Arbitrary handwaving is not helpful or interesting.

The real issue here isn't a lack of trust -- it's a lack of maturity.

Life isn't fair. All the democracy in all the world isn't going to make it so. All the progressive mandates and sweeping government programs/reforms won't make it so. All the freedom and conservative/religious values won't make it so.

The reason everyone feels betrayed is because, down deep in their hearts, they think that life should be fair, and they should get "what they deserve," despite everything going on around them. Maturity is recognizing that bad stuff is gonna happen to you, it isn't your fault, and thats okay. Thats why you have friends, family, and a small local community. That is who is supposed to pick you up when you fall down, just like you pick them up when they fall.

The rub is that being a part of a community requires commitment, maturity, and humility. You can't be a member of a community when its convenient for you, and then not when its a hassle. You have to be willing to forget your grudges and help other members of the community, even those you may not personally like very much. You have to be grateful for the help that others give, and recognize you haven't earned it. You have to be able to swallow your pride, accept help from others, and recognize you don't deserve it.

I don't blame the political system for our current "woes". I blame a citizenship with collective emotional maturity of a 13-year-old girl, constantly screaming "That's not fair! I'm not a little kid any more!"

That's like saying that you have a sales person who knows some Perl, so why do you need software engineers?

It worries me that this was flagged as insightful.

This.

I think a lot of CIOs, and IT managers of all stripes, don't understand that there is a difference between just "keeping things working" and actually adding value to the organization as it pursues its market strategy. Typically, I try to spend at least half my time looking for ways for IT to actually add value to other silos. This involves a lot of "fuzzy people" time, learning what those roles do, and how the people in those roles "feel" about their work. When you spend the time to get to know your company, you discover not only ways to make things substantially better for everyone, but you also discover those pesky metrics that demonstrate the value you bring to the bottom line.

In summary, a lot of IT should be very non-technical, very visible, and have results that can be easily quantified into added value and productivity for the company -- exactly what a CEO wants to see out of any department. Its the difference between being good, and being great.

I think it might be a bit hyperbolic to start checking everything off as present so quickly. Most of those metrics, as presented, are subjective at best. I'm not going to get into all of them, but as a single example "Religion and Government are Intertwined" could hardly be considered "checked". If you seriously believe that to be the case, I invite you review 17th century European history. Now THAT was an intertwining of government and religion. Our current situation could be more accurately viewed, historically, as a possible accidental bumping of elbows in a crowded hallway, followed by a curt "excuse me, passing through."

Thats not to say these things don't exist in the micro, or aren't even commonplace among fragmented demographics within the US. But there is hardly uniformity at the national level, especially among political ideologies.

I initially felt sort of bad for Ravi, for the same reasons everyone else has stated.

Then I read that he had been offered a plea that would have avoided all jail time and probably avoided any deportation issues. And he turned it down. So he has admitted all the particulars of the "cyber-bullying", but refuses to accept a slap on the wrist and instead decides to take the fight all the way to a jury verdict? Sounds to me like he really thought he hadn't done anything wrong at all -- completely justified in actions.

You have to be some sort of serious bigot to think what Ravi did was completely okay, and so if he thinks himself so justified to deny any wrong doing at all then I have no problem with him rotting in a cell for (up to) 10 years and then being expelled from the country.

From my experience, which I admit is anecdotal at best, Engineering pays just as well as Business.

Comparing an undergrad engineering degree to an MBA is not a fair comparison: half of those MBAs also have an engineering undergrad (at least the males do anyway). Of course they make more money than someone with just a bachelors. They also have learned *why* things need to be "engineered", not just *how*.

If you start looking at post-docs in engineering, then you can start comparing to MBAs. That's a closer fit. Yes, post-docs have been in school longer, but any decent MBA program requires 3+ years work experience to get admitted to the program. In the end, its about the same amount of work.

MBAs will go on to run most of a company's executive staff, and if they are worth their salt and have the ambition, will eventually make CEO. Likewise, a post-doc with smarts and ambition will be tech founders, and start the next Google, and retire in style after making their name.

There is plenty of room for growth in engineering, and the sky is the limit if you are willing to (1) get educated, and (2) take some risks. This is no different than any other field.

Incarceration itself is a flawed concept.

If you are incarcerating as a deterrent, it doesn't work. Prison is where a large number of criminals network and receive training in their "careers". (This is why it also doesn't really work as a punishment.) Further, time in prison disrupts any "legitimate" career they might have had, and puts a big black spot on their resume that pretty much guarantees they'll never climb any sort of corporate ladder again. This creates a further incentive to develop a criminal career, passing in and out of the prison system repeatedly over one's lifetime.

The reality is that our court system should ask itself one question when it tries someone for a serious crime: Is this person safe to have running around free in society? If the answer is yes, then slap them with a fine (or just slap them, for that matter) and then let them go. If the answer is no, sending them to prison isn't likely to change the answer. At that point, its probably best to execute them and move on.

Yes, innocent people will still be found guilty, and the guilty will go free. But just because its imperfect doesn't mean its not better than the disaster we have right now.

Ah, so you are a moral nihilist. Never mind then.

So something like the Civil Rights Movement isn't any better than the Holocaust? The two are roughly the same, taking all things into account? That's your argument? Could you expand upon the economics behind that equivalency?

So the holocaust wasn't bad?

Thats right! I just brought Nazis into a discussion about morality!

*thread implodes*

I think what you are referring to is Willful Ignorance. I would agree that is immoral.

But you can be educated and still be willfully ignorant about a great many things. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Agreed.

I would go further and say neither being uneducated or stupid makes you a bad person. It may make your life more difficult than it needs to be, but it doesn't drop you a rung on the moral ladder.

Unless it includes a actual nuclear attack option at some escalated point, its not really MAD. As painful as it is to lose the internet, and as much as it would harm our economy, etc; it could hardly be construed at total destruction of the nation.

"If you break our internet, we'll break yours" doesn't really carry the same weight as "if you break our internet, we'll nuke you into the oblivion."

Calls to mind the myriad stories we see here about some random hacker discovering vulnerabilities, reporting them, and then finding themselves on the wrong side of the law. Even if you do no damage, you're still breaking the law.