I've found that voice and interruptive sound can be quite bothersome, but if music is both interesting and acoustic it can have a positive affect... Just the right - balance. Go to candyrat.com & pick out some artists you find intreaguing - you can listen to most on YouTube to try them out. I think you'll be very happy with listening to some acoustic guitar with a nice set of headphones.
OK, granted the guy is green and full of himself... But perhaps a fresh perspective is not all that bad. We KNOW that a lot of the stuff we have worked on and inherited is absolute crap that is very difficult for average human beings to grasp. Here's a human being trying to come to grips with a wicked mass of old (and, granted, battle-tested) ideas.
You are also right that all of us tend to want to greet a problem by trying to bend it into our will so that no matter if the pin is trapezoidal, it will fit (darn it) into our circular world view. And this goes for the new guy as well... We are aware of it, but this new guy may not be aware of it. Explain to him htat he needs to learn to do this as well. Instead of strict adherance to a dogma, a set of programming patterns grows up around a problem space -- not the other way around. Try to help him see the problem and make sense of it first before he triest to tackle the crap with the "new hotness."
So... give they guy a challange. ell him the abovve, and also help him to understand that the code-base is NOT going to take on a revolutionary overhaul overnight. Tell him he can add his new ideas gradually if the new ideas do any of three things:
1) Reduce the LOC's in the program.
2) Measureably improve performance.
3) Measureably improve the code quality (via new introspection/tracing tools, unit testing or algorithmnic proof of correctness).
I worked in field applications in my previous job -- I lived by my cell phone & I was all over the place always, and 100% connectivity was paramount for me... I would also often need to do conference calls while travelling the highway. I tried a couple of carriers, and then tried Verizon. A few things I could tell you about Verizon:
0) Incomparable coverage -- I almost always had coverage everywhere across the country.
1) Rarely dropped any call... only intermittently driving I-5 across Camp Penalton.
2) I worked many times in an RF SHIELDED building, and I got calls ringing through the shielding.
So, for me there was no comparison. It cost more, but my butt was on the line with my connectivity, and I had to have that service -- and I have the service to this day.
Recently though, I had to go to take my dog to a remote area above Temecula in California to shelter my Dog for a trip. I could get coverage (bars) there, but I could not connect a call through. The lady running the kennel said that ATT was the only provider that worked there... So... for remote areas, maybe ATT is catching up? I've heard stories that ATT coverage is not so great everywhere, but at least in this one place it was the only option.
KDE and Gnome obviously yes, but Unity is one of the top 3? Just because most recent Ubuntus foist this on users (and most feedback I've seen has been negative)...
OK, I'll bite... Yes, Unity is crap. BUT IT WAS LESS CRAP THAN Gnome3.0 and KDE4.0 WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT -- and that's why i use it to this day. I am on Unity because it's not as clunky & restrictive as gnome3, and KDE was complete and "udder" stink under 4.0. But more than that, Ubuntu 6 mo. release cycles are awesome & I am hooked on that, and it's easier for me to stay on the path that they are actively developing for now. However, now that KDE4 is on the.7 minor release & seems to be looking better -- well, maybe I'll try Kubuntu in PeePee (seems only fitting that this is an LTS).
I wanted to stay with a mainline Linux graphical environment that would grow & wouldn't break too badly with each release. So, I figured that I had 3 choices really for main-line Linux environments... Gnome 3, KDE 4 and Unity... and I was already on Ubuntu. Gnome 3 was/is not mature yet... I'd tried KDE4 and found it "wanting." And I'd tried Unity on a Netbook -- It was a bit slow, but usable and tweak-able with Compiz -- and hey, for Netbooks, right? -- they had to make it faster.
Well, I decided I liked the 6 month cycles & decided not to migrate to Debian or Fedora. I eventually bit the bullet & let Ubuntu upgrade my laptop to Unity, & "got used to it." I keep my eye on Gnome 3 but, PLEASE -- that's even more a joke. KDE 4 also still looks like a Windows knock-off & is still clunky. I'll stick with Unity for a while. At least I'm hopeful because it _has_ improved.
Given the options available and the directions KDE and GNOME are taking... I'm better off with Unity or rolling my own. YMMV, but I'll stick with Unity for now.
I do this on my machines at home. Use ntfsclone and gzip to create compressed image files on a bootable linux partition. You can then create some custom scripts to ask for permission then restore the image automatically.
... and no, I'm not saying this because I want to see his collection. I'm saying this because there could be at least three different relevant definitions of porn here, and we need to know which one is being used:
Pornography as defined by a religious extremist
Pornography as defined by a conservative government
Pornography as defined by someone who uses the internet regularly
So bin Laden had a collection of porn. So did most of the 'men who killed him. What does that mean? It means that, in addition to being a terrorist, bin Laden was also a normal human being who wasn't a lot different than many of us on different levels.
Well... it's not very stupid to me actually... The people that look up to Bin Laudin are Extreme Muslims. If he were truly watching homosexual porn, or American porn... well, it would discredit him in the eyes of his followers. He would not be the great imam... but... as you stated just another flawed human being... A man in a world of extremes that cannot win against his passions... how can he be a holy leader of the Jihad?
I'm really interested in what kind of porn it was... Did it have to do with goats, like everyone is joking about? Was he ogling Americans, Arabians -- male or female, I wonder?
I have not had cable service in four years and more. I still had a set, but I used it for games and Netflix. News was easy to come by via Radio and internet. Only thing I "kinda" missed was football. This last Christmas, I bought a Blu-Ray player with integrated Wi-Fi, and as I was already a subscriber to Netflix, I had streaming first day. I have a 1000% better experience _commercial_free_ from a combination of Netflix streaming and occasionally buying my own DVD's or BD's from Amazon than I have from a hook-up to the Cable company.
My problem is the steps in Celcius seem to me to be too big. When I lived in China the 1-2 degree C tolerance on the AC was too wide and I would alternate between freezing and sweating all through the night. Couldn't get used to it. If the same 1-2 deg in F, I could live with that kind of tolerance much more easily.
- For inches to feet, 12 is a really nice number. You can halve it, quarter it and third it. With base 10, you have a hard time with thirds -- and even quarters are not integers. Such measures are better for building.
- Miles are 8 furlongs (a furlong being the amount of distance an ox could plow before taking a rest), and the mile is also roughly equivalent to a roman measurement of 1000 paces -- that's a nice way to think about how far you should walk before taking a sip from your canteen. Sorry, but kilometers don't do it for me.
Imperial is simple for a human being to "visualize"...
- Inches are about a thumb-width -- it's a nice physical measure, and a nice rule of thumb.
- There are about 4 inches in a hand -- which is roughly knuckle to knuckle.
- There are three hands to a foot.
- The measure of a man's arm from fingertip to elbow is approximately a foot and a half -- a measure also known as a cubit.
- Yards of cloth in stores used to be commonly measured by hand -- by stretching out the cloth an arm-width away from the center of the body... When I was young I saw women at the cash register measuring out cloth by hand -- it was common-place.
- Teaspoons are teaspoons -- is there an convenient equivalent measure in metric for a sip of something?
- Tablespoons are tablespoons -- same again as teaspoons... Is there a ready replacement even on metric kitchen tables?
Imperial is better on the human stomach.
- A cup is a nice amount for your coffee. I don't want to ask for 225ml (or whatever) measure of coffee -- I want my darned cup.
- A pint and a quart are really nice measures for beer in the tummy. I DON'T WANT a Liter of beer. I want to "mind my pints and quarts."
- An ounce is a nice shot of liquor. I know three of them will put me down for the night.
1) When looting while confused, must exchange gold for randomly generated throne room monster.
2) When sitting, should respond with "You feel very comfortable here" or should do one of the following:
________a) Grant a wish or increase your luck.
________b) Allow you to genocide something.
________c) Identify things in you are carrying.
________d) Make you feel much better by healing you completely, curing you from sickness, blindness, and wounded legs.
________e) Gain the ability to see things that are invisible, magically form a map of the entire floor in your mind, or completely confuse you.
________f) Gain some random attribute.
________g) Loose some amount of a random attribute, but gain hit points!
________h) Shock you, and make you lose hit points!
________i) Forcibly take away all the gold you are carrying.
________j) Make a lot of monsters appear around you.
________k) Either blind you or randomly curse what you are carrying.
________l) Either wake all monsters on your floor, or teleport your naked butt somewhere random on the floor.
________m) Turn your mind into a pretzel.
Whereupon the said throne may vanish in a puff of smoke.
Upon kicking it, depending upon how lucky you are, you would either destroy the throne, breaking loose 200GP, and exercise your dexterity... (well you could possibly fail to do so and injure yourself), or if you are lucky dislodge some gems and gold... and/or trigger a trap door.
That, my friends, would be a true geek's throne, in a true geek's throne room.
It's a shame when we think of leaching off the fancy of bureaucrats as being so profitable an option.
Sigh... Not that it will do any good, but... I'll continue to contact my congressman.
At what point are people going to say enough is enough? How long is everyone going to kow-tow to bureaucrats for a false perception of "security" (whatever that may mean).
Personally, I think this is offensive, and oppressive impingement upon our freedom to a basic right to walk around freely without threat of being accosted at every corner by government. The scanner situation is a poster child for bureaucracy run amok and going way too far. Government bureaucrats are not free to do whatever they want and spend our money willy-nilly as they please especially with the express purpose of looking up our skirts at every available opportunity.
At what point are we going to start making decisions either at the ballot, or with our feet?
Of COURSE managers count in all of these things -- and all things being equal (and perhaps some less so) Cost usually wins, because Cost usually wins over everything else with their customers. "Cost at a reasonable level of quality" probably also matters most to you too -- in the way you select your Car, your TV, your Internet service, your Cell Phone carrier, and even your toilet paper. Do you go out of your way to choose American TP -- Cause, "Damn-it, it's gotta be Americans wiping my Butt!!?" And if you are honest with yourself, that personal efficiency metric that you have in your head is what "really" matters to you -- not this religious fanaticism. And, It's the same efficiency metric that the managers in the companies you buy from will work towards no matter how painful it is to them or anyone else.
The reason that/currently/ I maintain my job in the states is that it/can't/ reasonably be outsourced right now. Otherwise, with the taxes and hostile attitudes of the government on business here in this country -- damn strait -- they would.
People talk a good talk about being charitable to the poor people in other countries, but darned if they will truly give poorer countries something truly valuable -- and train those other people in other countries to make their own living. Because, darn it... it's just unethical to do that! This guy in his Utopian universe of social/political correctness just lost a good job because he preferred his dream world to real life.
People... Listen... this is not a Zero Sum Game. One job at least was created here... a high skilled training job... and one with a lot of opportunity. The guy turned down a really, really good opportunity to help people -- both people overseas, and -- believe it or not -- his friends. You see, his friends were obviously doing a job that wasn't valuable in his home country any more. The sooner they got out of that job, the better!
We in America tend to think that we should keep as many jobs as possible here, no matter how crummy. And yet we complain about the monotony of some jobs, and the poor pay of unskilled labor locally. And... the bar is being raised ever higher. Software Engineers, IT, Help Desks, and Call centers... It's tough... But we have to realize -- and quickly -- that we are "competing" in a global labor economy. If there is another group of people in the world that can do the same job for less money, and the government structure is more favorable to business... then we better be a lot more efficient, offer some tangible benefit that the overseas people can't, or be prepared to go to war. That's just life!
On the other hand, developed countries have a lot of opportunity, and people ought to learn quickly to take advantage of that. People ought to educate themselves or start a business (thus managing/directing the cheap labor overseas). If people want low skilled labor jobs, especially, the school of the world tells us that they will have to compete now with unskilled labor from other countries -- and that's tough, but that's it. Wake up, people & don't be a victim! Learn to take advantage of the cold hard facts.
For the ethics part... He should have taken the job, or he should have gotten out of the business and started another. He's got to feed himself and his family. He's got to slap himself in the face and wake up and smell the Coffee -- It's a dog-eat-dog world -- not some dream world utopia he's locked his mind in. On the other hand, he also has a responsibility to tell his peers as quickly as possible that their jobs will be outsourced so that they can plan for the future.
You know... I have some experience here. I worked in Asia as an Expat. Here's what I learned...
Companies outsource for "cheap labor." But there are some companies that outsource jobs that take "skill" or "education." You know what you find out about the companies that do this? They invest in what ends up to be a "revolving door." They end up getting what they paid for in terms of support. They get the bottom of the barrel. Why? Because, when a person that works in that environment for any time learns something valuable, they CHANGE JOBS SO FAST THAT YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT HIT YOU.
I think it's not that people work in dead end jobs out of choice... I think it's their political systems that cage them in those jobs. People should fight to be creative, but they are told that they should just do what they are told by their government that they will get a pension and be all right.
Well, excuse me but that's _not_ all right. People are meant to do more than let me screw a widget in this piece of crap the same way over and over again! People shouldn't be satisfied to mechanically do anything! Robots do that. Humans DON'T -- for very long, unless they are brainwashed into it, or overly compensated into doing it!
Then, they are/forced/ to be creative! Right now they are undoubtedly "overcompensated" by your own admission. But I disagree with you -- damn it! I disagree! I think it is a shame that people who are innately gifted in some way throw their lives away at sucky jobs like this. And sucky -- so sucky that it WASTES OTHERS LIVES IN THE PROCESS!!!
There are/always/ other more creative or beneficial jobs out there.
You know who is the most valuable person in the Wal-Mart store? It's the greeter. No Robot could ever take that job! That person should be the most coveted person in the store. Why? Because it's that person that is the first person that you see and it's that person's job to make you feel welcome to come in and spend your money for whatever crap they sell there.
Does it take great skill to do that job? Well, it SHOULD. It takes skill to be that happy smiling person that you want to see -- that tells you exactly where to find a person find your crap wherever it is in the store -- that knows what you are buying is crap and that you the customer know is crap, but it's darned cheap crap and you're happy to buy it because, after all, it's darned cheap crap.
Some of these people as well could be artists. And some.. some could be scientists... What was Einstein before he became a world renowned nuclear genius of relativity? He was a patent examiner. Truly a step above booth babe/bozo... but really.
I truly thing you underestimate people. I think you need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself why you don't believe in people, and why you don't believe that the market will have a place for them. You think that they are so stupid that they will never amount to anything more?
Wow, I thought I was bad just for saying what I felt.
If they were naughty hot Asian minxes wearing next to nothing at the booth... OK, I'm happy with that... I'll gladly stop on my way to work for a wink, and a "hey, baby -- put your money in here..."
But, these are not the kinds of people that sign up for toll booth jobs. Instead, we have humpty dumpty, or some old woman with either a confused or grumpy expression on their face... And why wouldn't they be grumpy... They flat-out/know/ that their job requires absolutely no creative thought and can absolutely be done better by a robot... The moment of enlightenment that these poor people experience when they finally understand that they have thrown their lives away on a job so mechanical and worthless -- that has to be a soul-crushing.
So, I'm all for this. Maybe the people who sat on their lazy butts not only contributing a pittance to the human condition, but actually wasting others time and energy in the process, will learn to redeem themselves and take upon themselves the challenge of bettering society.
"I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived... and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 19
Slashdot Mirror
I've found that voice and interruptive sound can be quite bothersome, but if music is both interesting and acoustic it can have a positive affect... Just the right - balance. Go to candyrat.com & pick out some artists you find intreaguing - you can listen to most on YouTube to try them out. I think you'll be very happy with listening to some acoustic guitar with a nice set of headphones.
OK, granted the guy is green and full of himself... But perhaps a fresh perspective is not all that bad. We KNOW that a lot of the stuff we have worked on and inherited is absolute crap that is very difficult for average human beings to grasp. Here's a human being trying to come to grips with a wicked mass of old (and, granted, battle-tested) ideas.
You are also right that all of us tend to want to greet a problem by trying to bend it into our will so that no matter if the pin is trapezoidal, it will fit (darn it) into our circular world view. And this goes for the new guy as well... We are aware of it, but this new guy may not be aware of it. Explain to him htat he needs to learn to do this as well. Instead of strict adherance to a dogma, a set of programming patterns grows up around a problem space -- not the other way around. Try to help him see the problem and make sense of it first before he triest to tackle the crap with the "new hotness."
So... give they guy a challange. ell him the abovve, and also help him to understand that the code-base is NOT going to take on a revolutionary overhaul overnight. Tell him he can add his new ideas gradually if the new ideas do any of three things:
1) Reduce the LOC's in the program.
2) Measureably improve performance.
3) Measureably improve the code quality (via new introspection/tracing tools, unit testing or algorithmnic proof of correctness).
From a person that doesn't do email. Truly, truly incredible.
I know this will ruin my Karma, and... I have never used this language in a public forum in my life, but, it's warranted...
Not only "no," but "HELL NO!" you Hitlarian Fascist bitch.
I worked in field applications in my previous job -- I lived by my cell phone & I was all over the place always, and 100% connectivity was paramount for me... I would also often need to do conference calls while travelling the highway. I tried a couple of carriers, and then tried Verizon. A few things I could tell you about Verizon:
0) Incomparable coverage -- I almost always had coverage everywhere across the country.
1) Rarely dropped any call... only intermittently driving I-5 across Camp Penalton.
2) I worked many times in an RF SHIELDED building, and I got calls ringing through the shielding.
So, for me there was no comparison. It cost more, but my butt was on the line with my connectivity, and I had to have that service -- and I have the service to this day.
Recently though, I had to go to take my dog to a remote area above Temecula in California to shelter my Dog for a trip. I could get coverage (bars) there, but I could not connect a call through. The lady running the kennel said that ATT was the only provider that worked there... So... for remote areas, maybe ATT is catching up? I've heard stories that ATT coverage is not so great everywhere, but at least in this one place it was the only option.
KDE and Gnome obviously yes, but Unity is one of the top 3? Just because most recent Ubuntus foist this on users (and most feedback I've seen has been negative)...
OK, I'll bite... Yes, Unity is crap. BUT IT WAS LESS CRAP THAN Gnome3.0 and KDE4.0 WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT -- and that's why i use it to this day. I am on Unity because it's not as clunky & restrictive as gnome3, and KDE was complete and "udder" stink under 4.0. But more than that, Ubuntu 6 mo. release cycles are awesome & I am hooked on that, and it's easier for me to stay on the path that they are actively developing for now. However, now that KDE4 is on the .7 minor release & seems to be looking better -- well, maybe I'll try Kubuntu in PeePee (seems only fitting that this is an LTS).
I wanted to stay with a mainline Linux graphical environment that would grow & wouldn't break too badly with each release. So, I figured that I had 3 choices really for main-line Linux environments... Gnome 3, KDE 4 and Unity... and I was already on Ubuntu. Gnome 3 was/is not mature yet... I'd tried KDE4 and found it "wanting." And I'd tried Unity on a Netbook -- It was a bit slow, but usable and tweak-able with Compiz -- and hey, for Netbooks, right? -- they had to make it faster.
Well, I decided I liked the 6 month cycles & decided not to migrate to Debian or Fedora. I eventually bit the bullet & let Ubuntu upgrade my laptop to Unity, & "got used to it." I keep my eye on Gnome 3 but, PLEASE -- that's even more a joke. KDE 4 also still looks like a Windows knock-off & is still clunky. I'll stick with Unity for a while. At least I'm hopeful because it _has_ improved.
Given the options available and the directions KDE and GNOME are taking... I'm better off with Unity or rolling my own. YMMV, but I'll stick with Unity for now.
I do this on my machines at home. Use ntfsclone and gzip to create compressed image files on a bootable linux partition. You can then create some custom scripts to ask for permission then restore the image automatically.
Assuming that all machines are using NTFS...
... and no, I'm not saying this because I want to see his collection. I'm saying this because there could be at least three different relevant definitions of porn here, and we need to know which one is being used:
So... A forth...
Pornography as blessed in the name of Jihad
So bin Laden had a collection of porn. So did most of the 'men who killed him. What does that mean? It means that, in addition to being a terrorist, bin Laden was also a normal human being who wasn't a lot different than many of us on different levels.
Well... it's not very stupid to me actually... The people that look up to Bin Laudin are Extreme Muslims. If he were truly watching homosexual porn, or American porn... well, it would discredit him in the eyes of his followers. He would not be the great imam... but... as you stated just another flawed human being... A man in a world of extremes that cannot win against his passions... how can he be a holy leader of the Jihad?
Porn is often how terrorist use stenography to communicate amongst each other covertly.
Not this bunch... We're pretty sure how he communicated with his people... nice try though.
I'm really interested in what kind of porn it was... Did it have to do with goats, like everyone is joking about? Was he ogling Americans, Arabians -- male or female, I wonder?
I have not had cable service in four years and more. I still had a set, but I used it for games and Netflix. News was easy to come by via Radio and internet. Only thing I "kinda" missed was football. This last Christmas, I bought a Blu-Ray player with integrated Wi-Fi, and as I was already a subscriber to Netflix, I had streaming first day. I have a 1000% better experience _commercial_free_ from a combination of Netflix streaming and occasionally buying my own DVD's or BD's from Amazon than I have from a hook-up to the Cable company.
My problem is the steps in Celcius seem to me to be too big. When I lived in China the 1-2 degree C tolerance on the AC was too wide and I would alternate between freezing and sweating all through the night. Couldn't get used to it. If the same 1-2 deg in F, I could live with that kind of tolerance much more easily.
... and while we are at it, we need to standardize on a national language. I vote for Java or Perl.
OK, but with comments in pig-latin.
+/- 1/16 in. -- or, I suppose +/- 0.0625.
Imperial is more "humanly" practical...
- For inches to feet, 12 is a really nice number. You can halve it, quarter it and third it. With base 10, you have a hard time with thirds -- and even quarters are not integers. Such measures are better for building.
- Miles are 8 furlongs (a furlong being the amount of distance an ox could plow before taking a rest), and the mile is also roughly equivalent to a roman measurement of 1000 paces -- that's a nice way to think about how far you should walk before taking a sip from your canteen. Sorry, but kilometers don't do it for me.
Imperial is simple for a human being to "visualize"...
- Inches are about a thumb-width -- it's a nice physical measure, and a nice rule of thumb.
- There are about 4 inches in a hand -- which is roughly knuckle to knuckle.
- There are three hands to a foot.
- The measure of a man's arm from fingertip to elbow is approximately a foot and a half -- a measure also known as a cubit.
- Yards of cloth in stores used to be commonly measured by hand -- by stretching out the cloth an arm-width away from the center of the body... When I was young I saw women at the cash register measuring out cloth by hand -- it was common-place.
- Teaspoons are teaspoons -- is there an convenient equivalent measure in metric for a sip of something?
- Tablespoons are tablespoons -- same again as teaspoons... Is there a ready replacement even on metric kitchen tables?
Imperial is better on the human stomach.
- A cup is a nice amount for your coffee. I don't want to ask for 225ml (or whatever) measure of coffee -- I want my darned cup.
- A pint and a quart are really nice measures for beer in the tummy. I DON'T WANT a Liter of beer. I want to "mind my pints and quarts."
- An ounce is a nice shot of liquor. I know three of them will put me down for the night.
List of requirements for true geek's king throne:
0) Must be in a room full of monsters.
1) When looting while confused, must exchange gold for randomly generated throne room monster.
2) When sitting, should respond with "You feel very comfortable here" or should do one of the following:
________a) Grant a wish or increase your luck.
________b) Allow you to genocide something.
________c) Identify things in you are carrying.
________d) Make you feel much better by healing you completely, curing you from sickness, blindness, and wounded legs.
________e) Gain the ability to see things that are invisible, magically form a map of the entire floor in your mind, or completely confuse you.
________f) Gain some random attribute.
________g) Loose some amount of a random attribute, but gain hit points!
________h) Shock you, and make you lose hit points!
________i) Forcibly take away all the gold you are carrying.
________j) Make a lot of monsters appear around you.
________k) Either blind you or randomly curse what you are carrying.
________l) Either wake all monsters on your floor, or teleport your naked butt somewhere random on the floor.
________m) Turn your mind into a pretzel.
Whereupon the said throne may vanish in a puff of smoke.
Upon kicking it, depending upon how lucky you are, you would either destroy the throne, breaking loose 200GP, and exercise your dexterity... (well you could possibly fail to do so and injure yourself), or if you are lucky dislodge some gems and gold... and/or trigger a trap door.
That, my friends, would be a true geek's throne, in a true geek's throne room.
It's a shame when we think of leaching off the fancy of bureaucrats as being so profitable an option. Sigh... Not that it will do any good, but... I'll continue to contact my congressman.
At what point are people going to say enough is enough? How long is everyone going to kow-tow to bureaucrats for a false perception of "security" (whatever that may mean).
Personally, I think this is offensive, and oppressive impingement upon our freedom to a basic right to walk around freely without threat of being accosted at every corner by government. The scanner situation is a poster child for bureaucracy run amok and going way too far. Government bureaucrats are not free to do whatever they want and spend our money willy-nilly as they please especially with the express purpose of looking up our skirts at every available opportunity.
At what point are we going to start making decisions either at the ballot, or with our feet?
Of COURSE managers count in all of these things -- and all things being equal (and perhaps some less so) Cost usually wins, because Cost usually wins over everything else with their customers. "Cost at a reasonable level of quality" probably also matters most to you too -- in the way you select your Car, your TV, your Internet service, your Cell Phone carrier, and even your toilet paper. Do you go out of your way to choose American TP -- Cause, "Damn-it, it's gotta be Americans wiping my Butt!!?" And if you are honest with yourself, that personal efficiency metric that you have in your head is what "really" matters to you -- not this religious fanaticism. And, It's the same efficiency metric that the managers in the companies you buy from will work towards no matter how painful it is to them or anyone else.
The reason that /currently/ I maintain my job in the states is that it /can't/ reasonably be outsourced right now. Otherwise, with the taxes and hostile attitudes of the government on business here in this country -- damn strait -- they would.
People talk a good talk about being charitable to the poor people in other countries, but darned if they will truly give poorer countries something truly valuable -- and train those other people in other countries to make their own living. Because, darn it... it's just unethical to do that! This guy in his Utopian universe of social/political correctness just lost a good job because he preferred his dream world to real life.
People... Listen... this is not a Zero Sum Game. One job at least was created here... a high skilled training job... and one with a lot of opportunity. The guy turned down a really, really good opportunity to help people -- both people overseas, and -- believe it or not -- his friends. You see, his friends were obviously doing a job that wasn't valuable in his home country any more. The sooner they got out of that job, the better!
We in America tend to think that we should keep as many jobs as possible here, no matter how crummy. And yet we complain about the monotony of some jobs, and the poor pay of unskilled labor locally. And... the bar is being raised ever higher. Software Engineers, IT, Help Desks, and Call centers... It's tough... But we have to realize -- and quickly -- that we are "competing" in a global labor economy. If there is another group of people in the world that can do the same job for less money, and the government structure is more favorable to business... then we better be a lot more efficient, offer some tangible benefit that the overseas people can't, or be prepared to go to war. That's just life!
On the other hand, developed countries have a lot of opportunity, and people ought to learn quickly to take advantage of that. People ought to educate themselves or start a business (thus managing/directing the cheap labor overseas). If people want low skilled labor jobs, especially, the school of the world tells us that they will have to compete now with unskilled labor from other countries -- and that's tough, but that's it. Wake up, people & don't be a victim! Learn to take advantage of the cold hard facts.
For the ethics part... He should have taken the job, or he should have gotten out of the business and started another. He's got to feed himself and his family. He's got to slap himself in the face and wake up and smell the Coffee -- It's a dog-eat-dog world -- not some dream world utopia he's locked his mind in. On the other hand, he also has a responsibility to tell his peers as quickly as possible that their jobs will be outsourced so that they can plan for the future.
You know... I have some experience here. I worked in Asia as an Expat. Here's what I learned...
Companies outsource for "cheap labor." But there are some companies that outsource jobs that take "skill" or "education." You know what you find out about the companies that do this? They invest in what ends up to be a "revolving door." They end up getting what they paid for in terms of support. They get the bottom of the barrel. Why? Because, when a person that works in that environment for any time learns something valuable, they CHANGE JOBS SO FAST THAT YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT HIT YOU.
I think it's not that people work in dead end jobs out of choice... I think it's their political systems that cage them in those jobs. People should fight to be creative, but they are told that they should just do what they are told by their government that they will get a pension and be all right.
Well, excuse me but that's _not_ all right. People are meant to do more than let me screw a widget in this piece of crap the same way over and over again! People shouldn't be satisfied to mechanically do anything! Robots do that. Humans DON'T -- for very long, unless they are brainwashed into it, or overly compensated into doing it!
Then, they are /forced/ to be creative! Right now they are undoubtedly "overcompensated" by your own admission. But I disagree with you -- damn it! I disagree! I think it is a shame that people who are innately gifted in some way throw their lives away at sucky jobs like this. And sucky -- so sucky that it WASTES OTHERS LIVES IN THE PROCESS!!!
There are /always/ other more creative or beneficial jobs out there.
You know who is the most valuable person in the Wal-Mart store? It's the greeter. No Robot could ever take that job! That person should be the most coveted person in the store. Why? Because it's that person that is the first person that you see and it's that person's job to make you feel welcome to come in and spend your money for whatever crap they sell there.
Does it take great skill to do that job? Well, it SHOULD. It takes skill to be that happy smiling person that you want to see -- that tells you exactly where to find a person find your crap wherever it is in the store -- that knows what you are buying is crap and that you the customer know is crap, but it's darned cheap crap and you're happy to buy it because, after all, it's darned cheap crap.
Some of these people as well could be artists. And some.. some could be scientists... What was Einstein before he became a world renowned nuclear genius of relativity? He was a patent examiner. Truly a step above booth babe/bozo... but really.
I truly thing you underestimate people. I think you need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself why you don't believe in people, and why you don't believe that the market will have a place for them. You think that they are so stupid that they will never amount to anything more?
Wow, I thought I was bad just for saying what I felt.
If they were naughty hot Asian minxes wearing next to nothing at the booth... OK, I'm happy with that... I'll gladly stop on my way to work for a wink, and a "hey, baby -- put your money in here..."
But, these are not the kinds of people that sign up for toll booth jobs. Instead, we have humpty dumpty, or some old woman with either a confused or grumpy expression on their face... And why wouldn't they be grumpy... They flat-out /know/ that their job requires absolutely no creative thought and can absolutely be done better by a robot... The moment of enlightenment that these poor people experience when they finally understand that they have thrown their lives away on a job so mechanical and worthless -- that has to be a soul-crushing.
So, I'm all for this. Maybe the people who sat on their lazy butts not only contributing a pittance to the human condition, but actually wasting others time and energy in the process, will learn to redeem themselves and take upon themselves the challenge of bettering society.
"I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived... and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 19
"photonic" -- not "phonic"