So, is missile command a dumping ground, or a proving ground where one has to show they've taken enough shit and learned to kiss the right asses and the test is an arbitrary hurdle?

If it's just an arbitrary hurdle, fine, however, I would still believe that when handing out limited promotions, as unscrupulous as the process is made out to be, it seams that having the better score makes it easier to justify on a form why x is promoted over y. I can easily believe that the equiv of HR dumping resumes that don't have the right buzzwords on them or masters vs bachelors vs decade of experience is occurring.

Then do enlighten us, what sort of things are on such a test where the difference between 93 and 95% is immaterial? I'd be very curious to know.

It most certainly is the entire point, and I do love me some good blackberries and fishing.

However, when times are tough, and one needs to stand out from the crowd to get paid and advance, the best prepared is oft likely to achieve their goals. Too many are content to live a subsidized lifestyle and too many more are content to subsidize instead of getting the subsidized off their posteriors.

In my particular case, I'm approaching in 15+ years or so when my age begins to count against me. Therefore, I ensure through my own hard work and self learning that I am versatile, experienced, and able to adapt quickly and better to newer technologies than the little (cheaper) snots coming up under me expecting praise and adulation at every turn so their 'feelings' don't get hurt.

I disagree entirely. One question when dealing with the operations of a nuclear missile site is not statistical error if that question involves verification procedure for a launch order, or anything else that involves a life or megadeath decision.

tl;dr: Make your professional opinion known politely to the client in writing, with your advice, them let the client decide, and have records of this decision.

While I agree with you that security should be paramount, in reality, it is often trumped by adhoc business needs and costs. The owner/C-level want this or that to be able to happen, even tho you know it's bad security. You explain it, recommend alternative, then go with what they decide, no matter how asinine, provided you like receiving money. Document the decision so that when the inevitable happens, you've covered your posterior.

From the outset, it doesn't seem like the client is taking things too seriously when it comes to data, they are using sql express after all. The client typically doesn't want to be bothered with our techno babble of how they are doing it wrong, they want it to just work and on budget. They purchase service contracts and warranties so that when something does go wrong, they pick up the phone to get it fixed or point fingers of blame towards when legal gets involved. It's all about passing responsibility. That's why you document and get signed off that the client is aware of these shortfalls and that you work doesn't cover any breach due to the shortfalls. The client sure as hell doesn't need or want a pissing match between you and another vendor, even if you are correct.

Don't piss off the client. Call it a day, cash your check, have some beer.

If that is all one aspires towards, so be it. Being able to enjoy one's free time is a wonderful thing.

I, however, was instilled with an ethic to "always be better than the other guy in what you do".
It's served my family well for many years, even in hard times.

Your last paragraph raises valid points, however, it's based on insufficient information of the promotion process on both our parts.
Provided everything else is equal in qualifications for promotion, then yes, 95 is better than 93 when selecting for a limited supply of promotion.

However, this does not exist in a vacuum, and in your example, the lazy disorganized book retention specialist would be passed over for their disorganization if it hindered there performance in other areas.

Additionally, not toward you, but in general, I call Bull on people dismissing that the difference between 95 and 93% being a single question as not that crucial to the selection process. If that question happen to be order of procedures for verification protocols for a launch command, I want the person who got that correct promoted. If it's about security protocols, base operations, food or launch fuel logistics, targeting calculations, etc, I want the guy that got the right answers.

When nuclear missiles are involved, I want to be certain the most knowledgeable are being promoted.

I get that, I'm not commenting on that fact. I'm commenting on the 90% or better is an unrealistic expectation in the summary.

Now, as to 95 vs 93% affecting promotion speed? I don't see the problem there either. The person who studied harder (or better) than his rival should definitely have their higher score have more weight when considered for promotion.

Did both pass the test? Yes, but candidate x passed better than y. If all other things are equal, then X should get the promotion.

no, it's Technologist.

Get off your PC thought control horse and watch War Games to get his reference

Are you kidding me? 90% competency in protocol is unrealistic?
When it comes to a nation's nuclear weapons, I don't want a B or less, I want the person with the A managing the switch.

Has this country become so lazy and apologetic towards 'bad grades hurt feelings' pansies that they will pass everyone?
If I recall from ye olde school days:
A = 94-100%
B = 84-93%
C = 74-83%
D = 64-73%
F = 64%

C shouldn't even be a passing grade. It was never acceptable in my house. C's wait tables. D's are garbage collectors, F's live in government housing and vote for the people that continue to favor teacher's unions over children's educations and to take money from those the paid attention and succeeded to support them.

Everyone should be striving to be top in their desired field, whatever that be, from software dev to mechanic to entertainer. And if one isn't in their desired field, then they should be spending their free time to improve themselves to get into their desired fields.

90% is not unrealistic, it's a MINIMUM requirement for success.

You forgot about the pr0n and cats. I will say, faster pics of cats is probably worth some merit.

I'm not talking about OS, i'm talking applications, like games, like big data. A good game engine is heavily optimized with different code for the most popular hardware, or the hardware vendors adjust their specs to meet a specific standard. When you draw your polygons, you call make a (relatively) simple function call, but that function call packs the vertices for your triangles in vector arrays that are byte aligned to the hardware that will be processing them. The same thing is done when processing very large data in "big data" if you want your algorithms to complete in a reasonable time frame, where cpu time is rented and costs money. You first optimize your algorithms to be generally efficient, then anyone that wants to save lots of time and money, optimizes to take full advantages of the hardware they are running on. Are you running in a MIC (many integrated core) architecture? How big are the registers? Etc, all these things need to be taken into consideration when writing software for the HPC environment. Write once, run anywhere doesn't cut it when you have to pay for time.

Has little to do with hand optimizing asembly language, tho that definitely can be a benefit.

I'm talking about things such as properly aligning vector array data to match the memory alignment of the CPU during loops, knowing when and how to take advantage of installed installed modern coprocessors such as the Intel Xeon Phi series. Hell, even having the code for photoshop use MMX instruction sets when available or utilitzing hardware mpeg encoder/decoders versus standard CPU.

All about knowing the hardware you'll be running on.

No, this is stupid, wasteful, unoptimized software that performs like feces compared to a platform optimized piece of software.

The whole myth I've heard about software portability most of my life has never bore fruit that didn't need tweaks for different platforms.

The whole notion in the first place was to expand programming to the masses by giving the appearance of the elimination of the need of specialists.
A good intention, to be sure, except for the specialists.
The problem was that a specialist with knowledge of how the hardware operates could write software that took more advantage and/or better performed on a given platform. Things like CPU instruction set options, memory alignment, etc.

There is now a resurgence of platform optimized specialization thanks to big data. Do you want your humungous data sets processed and analyzed in months or years by the average programmer, or do you want it in days and weeks by the programmer that really, really knows how to squeeze the hardware.

Don't be a fool, Jesus is obviously a velociraptor!

Look forward to the Velocirapture!