I'm currently in the process of hiring someone for a startup. Long story short I got the requirements document that was partially written by an in-house recruiter who basically thought "you're building a Java back-end, so here are all the buzzwords this entails."

So I got a document that said that it required Java, Swing, JAX-RPC, AJAX, XML-RPC, Java Server Faces, Struts, Hibernate, ESB, and about a half-dozen other vaguely related technologies.

*sigh*

Given that I'm the hiring manager I asked if we could revise the list. And I narrowed it down to:

Required: Java experience.

Nice to have: Server-side development experience, experience with Eclipse, experience with JDBC, experience with JSON.

'Cause we're not using any of the other crap that was in the recruiter-supplied bullet list.

(P.S.: We don't have funding now so don't contact me privately about this job. Not quite yet...)

(Worked at home for 9 years about a decade ago, and recently started working at home again, and has parents who worked at home for nearly two decades.) Absolutely! I would highly recommend getting out of the house in the morning and in the evening, at the very least; in the morning it helps organize your thoughts and in the afternoon or evening it helps organize your thoughts. And getting out helps with the "cabin fever" as well.

All military equipment is subject to the laws of economics: each piece of equipment, from guns to tanks to aircraft carriers are subject to tradeoffs between weight, power, size, affordability and lethality--which is why, for example, the U.S. has a variety of different sized ships with different functions, rather than just floating a few thousand general-purpose aircraft-carrier sized ships that do everything.

So when envisioning space war, it's going to be the same sort of tradeoffs dictated by economics and by physics: very large, heavy and well shielded (read: very think bulkheads with lots of iron) ships that serve as carrier vessels and the like, surrounded by a periphery of smaller ships which serve as a sort of "forward guard" to the heavy capital ships, in much the same way that a U.S. aircraft carrier sails with a whole bunch of support ships.

Further, because blowing something up will always be easier than guarding something, the things that will deliver bombs (small airplanes) will always be smaller, lighter and more maneuverable than their (much much much) bigger targets. That's especially true in space, where you don't need to run your thrusters continuously, but can just be carried along by momentum. And because life support is going to be very expensive (since you have to carry everything with you, not just food and power, but air as well), and (assuming there is no artificial gravity) only the large capital ships will be able to spin like a top to simulate gravity, most of the smallest ships will be cheap drones. (In fact, I could envision a world where only the largest capital ships carry people, mostly marines, for when you actually have to put boots on the ground.)

Beyond that, most materiel has developed over the years in response to new defensive or offensive challenges. Star-configuration castles where developed in response to heavier artillery; aircraft carriers developed when timeliness and range prevented putting planes over foreign territory. In space, I would expect a lot of emphasis on electronic and optical surveillance (especially on the forward facing ships in the outer perimeter of the protective zone around a capital ship), along with laser-based inter-ship communications (to reduce the EM footprint), and I would expect a constant rotation of larger "battleship" like ships (smaller and more nimble than the capital ships, mostly rigged with a lot of bombs) to the main capital ship, so that the crew can go back to simulated gravity on a regular basis. I would also expect high-powered lasers, very powerful railguns and other measures to throw fragments into the air in order to protect capital ships against attack.

On vacation on the other side of the country visiting my in-laws, thus around 10.5% of the circumference of the Earth from where I was born. My wife? 1%...

They guy may be wrong, but he's probably less wrong than the pointy haired boss in the corner office at some random large non-tech corporation.

And that's the key: the MBAs are groping in the dark barely able to find their own ass. One happened to grope his way slightly closer to the light. Give him kudos for that.

The real problem, one that the Fortune article almost correctly alluded to, is that in the Software Industry, wage stickiness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_(economics)) is extremely high. Corporations are willing to cost themselves tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of intangible damage in order to save a few thousand dollars on floor space because they either believe the slowdown in the general economy is also reflected in the Developer market, or because they don't understand the vast incremental value a talented developer brings.

Wage stickiness occurs because of imperfect information and from fairness concerns; it just doesn't seem fair to pay a senior developer doing 20 times more work what he's worth because then a company would have to figure out he's doing 20x more work and pay him a seven-figure salary. With imperfect information managers look to balance sheets, and because they can't effectively control their work force (because they don't understand them), they don't realize that one key person's departure caused the entire project to collapse or be delayed months, costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

The one thing I got from the Fortune article is that people are starting in the business community to wrap their heads (imperfectly, of course) around the problem. One thing I think we'll see in the next 10 years as software eats the world is a loosening of wage stickiness. And you will start seeing the top 1% of programmers making salaries that start to compare to the CEO in the corner office when enough information percolates to management that those top 1% programmers are bringing more value to the company than the CEO.

It also helps that the protesters are playing an asymmetrical game with reporters who are sympathetic to their cause.

Meaning the various transgressions taking place in the Occupy movement (the rapes, the thefts, the public masturbation, shitting on cop cars, lobbing human waste at street vendors who don't give them freebees, etc) are all being ignored and will be ignored because they don't play into the story of the downtrodden standing up to The Man. But the handful of cops who lose their cool and snap, or the frightened police officer who suddenly discharges his weapon when it wasn't called for--that is what will be reported ad-infinitum until it becomes the only reality that anyone remembers.

The panopticon won't matter, simply because with more information we don't get more truth; we just get a flood that more people will tune out. Oddly in the flood of information it will become easier, not harder, for the spinmeisters to weave a tale that their target audience will eat up without question.

Worse, because each of us have conformation bias, we'll tend to throw out the ten thousand images that don't confirm our bias, while clinging onto the one image that does as the grain of truth in the flood of lies.

My modem is reporting 18 items. I know between my wife and I we have two iPads, two iPhones, two iMacs, two Apple TVs (one in each room), and two MacBook Airs. (Noticing a pattern here?) I also have a Chumby, three Android devices (for testing Android development), a file server for backup, and another one for storage. The other two--I have no idea. Huh. Dunno.

One of the biggest problems I've seen with science as it is used in public policy is that otherwise unrelated correlations are mined for in order to support a politically convenient theory, in order to provide a scientific basis for that public policy. Science (both social science and medical science) is full of these unrelated correlations which can then provide a "scientific" fig-leaf that allows you to bash your opponents as being unscientific idiots. (Nevermind the fact that you distorted the process.)

And if you don't find the correlation, bias the numbers.

Porn causes rape, anyone?

If you don't believe there are all sorts of random, weird and ultimately unrelated correlations out there, may I recommend Correlated?

"Only one party has made it a party platform to attack scientific facts based upon religious or ideological principles."

The Green Party?

(ducks)

A basic Brother FAX machine (the FAX 575 Monochrome Thermal transfer Fax/copier) can be had for $30 at our local Office Depot.

it is also ironic that you people are ok with people like us working in private sector to be responsible for all their choices of their employment, for the better or for the worse, and go talking about the 'free market' and the 'realities of life' when something shitty happens to any particular segment of the workforce, but, SOMEHOW, start to see things in a different way when someone working for a torture organization gets into danger because of who they work for.

Sure they knew the risks, just as a truck driver knows the risks of getting into an accident while working--but that doesn't mean you don't go after the stupid son-of-a-bitch who was drinking and driving when he plowed into the truck driver.

... expect to get burned. What will be fascinating to me is to see if the editors who were complicit in working with Assange won't also suffer criminal penalties. Probably they'll get away unscathed, but their efforts were not helpful.

Sure, but VAT is added to the posted sales price, while U.S. sales tax is added afterwards. So, for example, in Australia (with a 10% VAT), an iPad listed for $579 includes $52 in VAT as part of that price, with the base price of the product $526. In the United States, the posted price is $499, but then when you take it to the register they the sales tax--so if you were to buy your iPad in Glendale where sales tax is 8.75%, you get a receipt saying "$499 + 43.66 (tax) = $542.66."

So posted prices in the United States are always significantly lower than posted prices in countries where the VAT is added to the price tag prior to sale, such as Australia or the U.K.

Once you factor out that price, the exchange rate between Australia has fluctuated around 10%--from a low of AUS$0.9843 to AUS$1.105 per US$1. Because Apple tends to want a fixed price (and not adjust prices every time the exchange rate fluctuates) they fixed the price. And apparently it's only been within the last year that the U.S. dollar has been week against the Australian dollar.

If you look at the price difference in the base price of the iPad, the price difference (US$499 verses AUS$526), this suggests the price was set at an exchange rate of AUS$0.9480, which is in-line with historic exchange rates until around September of 2010, when the dollar significantly weakened.

There. I just answered the Australian Government's request for information. Phfffffffft!

This was marked "insightful?"

Look, all this boils down to the multiplier effect: when an entity (such as the government or a local municipality or a company factory) takes in money (either through taxes or through selling a product), they then spend that money on goods and services in a particular area, which then is taken in by others, spent by others, etc., etc., etc. This creates a form of multiplier effect, whereby a dollar of activity by an entity causes a ripple effect in the overall economy that is greater than that dollar spent. It's why an entire town with millions in economic activity can evolve around a factory which only employs a fraction of the people in that town; the rest provides goods and services to the factory and to the workers there, and to those who support the factory and so forth.

(As an aside, your example about cutting taxes saving someone $200 but then they don't get $800 from the government--(a) government wealth redistribution is macro-economically neutral: as long as someone has $800 to spend, that will create $800 worth of activity--and it doesn't matter if that $800 is spent on food or as a down payment on a luxury yacht. And (b) your statement "Because for most Americans, cutting taxes means less money in their pockets. Not more." assumes a zero-sum game, which wealth creation certainly is not.)

So the real question is not "how can we spread the wealth around." This may matter if we assume wealth is a zero-sum game (but if it were we'd all still be living in caves), and it may matter if we want to help the destitute and the hungry, but from a macro-economic perspective it just doesn't matter. No, the real question is "what is the government's multiplier effect verses private industry?"

Meaning if we take a dollar from a corporation and gave it to the government, will that dollar turn into more dollars or less than if we had left it with the corporation?

Now if we left it with the corporation, the corporation could spend that dollar on investing in new hardware for their plant, or in paying salaries to their workers, or paying dividends, or saving the dollar, or giving that dollar to some rich CEO who could then spend it buying a bigger Mercedes Benz. WIth the exception of saving that dollar, the dollars kept by a corporation generally will go out on goods and services--even if that good is the rich guy's big ass car. But then, even if that dollar is spent on a car, it will then eventually go to buying more factory equipment or spending it on the guy who hand-tooled the leather seats, employing his leather-making craft long after the market for horse saddles has disappeared.

Point is, don't discount the idea that leaving the dollar with some corporation wouldn't have a net positive public good.

The fundamental argument over taxes between the right and the left basically boils down to who, right now, has the larger multiplier effect. President Obama is on record claiming the government has a net multiplier for government purchases of 1.57 (that is, for every dollar the government spends, $1.57 is added to the GDP), and the tax multiplier is 0.99 (that is, for every dollar the government taxes, the GDP is lowered by $0.99.) There are those who believe that these multipliers are wrong; otherwise, the right thing for the government to do right now is to raise your taxes 30% and spend it on whatever.

Other researchers suggest that the real tax multiplier is much larger: for every $1 in taxes, GDP is actually lowered by $3. That's because when the corporation doesn't have $1, that's $1 less net profits they have. That's $1 less they can spend on equipment or on salaries or on that Mercedes, which is $1 less their suppliers have; even the guy making leather seats by employing his ancient craft of horse saddle making has $1 less due to fewer Mercedes being sold to fat cats.

(source), follow the links to originals.

And sure, that $1 is a dollar that could be given to some poor person to buy food, clothing and shelter, which makes it's hands back into some agribusiness exec or clothing manufacturer or landlord's pocket to eventually buy a Mercedes for their own. But part of that $1 goes into the hands of a bureaucrat--so the poor person really only gets some small fraction of the $1. And because that $1 was pulled from a corporation, it's less likely to be spent on making a more efficient factory that can make cheaper goods, and more likely to be spent on making a more inefficient government bureaucracy. Remember: corporations (who aren't rent seeking by petitioning the government) has a vested interest in survival by becoming more efficient; bureaucracies have a vested interest in survival by becoming more entrenched through inefficiency.

That's the real debate right now; does raising taxes raise revenue, or does raising taxes actually lower revenue? And should the government further stimulate the economy by getting out of the way or by taking a more controlling hand?

Sadly what should be a technical discussion complete with phrases such as "multipliers" and "moral hazard" and "undue regulatory burdens" and "fiscal stimulus" has turned into a partisan fight using such phrases as "tea bagger" and " socialist" and "doody-heads."