Erh... no. Of course I cannot talk about the teacher's view, but I sure can talk about the "other end". On both accounts.

First and foremosts, tests don't motivate students. They are, generally, a nuisance and something you want to get out of the way. Basically your goal is to get a passing grade with the least effort necessary. Unless of course the subject interests you in the first place but then you sure as hell don't need any encouragement, let alone in the form of a test. So what do you do? Well, you start learning for the test. To the test, more specifically. If you're in any way smart, you see through the formula these tests work at quite soon. For me that was more or less accomplished after elementary school, and you may guess that it was trivial to get passing grades with little to no effort for the rest of my school "career".

In short, tests don't show you whether the student understands the matter. It shows you whether the student understands the system and knows how to game it.

Second, and that's my far bigger beef with our school system, you talk about "practice their (children) weak areas". Why? Why the fuck is that even remotely sensible?

My weak area is languages. You might be able to tell, English is by far not my first language. I sure as hell loathed French and don't even make me start on Spanish. I hated every single second of it. Yet that is where I had to spend most of my study time. Because that's where my "weak" areas were. In math, physics, chemistry, history, I shouldn't be doing much. Those were the fields that were interesting to me, and hence my grades were pretty decent. But no, you should not concentrate on what you're good at. Concentrate on what you suck at.

Tell me: How the hell does this remotely connect with the real world outside of school? When was the last time your boss said "Oh gee, you're a great engineer, you can do the work of two mediocre engineers easily, but you really suck at marketing. So I'll put you into marketing for the time being 'til you improve at selling stuff."

Ever happened to you? No? Gee, why could that be? Could it be because your boss doesn't want you to be average in everything but rather an expert in the area you're working in? Because that's what EVERY business in the world would want from you? Being the best in your area, screw the rest?

But out school system is the exact OPPOSITE of what our economy demands and expects: It tries to make you average in everything. Instead of nurturing you in the fields you're good at and keep your focus on what you excel in, you're expected to let that slip and become mediocre in favor of the stuff you cannot do so well.

And as long as we keep this backwards system in place, don't expect the economy to improve any time soon!

Crappy management, either on your end or on your company's. If it is a necessity that you spend 10 hours at your work place, it either means that organization sucks and you have a lot of idle time or that you have more work to do than you have personnel for.

I think it's time someone told the managedroids that cutting 10% of the workforce per year doesn't work infinitely.

It was tried on me. It failed. Back then I learned a valuable lesson: You cannot force me to work. You can motivate me and you can give me a reason to do it, but you can't MAKE me.

Never worked. Never will. You can of course make me show up and make me physically present. And if I feel generous, I won't disturb you with snoring while you try to teach.

What fascinates me to no end is that the people here still believe what they're told by media and politics. People actually do believe them.

Maybe because we don't have any "West-TV" that could tell us that our emperors have no clothes.

" but anti-GamerGate has harassed far more women than GG has (namely, any)"

That's really how they talk.

Since the average dufus out there won't be able to tell the "fine" difference, I doubt they'd have a problem with this either.

perhaps, as an H1-B, you should take your own advice?

I've seen decent programmers fired over coding style differences like using // instead of /**/ for comments in C code, followed by the hiring of a half dozen indian H1-Bs who couldn't do squat. They would ask IT (ie me) how to do remedial things. When I refused to do their jobs for them, I was almost fired. This dysfunction has existed everywhere I've worked to some extent.

There are plenty. Employers need to offer more money, sane hours/goalposts, and not bitch so much about qualified applicants who don't/can't/won't conform to today's passive-aggressive 'corporate culture', with its ever expanding social minefields and fragile-ego-defending rulesets. Managers like this create clashes with employees over nonessential issues that really belong in highschool (omg, he's not wearing the 'right' shirt or pants, that's like so totally 'unprofessional!' ugh!) just to find excuses to fire the target and hire an H1-B for a third the wage. Meanwhile, money is lost on half-assed foreigners whose cultures have already conditioned them to accept the shitty wages, wear the silly clothing, and obey the rules defending all those fragile egoes, but whose cultures also let them buy/lie their way through their education, making them primo at making spaghetti out of the project. Then the smart native they should have kept is hired back, now at crazy consultant wages, to clean up the mess! The ignorance western countries have about some of these third world cultures astounds me.

However, if lowballed salaries and behavioral conformity is all that matters, these shitty companies should move to india, china, or some other hellhole, and not import their software back here. I don't want the grief of having to support yet another shitty piece of middleware produced this way. Americans (and probably most europeans) don't want to live the sardine can/'dormitory' lifestyle the market increasingly encourages either. If the employer doesn't want to pay the salary required to pay down that overinflated $50k education from some state college, the overtaxed car ("applicant must have reliable transportation"), and his hyperinflated studio apt, all with an ever inflating currency, then all I can suggest is to vote and, if large enough, lobby, accordingly.

Mr. Graham cannot expect to retain 'genius' programmers on the salary paid to 'competent' programmers, nevermind the peanuts paid to 'dormitory' slaves. Once those foreign geniuses come here, they will quickly learn to command the same salaries as their native peers, driving wages down for everyone. If he wants to make america interesting to investors, he should work on fixing the fundamental problems with our currency and political policy.

How about I kick in your front door and steal all your stuff? After all, you didn't put in place absolutely perfect security, so it's really your own fault for allowing me into your home.

Or a better analogy. I park a big rig in your driveway so you can't get into your home. That's what a DDOS is, basically. And if the "enemy" has enough resources, a DDOS is nearly impossible to prevent.

I'm more partial to a polar justice system. It gives you a perfectly clear direction and says exactly just how far you may go. But don't you think that kinda goes off on a tangent now?

I've seen many a hiring manager lubing up applicants with yammering about employee 'loyalty' and 'perseverance', and then lowballing the offer. You'll just have to pay more than minimum wage for decent skillsets if you want to sell your product in a healthy market. If all you care about is paying the lowest wage possible, move your business to china.

And why would it have been any problem to get a warrant against these businesses? You know, that old fashioned "due process" kind of way?

If your answer is corruption, be prepared to be laughed at and asked why the heck this elimination of privacy would make corruption harder instead of easier. It's one less branch of the system you need to bribe.

Trading freedom for safety does not work. For a proof, just look at the ultimate exchange of freedom for security: A jail. Now, do you want to tell me that inmates are SAFE in there?

Allegedly Erich Mielke (former head of the East German Stasi) said concerning the various forms of surveillance we're getting used against us "If we had these things, we'd still have communism today!"

Well, since we have them, we still have capitalism...

When every decently skilled US programmer has a job, and there is still demand, let some foreigners in. This should apply to any industry. When there is a glut of labor, like there is now, close the borders.