose when they don't know what they're saying.
And yet, for some reason, the likes of Ron Paul in the US can never really compete against the republicrats,
That's because Ron Paul is a nutjob who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into the Presidency. What's more, Libertarians - or at least, the particular brand of US Libertarians that is more akin to Randians - don't fare well in the broader population, where they have to deal with people who might not be so well off to survive on their own.
Sorry, but if you list a few exceptions to the rule, I can simply point out to the huge majority of basically everyone else out there.
I pointed out that your general statement doesn't hold up, and that it needs to be qualified. Glad we agree on that.
Full blown Libertarianism would have every single law causing single businessmen to avoid personal responsibility and to obtain government sanctioned advantages to be revoked, starting with the abolition of corporate personhood, limited liability, and copyright, patent and trademark laws, as well as the cessation of government possession of, for starters, the RF spectrum.
Which is exactly what established corporations love about Libertarianism.
Why short of bribes? Evidently what I'm talking about is all about bribes, be them of the direct, indirect, legal or illegal kinds.
Actually, quite a few companies LOVE Libertarianism: those that have an entrenched market. Monopolists. Companies that have locked up a very limited resource that is needed by everybody. Companies that sell stuff with a very inelastic demand. See for example the Koch brothers supporting what amounts to economic anarchism. It's surely not because they think that it will reduce their bottom line.
It's way, WAY easier to "make a deal" with a handful of high level bureaucrats and a few very friendly mega-corp CEOs, all working together to lock down the market into a de facto monopoly, than to deal directly with hundreds of millions of customers and thousands upon thousands of competitors.
What makes you think that there are thousands upon thousands of competitors in a market that all have similar market share? It's far more likely that there are a select number of companies that have significant market share, and that they will benefit from non-compete arrangements. It's actually much easier to make friendly deals with other corporations than with bureaucrats, because the corporations are after the same thing: easy money. Offer them that, and you're done. Short of bribes, it doesn't work like that with bureaucrats.
If you lost your job due to translation software, you were a shitty translator. No, really. Any serious translating (i.e., that goes beyond checking a box "we can do this!") requires highly skilled translators. And no, merely being fluent in the two languages is not enough. Translating also requires that you can map one expression to another quickly and smoothly, and that you can recreate subtle hints in the grammar structure, the setup of the sentences and other indirect modes of communication.
That is hard. Very hard. What software is doing is removing the easy stuff. So if you want a job - get ready to upgrade your skills and education. Or you're looking at manual labor for a rate that is too cheap to hire a robot for.
It's not that it is without comments, but that it is really brand-new. I don't know what the cut-off is for a story to turn green, but a red bar means it was JUST posted.
Their conferences are all about "sell, sell, sell!" and "transform your business!" and other management bullshittery.
Well, to be fair, their software is all about how companies can do more "sell, sell, sell!"
But yes, Salesforce doesn't give a shit about technology. Which is why I consider this move away from Oracle a huge adventure: it's not something that Salesforce is used to doing, and will require them doing a rework of the internals of their entire core product offering.
To put out a counter-point out: I've worked for two SaaS providers, and one where I had direct access to both our internal and the customer application and network information. The vast majority of cases, the issue was with the customer's network and application. In fact, at the first company, our service went down twice: when some moron dug up a fiber cable in Germany, and once when the company running our main data center decided to fuck up their routing table. At the second company, we had one major outage (more than a few hours) when some moron decided to propagate a network change without going through the proper approval process.
Is there spit and duct tape involved? Sure. Then again - that's not the real question. It's whether there's more duct tape and spit in your own organization or not.
From the numbers I saw, overall availability is hanging out 99.9% combined. Now, my laptops, both personal and professional, have already suffered more downtime - whether it is upgrades taking them down, maintenance requiring some amount of trouble-shooting and investigation (damn you Java).
If you do your own IT, you're also stuck with what resources you have. Most companies I know don't prioritize IT. Most people don't prioritize IT. For those, it makes sense to not have everything be in-house. That said, the mantra that you SHOULD put everything onto some outside server is nonsense. Even more so if they tell you that you don't need backups or local copies. If anyone ever tells you that, run screaming in the other direction.
I'm sorry, what process did you go through to make sure that you had the right guy? Was the John Smith you're interviewing really the John Smith on Facebook? Even if it is Quitzacohetl Habsburg the third, you know very little about how common certain names are.
You want to be really careful about those kinds of searches. I hope for your HR department that that level of incompetence doesn't spread elsewhere.
The problem is that Stand Your Ground laws extend the position of legitimate self-defense from fighting for your life to "someone is scaring you". Which is much, much, much more subjective.
The Dark Ages happened because of muslim conquests? What the fuck? Oh.... I see. One of those "Obama is a secret muslim sites". The core of the article's argument is that the muslim crusades were in the spirit of Islam, and the Christian crusades were done against the spirit of the bible... right. You might want to check your sources a bit more carefully. Just like your third link, which seems to make the argument that all that stood between chaos and civilization in Europe around 600-1000 AD was the Catholic Church... which, if anything, is about the exact opposite. Note that even your link says that Charlemagne forced the church to do things like educate the people around it, which it wasn't doing before.
I think that's the real news: seems that Benioff wants to slowly move away from giving one of his biggest competitors giant wads of cash every year. That's going to be one hell of an adventure.
The real question is: is the service provider with whom you store your data more reliable than you or your IT team in providing stable data access? Everything else is just paranoia and habit.
Here's the reality: a lot of people don't need a full computer. Their corporate life is either spent consuming content, or it is spent talking to someone and jotting down some quick notes.
Yes, there are engineers who program and business analysts who create spreadsheets (although what excel is being used for is a whole other horror story....). But the majority of management, all of sales, and much of marketing and PR is focused on consuming content and creating small, simple chunks of content. iPads are perfect for that. I know (second-hand) how much work is done on iPad, because all that work consists of checking email, writing quick emails, and pulling content off of the corporate intranet. From that perspective, he is right. Is he overselling his case? He sure is - then again, every statement by competent CEOs should be assumed to be nothing but advocating for the company, regardless of the reality of the situation.
For me, windows 8 is going to flop because it's the wrong OS for the wrong device from the wrong company: the desktop needs a full UI designed for creating content, not just consuming content. It also has to be efficient in that process, and not give them an interface designed for consuming content on a 4 inch screen. Finally, Microsoft is not a device and services company, no matter how much Ballmer wants to believe that. It is a business software/services company with a consumer division grafted on top of it. It might want to refocus itself, before it loses even its business clout.
What about the notion that Zimmerman had a history of violence himself, actually getting fired from his job as a bouncer for being too unstable? Is that relevant? If so, how does the relevance of that rank compare to getting into fights in school, or getting suspended for marijuana dust?
I've been in enough fights as a kid to know that when it gets to the point that when your head is being smashed around, you're not enough in control to pull out a concealed weapon and use it. Furthermore, I've been in enough accident to know that if you smash your head on the ground - even mildly - you're not in a state to do much else afterwards.
All in all, from my experience, Zimmerman's account doesn't pass the bullshit test. Too many things don't properly tie together. My suspicion is that there was an altercation, but that it wasn't nearly as life-threatening as Zimmerman made it out to be.
Here's the interesting part: since Trayvon Martin is dead, the only accounts we have of the incident is those of Zimmerman. In other words, the only thing we know about the entire incident comes from the person looking at life in prison if the entire thing isn't self-defense. Somehow, we should believe Zimmerman and not challenge his account of the events? Despite a very clear motive to lie his ass off?
As for what the intent of the Stand Your Ground Laws is, it matters very little. The only thing that does matter is the outcome of laws. And right now, the outcome of Stand Your Ground Laws is that if you're ever in a confrontation with no witnesses (or very pliable witnesses), make sure to kill whoever is confronting you.That can't possibly work long term.
The idea behind mod points is not to decide who is right. The idea is to weed out those comments unhelpful to constructive discussion, and keep those that promote it.
Fair enough. Question though: is a comment that is utterly wrong, ignores basic technology and makes up case law to justify its selfish position contributing to a constructive discussion? Or is it just drowning out good comments?
I'll grant you that it is a common post, and such, deserving of some education. However, we've been through this for years now. When does a comment stop being a starting point for education, and start being just a troll?
This is the classic post that is technically not a troll, technically not flamebait, but is still just noise we have to filter out. As a result, I'm perfectly ok seeing it hang around at -1. If people want to respond, more power to them. But to argue that somehow, posts that are factually incorrect should be modded up is to me a sign that you don't understand what keeps online fora alive.
Let's see... 1) Poster posts in the same minute story goes live. 2) Poster is not a subscriber, and post is longer than 90 words. 3) Poster is brand new, with only this post to his name. 4) Post consists entirely of "Google is evil!"
Woo, OCD anti-Google poster/shill is back.
By the way, Google did not remove the anti-muslim video, and Twitter (not Google) is following local German law. You're irrational, and can't read.
Somehow, I'm not surprised that the person writing this condescending drivel is an executive - even if it is for a non-profit. I'm a bit surprised that the author is a philosophy major - they tend to have to dig deepest when coming up for a justification for why their philosophy degree is important. Generally, the reasons revolve around becoming a well-balanced person, the importance of philosophy in teaching someone how to think and interact with the world, and insight into how we got to where we are. All very fuzzy concepts, but concepts I can understand and get behind.
However, where the argument for philosophy is a lot of fuzzy concepts that can easily be achieved with other means, the argument for gaining a basic understanding of the physical properties of the world around you is simple and straightforward: it allows you to understand how the world around you works. Granted, there's the joke about how chemistry is just the physics of the outer electron layer, but you'll only find it funny once you hit Quantum Mechanics. In high school though, chemistry tells you why beer is beer, how compounds change, where the car gets its energy from to move forward, and a ton more things. It also teaches you about that most deadly compound, dihydrogen monoxide, and how to avoid scams based on it. I fail to see how learning about these things is less important than learning about public speaking, or how the opportunity cost of learning chemistry is somehow greater than the opportunity cost of learning public speaking.
All in all, this reminds me of the exhortation of various internet entrepreneurs to skip college: it's a good soundbite, there's some justification for skipping college if you have some serious business to attend to, but it's terrible, terrible general advice. Same for skipping high school chemistry: there is a case to be made for it, but it really requires that you're doing something far more significant already (running your own iOS app development shop, for example), and it is something you SHOULD get back to when you have more time. However, the argument that "my kid is special", or "my kid will never be a scientist" are terrible, terrible reasons for skipping out on basic courses like physics, chemistry, math, biology, english, history, philosophy, religion, and art. Not to mention that from what I've seen, many parents are terrible at actually understanding what their kids want and what they need to be successful (for various definitions of successful). A well-rounded education is a good backstop for getting this wrong.
And to some extent, it's the last reason that I think this executive should take to heart most. Most executives I know operate on the assumption that they're rarely, if ever, wrong - even though they are wrong about as often as anybody else. There are exceptions (all hail Steve), but that's an exception, not the rule. The exec might well want to be a bit more humble in his claims about what his kid will find useful later on in life.
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And you didn't even mention the most egregious police state set up: constitution-free zones manned by ICE and various other border agencies. California, for example, has nearly 100% of its population living there. Other states have 100% of the entire state covered by it. Fun times: http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map
I find it shocking and disturbing how few people know the difference between legal and legitimate. What they hell do they teach in High School right now? People rag on liberal studies, but that's where you pick up these important bits of information.
Oh good, I was missing the no true Scotsman fallacy. Bingo!
AC has it right. The guy asking the original question is on the right path to salvation: he realizes that maybe, just maybe, it's not a requirement to be an arrogant dick to graduate from college. The gp though is lost for all time.
You might start by dialing back the flowery and mostly unnecessary vocab. Eschew obfuscation!
Which is also something he'll learn in college.
The best thing that I ever learned in college was that there are people far more brilliant than me in pretty much every area, and people write complex prose when they don't know what they're saying.
All in all, I say he's on track. Carry on!
And yet, for some reason, the likes of Ron Paul in the US can never really compete against the republicrats,
That's because Ron Paul is a nutjob who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into the Presidency. What's more, Libertarians - or at least, the particular brand of US Libertarians that is more akin to Randians - don't fare well in the broader population, where they have to deal with people who might not be so well off to survive on their own.
Sorry, but if you list a few exceptions to the rule, I can simply point out to the huge majority of basically everyone else out there.
I pointed out that your general statement doesn't hold up, and that it needs to be qualified. Glad we agree on that.
Full blown Libertarianism would have every single law causing single businessmen to avoid personal responsibility and to obtain government sanctioned advantages to be revoked, starting with the abolition of corporate personhood, limited liability, and copyright, patent and trademark laws, as well as the cessation of government possession of, for starters, the RF spectrum.
Which is exactly what established corporations love about Libertarianism.
Why short of bribes? Evidently what I'm talking about is all about bribes, be them of the direct, indirect, legal or illegal kinds.
Point taken.
Actually, quite a few companies LOVE Libertarianism: those that have an entrenched market. Monopolists. Companies that have locked up a very limited resource that is needed by everybody. Companies that sell stuff with a very inelastic demand. See for example the Koch brothers supporting what amounts to economic anarchism. It's surely not because they think that it will reduce their bottom line.
It's way, WAY easier to "make a deal" with a handful of high level bureaucrats and a few very friendly mega-corp CEOs, all working together to lock down the market into a de facto monopoly, than to deal directly with hundreds of millions of customers and thousands upon thousands of competitors.
What makes you think that there are thousands upon thousands of competitors in a market that all have similar market share? It's far more likely that there are a select number of companies that have significant market share, and that they will benefit from non-compete arrangements. It's actually much easier to make friendly deals with other corporations than with bureaucrats, because the corporations are after the same thing: easy money. Offer them that, and you're done. Short of bribes, it doesn't work like that with bureaucrats.
If you lost your job due to translation software, you were a shitty translator. No, really. Any serious translating (i.e., that goes beyond checking a box "we can do this!") requires highly skilled translators. And no, merely being fluent in the two languages is not enough. Translating also requires that you can map one expression to another quickly and smoothly, and that you can recreate subtle hints in the grammar structure, the setup of the sentences and other indirect modes of communication.
That is hard. Very hard. What software is doing is removing the easy stuff. So if you want a job - get ready to upgrade your skills and education. Or you're looking at manual labor for a rate that is too cheap to hire a robot for.
It's not that it is without comments, but that it is really brand-new. I don't know what the cut-off is for a story to turn green, but a red bar means it was JUST posted.
Their conferences are all about "sell, sell, sell!" and "transform your business!" and other management bullshittery.
Well, to be fair, their software is all about how companies can do more "sell, sell, sell!"
But yes, Salesforce doesn't give a shit about technology. Which is why I consider this move away from Oracle a huge adventure: it's not something that Salesforce is used to doing, and will require them doing a rework of the internals of their entire core product offering.
To put out a counter-point out: I've worked for two SaaS providers, and one where I had direct access to both our internal and the customer application and network information. The vast majority of cases, the issue was with the customer's network and application. In fact, at the first company, our service went down twice: when some moron dug up a fiber cable in Germany, and once when the company running our main data center decided to fuck up their routing table. At the second company, we had one major outage (more than a few hours) when some moron decided to propagate a network change without going through the proper approval process.
Is there spit and duct tape involved? Sure. Then again - that's not the real question. It's whether there's more duct tape and spit in your own organization or not.
From the numbers I saw, overall availability is hanging out 99.9% combined. Now, my laptops, both personal and professional, have already suffered more downtime - whether it is upgrades taking them down, maintenance requiring some amount of trouble-shooting and investigation (damn you Java).
If you do your own IT, you're also stuck with what resources you have. Most companies I know don't prioritize IT. Most people don't prioritize IT. For those, it makes sense to not have everything be in-house. That said, the mantra that you SHOULD put everything onto some outside server is nonsense. Even more so if they tell you that you don't need backups or local copies. If anyone ever tells you that, run screaming in the other direction.
I'm sorry, what process did you go through to make sure that you had the right guy? Was the John Smith you're interviewing really the John Smith on Facebook? Even if it is Quitzacohetl Habsburg the third, you know very little about how common certain names are.
You want to be really careful about those kinds of searches. I hope for your HR department that that level of incompetence doesn't spread elsewhere.
The problem is that Stand Your Ground laws extend the position of legitimate self-defense from fighting for your life to "someone is scaring you". Which is much, much, much more subjective.
The Dark Ages happened because of muslim conquests? What the fuck? Oh.... I see. One of those "Obama is a secret muslim sites". The core of the article's argument is that the muslim crusades were in the spirit of Islam, and the Christian crusades were done against the spirit of the bible... right. You might want to check your sources a bit more carefully. Just like your third link, which seems to make the argument that all that stood between chaos and civilization in Europe around 600-1000 AD was the Catholic Church... which, if anything, is about the exact opposite. Note that even your link says that Charlemagne forced the church to do things like educate the people around it, which it wasn't doing before.
I think that's the real news: seems that Benioff wants to slowly move away from giving one of his biggest competitors giant wads of cash every year. That's going to be one hell of an adventure.
The real question is: is the service provider with whom you store your data more reliable than you or your IT team in providing stable data access? Everything else is just paranoia and habit.
Here's the reality: a lot of people don't need a full computer. Their corporate life is either spent consuming content, or it is spent talking to someone and jotting down some quick notes.
Yes, there are engineers who program and business analysts who create spreadsheets (although what excel is being used for is a whole other horror story....). But the majority of management, all of sales, and much of marketing and PR is focused on consuming content and creating small, simple chunks of content. iPads are perfect for that. I know (second-hand) how much work is done on iPad, because all that work consists of checking email, writing quick emails, and pulling content off of the corporate intranet. From that perspective, he is right. Is he overselling his case? He sure is - then again, every statement by competent CEOs should be assumed to be nothing but advocating for the company, regardless of the reality of the situation.
For me, windows 8 is going to flop because it's the wrong OS for the wrong device from the wrong company: the desktop needs a full UI designed for creating content, not just consuming content. It also has to be efficient in that process, and not give them an interface designed for consuming content on a 4 inch screen. Finally, Microsoft is not a device and services company, no matter how much Ballmer wants to believe that. It is a business software/services company with a consumer division grafted on top of it. It might want to refocus itself, before it loses even its business clout.
What about the notion that Zimmerman had a history of violence himself, actually getting fired from his job as a bouncer for being too unstable? Is that relevant? If so, how does the relevance of that rank compare to getting into fights in school, or getting suspended for marijuana dust?
Nifty piece of information on Zimmerman's background as a bouncer: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/31/1079454/-Zimmerman-was-Fired-from-Security-Job-after-he-Snapped. Yeah, it's dailykos, but that story was pretty broadly distributed. Feel free to find your own link.
I've been in enough fights as a kid to know that when it gets to the point that when your head is being smashed around, you're not enough in control to pull out a concealed weapon and use it. Furthermore, I've been in enough accident to know that if you smash your head on the ground - even mildly - you're not in a state to do much else afterwards.
All in all, from my experience, Zimmerman's account doesn't pass the bullshit test. Too many things don't properly tie together. My suspicion is that there was an altercation, but that it wasn't nearly as life-threatening as Zimmerman made it out to be.
Here's the interesting part: since Trayvon Martin is dead, the only accounts we have of the incident is those of Zimmerman. In other words, the only thing we know about the entire incident comes from the person looking at life in prison if the entire thing isn't self-defense. Somehow, we should believe Zimmerman and not challenge his account of the events? Despite a very clear motive to lie his ass off?
As for what the intent of the Stand Your Ground Laws is, it matters very little. The only thing that does matter is the outcome of laws. And right now, the outcome of Stand Your Ground Laws is that if you're ever in a confrontation with no witnesses (or very pliable witnesses), make sure to kill whoever is confronting you.That can't possibly work long term.
The idea behind mod points is not to decide who is right. The idea is to weed out those comments unhelpful to constructive discussion, and keep those that promote it.
Fair enough. Question though: is a comment that is utterly wrong, ignores basic technology and makes up case law to justify its selfish position contributing to a constructive discussion? Or is it just drowning out good comments?
I'll grant you that it is a common post, and such, deserving of some education. However, we've been through this for years now. When does a comment stop being a starting point for education, and start being just a troll?
This is the classic post that is technically not a troll, technically not flamebait, but is still just noise we have to filter out. As a result, I'm perfectly ok seeing it hang around at -1. If people want to respond, more power to them. But to argue that somehow, posts that are factually incorrect should be modded up is to me a sign that you don't understand what keeps online fora alive.
Let's see...
1) Poster posts in the same minute story goes live.
2) Poster is not a subscriber, and post is longer than 90 words.
3) Poster is brand new, with only this post to his name.
4) Post consists entirely of "Google is evil!"
Woo, OCD anti-Google poster/shill is back.
By the way, Google did not remove the anti-muslim video, and Twitter (not Google) is following local German law. You're irrational, and can't read.
Somehow, I'm not surprised that the person writing this condescending drivel is an executive - even if it is for a non-profit. I'm a bit surprised that the author is a philosophy major - they tend to have to dig deepest when coming up for a justification for why their philosophy degree is important. Generally, the reasons revolve around becoming a well-balanced person, the importance of philosophy in teaching someone how to think and interact with the world, and insight into how we got to where we are. All very fuzzy concepts, but concepts I can understand and get behind.
However, where the argument for philosophy is a lot of fuzzy concepts that can easily be achieved with other means, the argument for gaining a basic understanding of the physical properties of the world around you is simple and straightforward: it allows you to understand how the world around you works. Granted, there's the joke about how chemistry is just the physics of the outer electron layer, but you'll only find it funny once you hit Quantum Mechanics. In high school though, chemistry tells you why beer is beer, how compounds change, where the car gets its energy from to move forward, and a ton more things. It also teaches you about that most deadly compound, dihydrogen monoxide, and how to avoid scams based on it. I fail to see how learning about these things is less important than learning about public speaking, or how the opportunity cost of learning chemistry is somehow greater than the opportunity cost of learning public speaking.
All in all, this reminds me of the exhortation of various internet entrepreneurs to skip college: it's a good soundbite, there's some justification for skipping college if you have some serious business to attend to, but it's terrible, terrible general advice. Same for skipping high school chemistry: there is a case to be made for it, but it really requires that you're doing something far more significant already (running your own iOS app development shop, for example), and it is something you SHOULD get back to when you have more time. However, the argument that "my kid is special", or "my kid will never be a scientist" are terrible, terrible reasons for skipping out on basic courses like physics, chemistry, math, biology, english, history, philosophy, religion, and art. Not to mention that from what I've seen, many parents are terrible at actually understanding what their kids want and what they need to be successful (for various definitions of successful). A well-rounded education is a good backstop for getting this wrong.
And to some extent, it's the last reason that I think this executive should take to heart most. Most executives I know operate on the assumption that they're rarely, if ever, wrong - even though they are wrong about as often as anybody else. There are exceptions (all hail Steve), but that's an exception, not the rule. The exec might well want to be a bit more humble in his claims about what his kid will find useful later on in life.
How about reasoning and logical discussion? Give those a try sometime.
The logical fallacy of "Everything that exists is what is right in front of me". Give searching a try sometime.