...double major in something useful and something useless.

I'm of the opinion that it isn't "something useful and something useless" ... it's more about "something directly practical" coupled with "something interesting and abstract to give you balance and perspective".

Not all things are 100% objective. And, likewise, in some things there's just no room for subjectivity.

Being able to tell the difference is something many people don't learn.

The dogmatism that I have seen and heard on the job and here on Slashdot makes all of you come across as delusional and self aggrandizing.

LOL, you know, I won't dispute the point. Because I agree with it. It's been true for a very long time, and is widespread.

What I suggest is that being an asshole isn't due to a lack of critical thinking skills, it's a personality defect which can subsequently be overcome. ;-)

In some disciplines (*cough* Poli Sci *cough*) where there is no objective right or wrong, the ability to state a case for anything as being equally valid to anything else ... well, some of us don't see that as critical thinking, we see it as rhetoric and sophistry. Because you're not measuring against an objective standard.

The problem comes when you do come from a discipline where things are right or not right, you end up with an overly simplified world view, and nuance becomes something you don't necessarily get.

When there's no room for wishful thinking and sophistry, and you need to use empirical evidence to determine what is happening and what to do about it ... your "feeling" that your "belief" that the router must be sending moon packets is meaningless if you claim it has as much weight as me telling you that the cable is unplugged. Mine is testable and can be acted on, yours is the mistaken belief that if we solve the existential crisis of the router things will sort itself out.

But it becomes a clash of cultures when someone's sensing/feeling/intuition has nothing to do with objective reality, and objective reality is the only thing which matters.

And, likewise, people who only deal in objective reality and can't see past it are largely incapable of doing anything else, unless they've tried really hard to pick up an additional set of skills.

Which means we mostly want to punch people who say the universe could be just a simulation or that a tree doesn't make any noise if anybody is around to hear it, because if it can't be proven true or false, it's probably just a pointless mental exercise. ;-)

Tell that to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who said he believes semi-automatic rifles are great for women because they don't have to worry so much about aiming.

Believe it or not, this is a common trope in the gun community. They need lots of bullets in case they miss.

Some do, but the stereotype of IT having a myopic view of technology and projects didn't spring from nowhere.

In my experience, that's not a lack of critical thinking skills.

It's a lack of a breadth of education, and a complete lack of maturity and wisdom.

The problem is a lot of people come out of a STEM degree with a minor god complex, and are completely incapable of recognizing when their book learning doesn't match real world experience, and the stuff they're digging in their heels about doesn't work so well in the real world.

Basically they think they know everything.

But ask any senior programmer who has dealt with one straight out of school. Very often the lack of real world experience means they're unwilling/incapable of recognizing that someone knows some things they didn't cover in school, and that their theoretical model falls on its face when confronted with other things.

I once worked with a junior programmer who really didn't know nearly as much as he thought he did. He wrote crap code, and I once had to demonstrate why his version of the code was 100x slower than mine when called a very large amount of times. He quickly got shunted into a corner because he wouldn't listen, and management eventually realized he was useless to us. He had an engineering degree, and he had the right skills ... but he had the entirely wrong attitude. In his mind, nobody could possibly tell him anything ... which made him an asshole, not someone lacking in critical thinking ability.

I'm more of the opinion that STEM candidates should be forced to take a little more arts classes to make them more well rounded and be able to interact with other people.

But, who do you want debugging your production outage? Someone who is well versed in Chaucer, or someone who can apply logic and critical thinking to the problem at hand and has the technical skills to back it up?

You will find that all of those quotes except that of George Mason are fraudulent.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/w...

The actual Thomas Jefferson quote is, “No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]“

The George Washington quote isn't found anywhere but on Second Amendment activist sites. It doesn't appear anywhere in Washington's papers. The first quote, which you attribute to Alexander Hamilton, is usually attributed to Samuel Adams. The only problem is, Adams never said it either.

That's the thing about this Second Amendment "movement", which as I said, started in the 1980s. They lie. They make stuff up. Maybe they don't realize that people can check these things, or maybe they don't care. As I said above, it tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual honesty of the pro-gun movement.

So where is the line where it is ok to break the law for law enforcement? What crime do they have to prosecute so they can ignore any and all rights you have?

Some of the best programmers I know have degrees in art and music, with even a few English Lit and Philosophy degrees scattered around. Then again, some of the best programmers I know never went or graduated from college. That's just on the IT/Programming side of things.

Hiring a real writer to handle press releases, web "verbiage" (um, the actual text on the website) would do wonders for quite a few sites (like.. /. hiring a real editor would be a boon...), documentation, etc. Once your company gets to a certain stage, you're going to want an HR person, who probably has a LA degree of some sort.

Frankly, outside of an accountant and a lawyer, anyone with a degree that's not from the Business School would be good.

Well, it costs multiple thousands for the laser, so I guess after the first use you know for sure which ones your enemy will field.

Yeah, no kidding ... I'm pretty sure you can't get a STEM degree without critical thinking skills.

However, some of the Poli Sci majors I've met have precisely zero critical thinking skills, and mostly just parrot whichever rhetoric they adopted in their second year of school for the rest of their lives.

I'm not saying liberal arts students don't have the chance to develop critical thinking skills. But I am saying anybody who thinks STEM graduates don't have them is clueless.

I've lost count of the number of sales people I've known who don't come from technical backgrounds. They lack the critical thinking skills to even know if they're lying to you or not.

I often wonder if it's not a "why make $30 million now when we might be able to make $300 million later" kind of deal.

By committing to a licensing deal now, they're stuck with it.

But I've definitely heard many Aussie's lamenting that you pay much more for the same thing there than you do here, and the corporations we're talking about really don't do anything unless it's maximizing profits.

So, if it's a company like Sony who is refusing to license the content ... then I can only assume it isn't, and never has been, technology which is the barrier.

Because I doubt the Australian packets drive on the wrong side of the intertubes and create a safety hazard. ;-)

At which point "licensing" comes down to: national regulations prevent you from doing it, or unwillingness to do it for whatever reason -- which to me comes down to profit, or creating artificial scarcity (again, for profit), or because at some point you want to have your own service and don't want to cannibalize it (again, profit).

Essentially it's a business decision.

But the technology of streaming a video over the interweb? That's not what stops this.

Quite possibly true.

I definitely stopped making food in the game once I figured out what alchemy was for, and I've definitely upgraded my gear to the point that most encounters don't provide too much sport (the odd leveled character still gives me a go). But then again, I'm not the best at the combat, so I'd rather get it done quick and/or work on style points than really have to grind through it.

But then I switched my focus to collecting stuff and going back and leveling up some of the skills I'd initially missed.

For the time being, I'm sill content to go on a walkabout, collect raw ingredients and trade with merchants, flesh out the bits of the map I've not been to, and occasionally do one of the quests to advance something along. Having a couple of houses makes that a little easier as you have some place to go back to and drop off the stuff you've collected until you can turn it into something more valuable.

There's dozens of side quests I've not done yet, a bunch of main quests I haven't done (and some I'll never do), lots of places I've not been to, and probably some places I should go back and revisit since I probably missed stuff on the first pass through.

It's like it's an interface to OCD you can turn off and on as you see fit, and just focus on whatever minutia appeals to you on a given day. ;-)

Which definitely isn't how most people play video games, but for some reason is something that keeps me playing it. When I've done about all I can with my current character, I might start all over again and play with completely different skills and do the quests entirely differently.

For some reason, the open-ended nature of the game keeps me fascinated, because I don't have to do anything on anybody else's timeline. Which makes it pure escapism for me.

This is what I always here, same with Anime. But I don't understand why this is hard.

It's not hard from a technology perspective, and it never has been.

It's hard from a "these corporations are greedy bastards" perspective. They want to maximize profits. Pure and simple.

If that means telling the consumer "no, you can't have our product until we can figure out how to sell it to you for more money", they're OK with that.

You don't need to look beyond money, because technology isn't the roadblock here.

Demand for privately-built spacecraft drops by what, 33%? Ouch.

But, why would licensing in Australia be different from licensing elsewhere?

Best guess: the content creators use it as a way to extort more money out of people.

Why go for "just as profitable" when you can have "more profitable". If we can't get more profit, we're not licensing it to you.

The companies who own the content and are in charge of licensing see people as nothing more than a revenue stream, and want to be able to control what you see so it's on their terms.

In other words, greedy assholes.

There's no technical reason I can imagine, which means it's all about money.

Same as the region codes in DVDs, because heaven forbid you be able to buy a movie in another country and watch it at home. Because that could disrupt corporate profits and executive bonuses.

Given a chance, I believe any company would seek a monopoly.

Given the chance to force consumers to use your product, I think the people who run corporations would jump at it.

But if you think forcing me to subscribe to your product instead of the competitor I was already happy with ... you'd have to be a complete idiot, and I think these people might be.

This isn't anything other than trying to force people to use your service, even if your service isn't as good or people aren't interested in it. And that doesn't always get a good reaction from people.

If I was an Australian Netflix users, Quickflix would not be getting any of my business.