The students at the U of C are not about getting good grades and passing courses to get good jobs. They are about discovering and creating and investigating things that no one else has thought of yet. It's a research institution, not a tech school. And I wish we had more like it.

As a graduate of the University of Chicago, I'd have to say that, like many things, the perception is very different from reality. I'd say the vast majority of the student body, like at every school, are pretty average. It's not an environment that stirs intellectual discussion. If anything, it's a rather depressing environment where the vast majority of the people *are* obsessed with getting good grades, so they can get a good job or go to a good grad school. Which should be perfectly fine, but I think a lot of students there take it a little too far and feel they need every competitive advantage against people in their classes. It just makes for a very cutthroat environment, where people don't necessarily believe in collaboration or working together.

The amazing research the university is known for is really more the realm of the faculty, who are more focused on their own research and generally look at teaching as a necessary evil they have to deal with in order to continue their research. You're not going to be exposed to these amazing concepts and ideas. You're going to learn what's in the textbook.

I *do* think that some of the liberals arts courses the university offers can be very interesting and probably attracts a slightly different type of student, but outside of that realm, it'll be pretty dry (sciences, math, economics, pre-med, pre-law folks).

I know most folks would jump at the opportunity to telecommute. I've been lucky, as my current workplace is very flexible and allows people to work from home at their own discretion with project manager approval. Some managers are very loose with it and only care if you are getting work done and can be reached through reasonable means. Other prefer that you're in the office, but make allowances under special circumstances.

Now, I absolutely love the flexibility, but there is something that would be missed if we moved to a full telecommute model. There are plenty of times when you might overhear a co-worker discussing a problem or perhaps a solution. You might be able to provide some insight or a solution to them. It saves them a ton of time, and it gets you some respect points with your peers. And obviously it works both ways, where someone else might help you at at some point.

In a pure telecommuting environment, you'd probably miss out on some of those incidentals. Although there are some that would argue that you'd also decrease the amount of distractions, which can definitely be true. So, there are good and bad points. Just playing a little devil's advocate.

You might be surprised. I worked for about 2 years in a Federal agency. The person I replaced as a contractor was a federal employee and had been fired for looking at pornography on the job.

Two years later, the managers were still going to court hearings with union reps to discuss the matter. Seemed like a colossal waste of time, but that's the federal government (and their unions) at work. As much as is publicized about government waste, the true story is much, much worse that you could ever imagine, and also a lot more depressing/disheartening.

Haven't read the article yet, but I'm curious why there isn't more discussion on his comment about intelligent design:

Consolmagno dismisses the ideas of intelligent design as a pseudo-scientific version of creationism. 'The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning.'"

I know the general Slashdot community looks down on religion, but it'd be nice to see greater distinction between fundamentalists and Christians who are probably generally more in the moderate realm. Unfortunately, when most people hear "Christian," the automatic response is to think that the person is a fundamentalist.

I remember looking into some Information Assurance type programs a few years ago, as the buzz about this field (especially in the government sector) was beginning to pick up (or at least when I first became aware of it). Some of these programs cost about $50,000 USD a year. It was just too expensive in my eyes. Perhaps that's just become the cost of private higher education, but that doesn't make it easier to accept. I don't recall what the starting salaries for these types of specialists were, though.

The other concern I'd have is that a lot of organizations receiving security audits would probably not be too cooperative. We all know that government work isn't always the most attractive, and one of the challenges they face are attracting people to interesting work, not being trapped for years in a political maze.

Perhaps high enough salaries can attract more talent, but they'd still lose out on plenty of people because of the environment. And having worked in Federal IT for a bit, it's a black hole of money and productivity. I'm sure there will be plenty of individuals and companies scrambling for their piece of this pie, but I wonder how much of a difference they'll actually make (besides to their own bottom lines)?

Many people apply, few (with the exception to political appointees) are accepted.

Actually, there are some similarities with security background checks and the H1B issue. I believe for security clearance, you need to be sponsored by a company. While you are getting your clearance, you technically can't do clearance-required work. So, a company who wants to sponsor someone might have them on a project that doesn't require clearance, while they are in the process. The problem with most DC companies is that they don't want to pay for that. They'd rather try to find someone else that has gone through the process already on someone else's dime. That way, they can start billing more quickly.

My guess is that some of this motivation is to not lose money from having someone you sponsored for their clearance to just leave when they are finally cleared.

In some situations, a employee will get hired by a subcontractor while their security clearance is being processed, and once it is cleared, be hired by the company with the contract.

The job market for cleared people is nearly always good (but has gotten pretty tight under the anti-military/intelligence Democratic congress/white house), so this will only make life better for them.

This is definitely true. There are plenty of jobs that require clearance, and only so many people that actually have it. It's kind of sad, as the clearance probably takes priority of skill/ability. I worked with a woman who had a clearance, left her previous job to a non-clearance position, and within three weeks quit to go another position that required clearance, because she didn't want to lose it. I believe if your clearance is inactive, meaning you weren't in a clearance-required position, for a certain period of time (6 months?), it's no longer valid. Of course, some of this is anecdotal, and I could be wrong. :)

Anyway, IT work in DC is a real joke. Plenty of money to be made there, but there's very little work being done. Lots of people just sitting around, waiting for their retirements. To an extent, I didn't really care who won any elections, because the civil service layer and the layer of contractors are such a drain on the system, that until something is done about it, you'll never really make much progress.

It's a perfect example of untrue but widely believed anti-union propaganda. This cop's union didn't help him, nor should it have. If your're caught stealing office supplies, your union won't help you. If you're reprimanded or fired for smoking in a no-smoking area, your union won't help you. If you're a "no call no show" your union won't help you. If you show up for work drunk your union won't help you. If your boss trumps up some bullshit charge because he just doesn't like you, then your union WILL help you.

I had a short stint working for the federal government, both as a full-time employee and as a contractor. At one of my positions, the guy I was effectively replacing had been fired for surfing pornography at work. My manager had to go to several court proceeding to testify about this... two years after the guy had been fired.

We also had more meetings to discuss the chairs at the office we were moving to than we did about the database design of the system we were creating. Part of this was supposedly so the union wouldn't complain later. Possibly being overly paranoid, but management probably wanted to err on the side of caution.

A woman at the office was caught sleeping at her desk. When the previous manager tried to wake her up, apparently, she fell out of her chair, and so she sued. Not sure the outcome of that, but she was still employed, and still falling asleep in meetings later. The most that the new manager would do would be to ask her to stop snoring, and then try to continue the meeting.

Those are your tax dollars at work, protected by a union.

While it's possible that unions do protect their workers, sometimes it is carried too far.

I hate to say it, but there is no coming shift to geek culture. There simply are not enough geeks compared to "normal people." Geeks don't have the spending power or sheer numbers to really matter. While geeks might have been on the cutting edge at one point, things like the internet, instant messaging, e-mail, social media didn't really start to matter until they started to appeal to more people besides a small niche population.

While geeks may be some of the driving forces behind some of these advancements, only a few of them actually reap the rewards. Case in point, Twitter has gone mainstream. But who has the largest following? Ashton Kutcher.

I just spent some time trying to track a gift down for my wife. In the search results, I came across a forum for handbags/purses. I've seen all sorts of forums in the past: Computers, DVDs, Anime, Cars, Sports, etc, but this was the first time I came across a forum like that. The ladies on that forum are not shifting to geek culture, they're just using new tools to communicate with others of similar interests in new ways.

In South Korea, after going to "normal" school, a lot of students go for additional studying/tutoring. These are called "Hagwon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon)

I believe Japan has something similar with their cram schools.

Not trying to say more amount of time in school is either better or worse, but it'd probably be useful to look at how the total amount of time in school was determined before relying on it too much.

Some people criticize these other school systems as stressing memorization and test-taking abilities over individual/creative thought. Of course, that's an anecdotal statement, so take it for what it's worth...

re: "responsible management position at an important technology office"

I think you might be overestimating the qualifications needed for promotion within the government. I worked for the Federal Government for a while, and their review process was basically pass/fail. Someone who had been around for 15+ years was discussing promotions with me once, and they government, trying to be fair to a fault, will do things like give priority to people with advanced degrees.

This might sound fine, but there are plenty of not-so-great universities that offer masters degree programs that don't require too much effort. Also, I imagine she might have taken advantage of some type of tuition reimbursement. So, some type of higher position as a civil servant doesn't always equate to a high skillset or lots of experience or good education. Of course there are exceptions, but the norm is probably not all that impressive.

Also, most people of influence and wealth don't target civil servant-type positions. They got after appointments and then try to make more money eventually moving to the private sector.

Just read the post that the parent was replying to, and I realized he was replying to a troll... =\

So, if these cows do not feel pain, would it still be considered inhumane to take actions against them that would normally cause pain?

Having recently moved away from Northern Virginia, I'm not sure if it's fair to use that as an example of a typical suburb. Northern Virginia and Baltimore and kind of atypical, as a lot of the financial success in the area is due to employment either directory or indirectly supplied by the federal government. There's a *lot* of traffic, and it kind of felt like the area was designed to accommodate work traffic (driving) over everything else. Even residential areas suffered from gridlock.

I grew up in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs, and while Chicago has its own traffic issues, they seemed a lot easier than things in the DC area. I remember there being plenty of places to bike to as a child, and even now, know many adults who live in the city without a car. The city also has many designated bike lanes and bike paths.

Just curious how they were transported back and forth (and how far)? I'm imagining the overall amount of fuel used would be less than using mowers, but there have been plenty of cases where good intentions didn't pay out in the end.

You probably need someone with more awareness of Chinese history and Asian cinema than I have to be able to accurately explain this, but I'll give it a shot. That movie, according to IMDB, was made in 1987. Hong Kong reverted back to China in 1997. So, it's possible that Hong Kong, when not under the control of China, was a bit more open regarding censorship.

This is purely anecdotal, but I seem to remember reading articles about people in the Hong Kong movie industry wondering what would happen after the shift, and if that would be the death of the industry.

And just because it says, "Chinese" in the title doesn't automatically qualify it as a definitive representation of everything Chinese... or ghostly, I suppose. :)