... is that it's a mish-mash of pychological and psyciatric methods of the first half of the twentieth century, mixed in with some (small) biology, and, oh yes, the e-meter.
But then, the truth is that aroudn 1951, L. Ron Hubbard and several other science fiction writers were hanging out, and they made a bet as to who could create a religion. There was also, on the side of L.Ron, being tired of writing for the pulps for a penny a word, and wanting to make more money. And that *is* where Dianetics came from, which begat Scientology.
In 1968, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding/Analog for something like 30 years, told me and some others that over the years Hubbard had varied in his own mind between "it was for real" and "it was a great scam".
Let me also note that Hubbard spent the last ten or 15 years of his life on a yacht, outside British waters, since he was wanted in the UK for tax fraud (and a fake religion).
mark (Real sf fans know this, which is why Scienterologicalists
tend to avoid us in droves)
There are two related problems: first and foremost, the multinationals have shoved through draconian copyright laws. The original idea of copyright is for the author/creator to get paid for their work, and to retain control. The original in the US was something like 17 years. It's now what, the lifetime of the author *plus* that? And who gets the money for it? Arlo Guthrie says that it took him *30* years to get paid for his records from his recording company.
Go back to the original, I say. And add some languages that forces the companies to pay the creators "in a timely manner".
If it had been Clinton in the White House, and it was to the DNS host, every damn little snot-nosed Republican/Libertarian brat here would be screaming for an assassination.
Time to RICO the RNC. Before we loose everything (see the below excerpt and link)
mark
Excerpt: Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration. --- end excerpt ---
Sorry, but Cuba isn't anywhere near a "totalitarian country". Lessee, the pre-revolution Romania *was*. On the other hand, Cuba has, I believe, a 95% literacy rate (the US is *way* down from there); has a real national healtchcare system, and exports doctors, as opposed to the US, with between 15% and 20% with *no* healthcare, etc, etc.
But, of course, those who've been posting more than half the responses to this story a) didn't read the translation of Guantanemaro; b) believe that everyone in Gitmo (gee, the US is holding onto Cuban territory - how 'bout giving Casto Miami?) is an Evil, High-Level terrorist (and not a single one of you little shits believes in the US Constitution (i.e, no "cruel and unusual punishment" - I suggest you get yourselves thrown into jail for a few weeks, or months, or years, and see how you feel about it); those that are old enough probably, during the Clinton administration, said all kinds of bullshit about it being "good" to have a divided gov't, with a Dem administration, and a Republican Congress, but now want a one-party state, all Republican, and the over 50% of Americans who disagree should have *your* neofascist, sorry, 'neocon', fundamentalist Christian agenda down our throats.
Thanks, Richard.
mark
ObDisclaimer: yes, I *am* married to a convicted terrorist....
carefully chosen.sig: Libertarian IT workers who watch their jobs go overseas should derive joy from geographic shifts in employment. Their "dog eat dog" creed requires them to be happy whenever the marketplace finds a way to pay workers less and increase business owners' profits. - Roblimo Miller, NewsForge.com
My CoCo is long gone, and even my beloved 286 has been recycled, but I have sitting here at my feet a (re)Pentium 200, circa '94-'97, with the new used $3 hard drive (shipping companies who *don't* bubble wrap, even when they're asked to, and hard drives do *not* get along...), and a used $10 CD drive, that I use for a Linux-based firewall router. No X, no compilers... and once I get it back up, it'll do the work it's been doing for seven or eight years.
Tell me why I need a new, fast machine for this purpose....
I'd say the teachers should, in *EVERY* class, assign a Web research assignment, and then go over every assignment, in class, and point out which sources are good, which are questionable and *WHY* they're questionable, and which are complete disinformation.
It's called "teaching critical thinking', boyos and grrrllls.
So, they're making sexier companions for, as U. Utah Phillips put it, "I'm from Utah, where the men are men, and the sheep are scared. I'm from Utah, where the only way you get virgin wool is from sheep that can outrun the Mormons and the Republicans".
mark "was not going to insult the Scots by putting them in
with Mormons and Republicans"
First, *real* science fiction, or sf (NOT sci-fi). 99.999% is WRITTEN. Evidence: I would guess that less than 1000 "sci-fi" movies have ever been made; meanwhile, I have over 3000 novels in my library, a fair-to-middlin' size collection for Real sf fans, and well under 100 are related in any way to any movie or tv series.
This, of course, cuts out most Americans, who *claim* to value education, etc... but the last time I saw a figure, they average 3-4 books PER YEAR. I would say, then, that between my family and myself alone, hundreds of Americans don't read a *single* book per year.
It also cuts out a large percentage of Americans, who avoided anything related to science in school or college, and know *nothing* about it. The popular ones, of course, added another layer to that: they began the crap of giving derogatory names to anyone who *did* know anything about anything, and looking down on them. Come on, how many folks reading this are not considered wonks, geeks, grinds, nerds, etc, etc, and not "worthy" of being in the in-crowd, and who are considered to have poor cleanliness, social skills, and so forth, and are definitely portrayed that way in the entertainment media? So many Americans think along the lines of "no user serviceable parts", and that those of us who *do* know stuff are self-evidently weird, and so why would they want to associate, or even read or watch stories about us?
Second, sci-fi (pronounced skiffy by real sf fans) is mostly associated with the science of Godzilla movies and movie reviewers with the attitudes mentioned above, who will, therefore, not even *consider* sf seriously. Point of evidence: months after Apollo XIII hit the theatres, I heard Siskal and Ebert pronounce that they didn't understand why it was still in the theatres.
Finally, with the ongoing consolidation of the media, the head honchos are especially from that in-crowd from high school that I mentioned above, with all those attitudes. When combined into a group of executives and a board, of course, the old truism is that the IQ is divided by the number of members involved.... Certainly, we have enough proof with Berman, who is in charge of the Trek franchise at Paramount, say in an interview that he hated it, and in general displayed, in print, the attitudes above towards sf.
Is that enough reasons that it's a stigma, in a know-nothing country?
I've never done much in assembly, and what I did was a loooong time ago. But I *do* know some, and it is important. Here's one example of why: a number of years ago, at one job, some younger consultants came to me (as the senior tech resource) to tell me this one program kept crashing, and it was doing so in a linked-to commercial library (Tuxedo, if you must know), and they had no idea why.
I proceded to run the program under the debugger, got to the library call, and then did something they had no idea you could do: stepi, and stepped *into* the library, with the debugger doing the disassembly. I worked my way through and found the function it was cratering in. Now, I had no idea of the purpose of the function, and there were no comments, of course. But had the authority and the knowledge to call BEA support, tell them I needed info from their developers, and could tell them both the name of the function, and though I wasn't familiar with assembly on a SPARC, I could still offer them some variable names, and about where it was happening.
Within a day, I had the answer, and that's with waiting for a callback from tech support. Try *that*, if all you know is OOEmeraldSerpent++#....
First, I've never done this, because I've been afraid of the charges (used to be something like over a dollar a page for "copying, etc". Secondly, they'll give at least some... but a) you need to ask the right agency, and b) you may find that you have 150 pages... with 50% of it "redacted" (i.e., a black marker over the info).
But, yes, you *can* get the info they have on you. Or, based on the first few comments I've read, do y'all believe that we live under, oh, Hitler or Stalin, and everyone who works for the gov't, including every mail carrier, have Sold Their Souls, and are your enemy? And in *that* case, what the *hell* are y'all doing online, and not hiding out like a survivalist, out in the woods, completely off the grid?
My wife, an engineer who worked at the Cape for 17 years, immediately cried "bullshit". She says that we get hailstorms like that every year or so, and it's happened enough times before. A friend who still works at KSC, as a tech, verifies this.
The dithering is because KSC is now staffed overwhelmingly by mostly Republican and fundamentalist types who don't, in fact, know engineering, and *certainly* don't believe in the buck stopping at their desk.
Then, of course, the GOP has *never* liked the space program, since it became associated with JFK (never mind that Ike started it), and are always looking to cut it, and shift money to the military programs, where their buddies can get big bucks from our tax dollars.
Don't believe that? Then why are we still flying Shuttles whose *intended* lifespan was 20 years, and we have *nothing* new even in test?
1) FIRST: DO NOT INTERVIEW MANAGERS. Interview end users. I can't remember all the times I've seen software that was spec'd by managers who allegedly knew it all, and the end users did everything they could to not use it, or get around it, because it was so hostile, and did *not* work they way that they needed it to.
2) Sit them down, one by one, in a chair, and bring out the rubber light bulbs, and bare hoses, and beat them around the head and shoulders until you find out what it is they actually need as a result, *not* how it should be done. They used to teach one design method called HIPO charts: get what comes in, and what they need to come out, from them. *YOU* are the software professional; how you get from a to b is *your* job.
Lest you think I exaggerate in 2), there was a time, at one job, I had a chemist come in and ask me to convert the (dBase) files he had on a disk to ASCII, so that he could massage the data to create a report. I brought them up in dBase, then beat him about the head and shoulders, until he admitted what it was he was trying to produce. Then I asked him how long it would take, if I converted it, and he told me two or three days. I looked at him, and asked if he'd like the same report in two or three *hours*. The tables were perfect. All I had to do was create the query, and format the output.
So, remember, you get the rules, but *you* have to figure out how to get from here to there.
The judge should go read the US Constitution, and what the Founding Fathers wrote about what they were doing. What is *explicitly* meant by "free speech" is freedom of *political* speech, and fraud in NC sounds like just that....
Or doesn't anyone remember, from just a few years ago, when a US Navy ship (an Aegis cruiser, I think) went to Windows... and bluescreened, and literally had to be towed back to port?
mark "and so, will Bill Gates be lined up against the wall, when
the fleet crashes in combat?"
...the hairdressers and the politicians that colonized this planet (ObRef: HHGttG)? The overwhelming part of our manufacuring base is gone, shipped overseas by CEOs who didn't want to pay union (or even decent) wages; and in the computer industry, specifically, they don't want to pay decent wages, so they hire H1-B's or ship the work overseas.
We won't even *begin* to discuss corporate training programs (they don't "waste" money that way), or the fact that the overwhelming majority of upper managers and almost all HR people wouldn't have a clue if it bit them on the ass as to what the requirements for the computer jobs they're hiring for mean, and so, rather than look for skillsets, look for specific acronyms. Oh, and we also won't point out that they're looking for someone who's worked there for a year to hire, and not facing the reality that EVERYONE takes a week or so to ramp up on that company's environment.
If he actually meant what he said, there wouldn't be one involuntarily unemployed computer person in this country.
And in addition to what others have already said, let me point out all the companies where the CEOs downsized (or, as I prefer, undersized) until the market stopped rewarding their actions by increasing the value of their stock options, never mind the effect on the company or its customers.
I've come to the conclusion that modern American "free market" businessmen are among the greediest, most thoughtless class of wealthy people seen on this planet since the French took objection to theirs two hundred and a few years ago.
Oh, come *on*, Abdul Alhazrad didn't reveal the TRVTH of Cthul'hu until the time of Mohammad. Some people gotta backdate *everything* to sound funnymentalist....
After programming for nearly 15 years, I finally got my B.Sc in CIS in '95. Several months later, I left the job I was in, and got one with a telecom. A while after I was hired, I asked my manager if the degree had any effect, and was told that it helped them get me through HR.
In the early nineties, I and my late wife worked for Radian Corp., in Austin. After nearly nine years, she got *dumped* on a Friday afternoon, and in that Sunday's want ads, they were looking for someone to do *exactly* the same job, not because she couldn't do it, but because they wanted someone with a four-year piece of paper. At the same place, I was a "tech IV", rather than a "staff scientist", even though I had been *working* in the field since before half the folks I was working with started college. I was paid significantly less, as well: no four year piece of paper.
The *REAL* problem are HR and headhunters, 85% of whom HAVE NO CLUE what the real requirements are for the position they're trying to fill, and don't *give a shit* about learning anything (that's haaaard, to quote that Barbie doll), and so look only at acronyms they've been handed, and nothing else.
Oh, and let's not forget their attitude of "oh, you're 'between positions', so you're not 'fresh'"....
So, yeah, get the degree. And Come the Revolution, forget about wasting ammo lining HR up against the wall, just lay 'em down on the street and pave them into it.
We recently brought up a tracking system... after going through several. We wound up with Mantis, which wound up having only one minor, if aggravating issue (MySQL password lengths). Trac, we tried to install for *weeks*, and there kept being problems at getting it going. Mantis went up within a couple of days, and that included back-and-forth.
And my best argument against the Our Gov't Is In Contact With Aliens/Has Captured UFOs is a complex one: let's ignore the folks who think that microwave ovens are UFO tech; we *know* where every bit of technology came from, and can trace back the scientific research behind it a hundred and fifty years, at least. If any of the contact/capture had been true, there would have been *something* that came literally out of nowhere, that we couldn't see where it came from.
mark "and would *you* want to contact us, with Bush 'in charge'?"
"Beam us up, Scotty, there's *no* intelligent life here."
And I see subjects like "this is crap". Clearly, these are kids too young to remember it, and those that are anti-democracy... and yet claim to "disbelieve the media", but hang on every word of O'Reilly and Limburger.
They don't *want* equal representation of the more than 50% of us on the other side.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of Ray Bradbury's short story from the fifties, "The Pedestrian", about the last pedestrian.... (For an essay on it).
Seriously, who *needs* it, or wants it? And if you do, then you need to be in an assisted living facility.
mark "get up and get your own bheer, ya lazy bum!"
... is that it's a mish-mash of pychological and psyciatric methods of the first half of the twentieth century, mixed in with some (small) biology, and, oh yes, the e-meter.
But then, the truth is that aroudn 1951, L. Ron Hubbard and several other science fiction writers were hanging out, and they made a bet as to who could create a religion. There was also, on the side of L.Ron, being tired of writing for the pulps for a penny a word, and wanting to make more money. And that *is* where Dianetics came from, which begat Scientology.
In 1968, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding/Analog for something like 30 years, told me and some others that over the years Hubbard had varied in his own mind between "it was for real" and "it was a great scam".
Let me also note that Hubbard spent the last ten or 15 years of his life on a yacht, outside British waters, since he was wanted in the UK for tax fraud (and a fake religion).
mark (Real sf fans know this, which is why Scienterologicalists
tend to avoid us in droves)
There are two related problems: first and foremost, the multinationals have shoved through draconian copyright laws. The original idea of copyright is for the author/creator to get paid for their work, and to retain control. The original in the US was something like 17 years. It's now what, the lifetime of the author *plus* that? And who gets the money for it? Arlo Guthrie says that it took him *30* years to get paid for his records from his recording company.
Go back to the original, I say. And add some languages that forces the companies to pay the creators "in a timely manner".
mark
If it had been Clinton in the White House, and it was to the DNS host, every damn little snot-nosed Republican/Libertarian brat here would be screaming for an assassination.
Time to RICO the RNC. Before we loose everything (see the below excerpt and link)
mark
Excerpt:
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
--- end excerpt ---
Sorry, but Cuba isn't anywhere near a "totalitarian country". Lessee, the pre-revolution Romania *was*. On the other hand, Cuba has, I believe, a 95% literacy rate (the US is *way* down from there); has a real national healtchcare system, and exports doctors, as opposed to the US, with between 15% and 20% with *no* healthcare, etc, etc.
.sig:
But, of course, those who've been posting more than half the responses to this story a) didn't read the translation of Guantanemaro; b) believe that everyone in Gitmo (gee, the US is holding onto Cuban territory - how 'bout giving Casto Miami?) is an Evil, High-Level terrorist (and not a single one of you little shits believes in the US Constitution (i.e, no "cruel and unusual punishment" - I suggest you get yourselves thrown into jail for a few weeks, or months, or years, and see how you feel about it); those that are old enough probably, during the Clinton administration, said all kinds of bullshit about it being "good" to have a divided gov't, with a Dem administration, and a Republican Congress, but now want a one-party state, all Republican, and the over 50% of Americans who disagree should have *your* neofascist, sorry, 'neocon', fundamentalist Christian agenda down our throats.
Thanks, Richard.
mark
ObDisclaimer: yes, I *am* married to a convicted terrorist....
carefully chosen
Libertarian IT workers who watch their jobs go overseas should derive joy from geographic shifts in employment. Their "dog eat dog" creed requires them to be happy whenever the marketplace finds a way to pay workers less and increase business owners' profits. - Roblimo Miller, NewsForge.com
My CoCo is long gone, and even my beloved 286 has been recycled, but I have sitting here at my feet a (re)Pentium 200, circa '94-'97, with the new used $3 hard drive (shipping companies who *don't* bubble wrap, even when they're asked to, and hard drives do *not* get along...), and a used $10 CD drive, that I use for a Linux-based firewall router. No X, no compilers... and once I get it back up, it'll do the work it's been doing for seven or eight years.
Tell me why I need a new, fast machine for this purpose....
mark
I'd say the teachers should, in *EVERY* class, assign a Web research assignment, and then go over every assignment, in class, and point out which sources are good, which are questionable and *WHY* they're questionable, and which are complete disinformation.
It's called "teaching critical thinking', boyos and grrrllls.
mark
So, they're making sexier companions for, as U. Utah Phillips put it, "I'm from Utah, where the men are men, and the sheep are scared. I'm from Utah, where the only way you get virgin wool is from sheep that can outrun the Mormons and the Republicans".
mark "was not going to insult the Scots by putting them in
with Mormons and Republicans"
First, *real* science fiction, or sf (NOT sci-fi). 99.999% is WRITTEN. Evidence: I would guess that less than 1000 "sci-fi" movies have ever been made; meanwhile, I have over 3000 novels in my library, a fair-to-middlin' size collection for Real sf fans, and well under 100 are related in any way to any movie or tv series.
This, of course, cuts out most Americans, who *claim* to value education, etc... but the last time I saw a figure, they average 3-4 books PER YEAR. I would say, then, that between my family and myself alone, hundreds of Americans don't read a *single* book per year.
It also cuts out a large percentage of Americans, who avoided anything related to science in school or college, and know *nothing* about it. The popular ones, of course, added another layer to that: they began the crap of giving derogatory names to anyone who *did* know anything about anything, and looking down on them. Come on, how many folks reading this are not considered wonks, geeks, grinds, nerds, etc, etc, and not "worthy" of being in the in-crowd, and who are considered to have poor cleanliness, social skills, and so forth, and are definitely portrayed that way in the entertainment media? So many Americans think along the lines of "no user serviceable parts", and that those of us who *do* know stuff are self-evidently weird, and so why would they want to associate, or even read or watch stories about us?
Second, sci-fi (pronounced skiffy by real sf fans) is mostly associated with the science of Godzilla movies and movie reviewers with the attitudes mentioned above, who will, therefore, not even *consider* sf seriously. Point of evidence: months after Apollo XIII hit the theatres, I heard Siskal and Ebert pronounce that they didn't understand why it was still in the theatres.
Finally, with the ongoing consolidation of the media, the head honchos are especially from that in-crowd from high school that I mentioned above, with all those attitudes. When combined into a group of executives and a board, of course, the old truism is that the IQ is divided by the number of members involved.... Certainly, we have enough proof with Berman, who is in charge of the Trek franchise at Paramount, say in an interview that he hated it, and in general displayed, in print, the attitudes above towards sf.
Is that enough reasons that it's a stigma, in a know-nothing country?
mark
I've never done much in assembly, and what I did was a loooong time ago. But I *do* know some, and it is important. Here's one example of why: a number of years ago, at one job, some younger consultants came to me (as the senior tech resource) to tell me this one program kept crashing, and it was doing so in a linked-to commercial library (Tuxedo, if you must know), and they had no idea why.
I proceded to run the program under the debugger, got to the library call, and then did something they had no idea you could do: stepi, and stepped *into* the library, with the debugger doing the disassembly. I worked my way through and found the function it was cratering in. Now, I had no idea of the purpose of the function, and there were no comments, of course. But had the authority and the knowledge to call BEA support, tell them I needed info from their developers, and could tell them both the name of the function, and though I wasn't familiar with assembly on a SPARC, I could still offer them some variable names, and about where it was happening.
Within a day, I had the answer, and that's with waiting for a callback from tech support. Try *that*, if all you know is OOEmeraldSerpent++#....
mark
It would have cost *far* less if they'd paid for an unformat - what's the worst case, $10k?
mark
Folks,
First, I've never done this, because I've been afraid of the charges (used to be something like over a dollar a page for "copying, etc". Secondly, they'll give at least some... but a) you need to ask the right agency, and b) you may find that you have 150 pages... with 50% of it "redacted" (i.e., a black marker over the info).
But, yes, you *can* get the info they have on you. Or, based on the first few comments I've read, do y'all believe that we live under, oh, Hitler or Stalin, and everyone who works for the gov't, including every mail carrier, have Sold Their Souls, and are your enemy? And in *that* case, what the *hell* are y'all doing online, and not hiding out like a survivalist, out in the woods, completely off the grid?
mark
while driving? Sorry, this existed 30 years ago. "Breaker, breaker, good buddy on channel 13, smokey under the bridge...."
mark "I've got our CB radios here *somewhere*...."
Coming next: NASA reveals pictures of 3-meter tall, four-armed green Martians riding thoats out of the caves....
Yeah, I know, it's White Martians down at the south pole....
mark "
My wife, an engineer who worked at the Cape for 17 years, immediately cried "bullshit". She says that we get hailstorms like that every year or so, and it's happened enough times before. A friend who still works at KSC, as a tech, verifies this.
The dithering is because KSC is now staffed overwhelmingly by mostly Republican and fundamentalist types who don't, in fact, know engineering, and *certainly* don't believe in the buck stopping at their desk.
Then, of course, the GOP has *never* liked the space program, since it became associated with JFK (never mind that Ike started it), and are always looking to cut it, and shift money to the military programs, where their buddies can get big bucks from our tax dollars.
Don't believe that? Then why are we still flying Shuttles whose *intended* lifespan was 20 years, and we have *nothing* new even in test?
mark "bastards stole our future"
1) FIRST: DO NOT INTERVIEW MANAGERS. Interview end users. I can't remember all the times I've seen software that was spec'd by managers who allegedly knew it all, and the end users did everything they could to not use it, or get around it, because it was so hostile, and did *not* work they way that they needed it to.
2) Sit them down, one by one, in a chair, and bring out the rubber light bulbs, and bare hoses, and beat them around the head and shoulders until you find out what it is they actually need as a result, *not* how it should be done. They used to teach one design method called HIPO charts: get what comes in, and what they need to come out, from them. *YOU* are the software professional; how you get from a to b is *your* job.
Lest you think I exaggerate in 2), there was a time, at one job, I had a chemist come in and ask me to convert the (dBase) files he had on a disk to ASCII, so that he could massage the data to create a report. I brought them up in dBase, then beat him about the head and shoulders, until he admitted what it was he was trying to produce. Then I asked him how long it would take, if I converted it, and he told me two or three days. I looked at him, and asked if he'd like the same report in two or three *hours*. The tables were perfect. All I had to do was create the query, and format the output.
So, remember, you get the rules, but *you* have to figure out how to get from here to there.
mark
The judge should go read the US Constitution, and what the Founding Fathers wrote about what they were doing. What is *explicitly* meant by "free speech" is freedom of *political* speech, and fraud in NC sounds like just that....
mark
Or doesn't anyone remember, from just a few years ago, when a US Navy ship (an Aegis cruiser, I think) went to Windows... and bluescreened, and literally had to be towed back to port?
mark "and so, will Bill Gates be lined up against the wall, when
the fleet crashes in combat?"
...the hairdressers and the politicians that colonized this planet (ObRef: HHGttG)? The overwhelming part of our manufacuring base is gone, shipped overseas by CEOs who didn't want to pay union (or even decent) wages; and in the computer industry, specifically, they don't want to pay decent wages, so they hire H1-B's or ship the work overseas.
We won't even *begin* to discuss corporate training programs (they don't "waste" money that way), or the fact that the overwhelming majority of upper managers and almost all HR people wouldn't have a clue if it bit them on the ass as to what the requirements for the computer jobs they're hiring for mean, and so, rather than look for skillsets, look for specific acronyms. Oh, and we also won't point out that they're looking for someone who's worked there for a year to hire, and not facing the reality that EVERYONE takes a week or so to ramp up on that company's environment.
If he actually meant what he said, there wouldn't be one involuntarily unemployed computer person in this country.
mark
And in addition to what others have already said, let me point out all the companies where the CEOs downsized (or, as I prefer, undersized) until the market stopped rewarding their actions by increasing the value of their stock options, never mind the effect on the company or its customers.
I've come to the conclusion that modern American "free market" businessmen are among the greediest, most thoughtless class of wealthy people seen on this planet since the French took objection to theirs two hundred and a few years ago.
mark
Oh, come *on*, Abdul Alhazrad didn't reveal the TRVTH of Cthul'hu until the time of Mohammad. Some people gotta backdate *everything* to sound funnymentalist....
mark
After programming for nearly 15 years, I finally got my B.Sc in CIS in '95. Several months later, I left the job I was in, and got one with a telecom. A while after I was hired, I asked my manager if the degree had any effect, and was told that it helped them get me through HR.
In the early nineties, I and my late wife worked for Radian Corp., in Austin. After nearly nine years, she got *dumped* on a Friday afternoon, and in that Sunday's want ads, they were looking for someone to do *exactly* the same job, not because she couldn't do it, but because they wanted someone with a four-year piece of paper. At the same place, I was a "tech IV", rather than a "staff scientist", even though I had been *working* in the field since before half the folks I was working with started college. I was paid significantly less, as well: no four year piece of paper.
The *REAL* problem are HR and headhunters, 85% of whom HAVE NO CLUE what the real requirements are for the position they're trying to fill, and don't *give a shit* about learning anything (that's haaaard, to quote that Barbie doll), and so look only at acronyms they've been handed, and nothing else.
Oh, and let's not forget their attitude of "oh, you're 'between positions', so you're not 'fresh'"....
So, yeah, get the degree. And Come the Revolution, forget about wasting ammo lining HR up against the wall, just lay 'em down on the street and pave them into it.
mark "why, yes, I *am* hostile to HR people"
We recently brought up a tracking system... after going through several. We wound up with Mantis, which wound up having only one minor, if aggravating issue (MySQL password lengths). Trac, we tried to install for *weeks*, and there kept being problems at getting it going. Mantis went up within a couple of days, and that included back-and-forth.
mark
And my best argument against the Our Gov't Is In Contact With Aliens/Has Captured UFOs is a complex one: let's ignore the folks who think that microwave ovens are UFO tech; we *know* where every bit of technology came from, and can trace back the scientific research behind it a hundred and fifty years, at least. If any of the contact/capture had been true, there would have been *something* that came literally out of nowhere, that we couldn't see where it came from.
mark "and would *you* want to contact us, with Bush 'in charge'?"
"Beam us up, Scotty, there's *no* intelligent life here."
And I see subjects like "this is crap". Clearly, these are kids too young to remember it, and those that are anti-democracy... and yet claim to "disbelieve the media", but hang on every word of O'Reilly and Limburger.
They don't *want* equal representation of the more than 50% of us on the other side.
mark