I get the feeling that the programmers who are finding it difficult to find work at the moment are those with mediocre skills

Well, enjoy that feeling. It's worth every penny you paid for it.

As for Musk, he's a big corporate player. Calling him a "programmer" these days is pretty silly. Using him to justify outsourcing basically the majority of programming jobs is also pretty silly.

Note that my employer isn't farming out jobs to foreigners because they're trying to cut costs, but because it is genuinely difficult to find the skills

Yes, it does become difficult if "too old, too unhealthy, no degree, overqualified, wrong state, bad credit" are used as stacked pre-filters. But to argue that unemployed programmers in the US are "mediocre" isn't just silly, it's ridiculous.

Making one program free while the rest remain expensive (all subjects should be free like they are in school) is not a good way to motivate students to take a STEM degree. You will end up with lots of poorly motivated students who cannot afford to take the subject they really want. The best way to ensure that students want to take STEM is to ensure that there are lots of well paid jobs waiting for them. This provides monetary incentive to people planning to make a career in STEM which is what you want.

The problem with society today is that STEM is viewed as hard by most students and leads to a job which is ok but requires real work. Compare that to the view of subjects like business studies or law where the view is that you can get a well paid job and have to do far less actual work to get the same (or even better) salary. That's not to say that there are a lot of really hard working lawyers and MBAs out there but the general perception is that you can get by doing far less work if you want to and still get a better salary than a STEM worker at least based on my interactions with prospective students.

...when every programmer (and tech support person, and manufacturing person) in the US can get a job, that's the time for US operations to be looking for foreign help.

But since age, health, formal schooling, in-country location, and credit score are widely and consistently used to deny highly skilled US programmers jobs -- I am very confident in saying that Mr. Graham has not even come close to identifying the "programmer problem" from the POV of actual US programmers. All he's trying to do here is save a buck, while screwing US programmers in the process.

Do it his way, and the US economy will suffer even further at the middle class level as decent jobs go directly over our heads overseas, while, as per usual, corporations thrive.

This is exactly the kind of corporate perfidy that's been going on for some time. Graham should be ashamed. He represents our problem. Not any imaginary lack of US based skills.

If the main text of a religion isn't a reliable guidebook to that religion, how can we determine if anything is?

Obviously, we can't.

What made you think we could?

All major (and most minor) religions present huge diversity. Within Christianity, the bible is taken as everything from vague metaphor to the "inerrant word of God." The Koran for Islam, the same. Buddhist practice ranges from meditative to non, from vegetarian to non, from rigidly scientific to the most laughable crystal-gazing nonsense you've ever heard of. New agers.... that's a basket so broad I don't even have a clue as to what it really means, although I have to say, I've rarely come away from someone's description of their new age ideas thinking "wow, that made sense." OK, actually, never. But I figure it could happen. :)

In addition to actual sect differences, there are practitioner differences, and they range all the way from non-believers who are there for the social aspect, to rigid adherents to every jot and tittle in every book (and some, like the Catholics, have quite a few books.)

For my part, I figure, if I want to know what someone thinks, just ask them. Unless I have specific relevant evidence, I don't assume people fit into standardized boxes. I have found that to very rarely be true.

More to the point, you can't just hack /any/ data. Stealing customer's personal information, credit card numbers, or similar doesn't phase the corporations either; sure it causes them a bit of bad PR, but ultimately the cost of the hack is paid by their customers, not by the corporation itself. In fact, seeing as how common the "we stole your entire customer database" sort of hacks are becoming, even the negative PR is becoming minimized; after all, as /everybody/ is seemingly getting hacked in that way, so why get upset with any one particular company?

No, if the hacker groups really want to make companies improve their security, then they need to grab proprietary information, like the GOP did to Sony. Emails and accounting information are particularly damning, since they often reveal poor practices and corporate malfeasance that might get the companies into legal hot-water. If you start showing corporation how easy those doors are to open, you can be sure they'll hire a proper locksmith PDQ.

So these Christmas DDOS's aren't going to provoke the affected companies into doing a damn thing (except maybe sic the legal system on the ones behind it). All it did was piss off a bunch of kids on Christmas morning. Way to go, grinches!

Well THAT is fucking offensive, the way you said "codifying" it sounded like "codpiece".

Yes? Well then...

Baldric... Bring me... The Black Russian!

Needless to say, by disagreeing, I mark myself as an un-person.

Needless, pointless, and untrue. Someone else may so choose to regard you; you, however, are not that at all, and anyone who takes the attitude that you are, as you put it, an "unperson", is solely responsible for that attitude. You're still you, just as worthy as ever.

Consider the source, soldier on. Defy invalid social norms.

Some things are just not done, and are socially unacceptable this is one of them.

Socially unacceptable is one thing. And the appropriate response from you when faced with something you identify as such is also social: adjust your respect, relationship(s) and commentary according to the social cues you are given.

Relying on coercion and/or violence exerted by your government so you can assure that the general social environment is only populated by speech you approve of is something else entirely. It reeks of abject failure on your part, and on the part of your legislators. Such government-based active repression is one of the very few things that is more despicable than intentionally offensive speech presented without even a suggestion of humor.

> But as an athiest, my very existence is 'offensive' to muslims.

I'm an atheist as well. And I am aware that some Muslims proactively take offense because of my lack of belief.

However, you should be aware that of the five pillars of Islam, none say or imply one word about "hating atheists." That's just crap out of the Koran, which is a mish-mosh of uncorrelated and unordered quotes. Only fanatics take the violent sections of the Koran seriously. Not that there aren't enough fanatics to go around, of course.

> Are you suggesting that I should commit suicide to appease the Muslims?

Not in the least. I wasn't suggesting anyone should commit suicide, or in any way alter who or what they are. These are not things that give offense. You have not chosen to be atheist in order to give offense, have you? I presume you're atheist because you find that to be a comfortable state of mind, one that correlates well with what you observe of the world around you. Nothing to do with giving offense at all. I'm not wrong, am I? If I am, please let me know... that's a whole 'nuther bag of wolverines.

Simply being (existing as) atheist is not giving offense. That is the same as the case where someone is simply "being atheist" or "being Christian" or "being Muslim" or "being a rock collector."

When such provokes an "offended" response, we are merely seeing examples of the common practice by muddy thinkers of taking offense for any, or no, sane reason...

> Go Fuck Yourself ...Just as you have here. Brilliant to have so cleverly put yourself in exactly the same unreasonable club with those nasty, hateful, offended Islamists, isn't it? :)

A lot of us do, but when both NK and China have nukes, it's a tricky proposition to effect change. Would China happily leave NK out to dry, or would they send their tanks in? If their backs were up against a wall, would NK retaliate by sending over a nuke in a shipping container to one of our port cities? Also, with a recent look at our history, freeing up the Iraqi people hasn't gone all that swimmingly, what with the Islamic State forming their own little territory and chopping off every westerner's head they can.

It's great to say "we need to help them", but what you're saying is "we're going to send a lot of young American men and women into harms way, and many of them will end up dead or maimed. It's something that needs to be weighed very, very carefully. Despite our military and economic power, we can't simply march in and right all the wrongs in the world. I wish we could... I really do. But the world isn't that straightforward.

No. Offense can surely be given. But trying to magically legislate it away is a horrific, cowardly, hubris-ridden mistake. Offense arises because of difference in opinion and grasp of fact, intentional or not.

Because of this, it can and will always arise, no matter how narrow you choke down the channel of discourse, unless or until all have the same opinions and grasp of facts, which, one hopes, will never, ever come about.

The most productive course is to try not to give offense, and if received, to assess it and take value (warning, insight, stance, new information) from it if possible — otherwise, let it go.

Restricting opinion by legal means is one of the worst ideas ever. Offense is not a legitimate mitigating factor for censorship and repression. When enacted into law as justification for anything, what it tells us is that we need new legislators, because the ones we have demonstrated fundamental incompetence.

No one has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (collective, society, community) may not offend another; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another. And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not. Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. Law that bans something based upon the idea that some group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.

Conversely, when people are truly harmed (not just offended) without their informed consent (and legitimate defense is not the cause), then the matter is one that should arguably be considered for law. Otherwise, no.

Oblig/meta: Orwell was an optimist