The idea that physical things all have minds seems more correct than the idea that only people have minds and nothing else does. But if one's only notion of a mind or soul is that it responds to inputs with peculiar output due to some hidden physical structure, then that doesn't signify something supernatural. To interpret "Everything that is is alive." you have to know what "alive" means. Does it mean a singular sensing consciousness that can't be described or measured in physical terms, or does it mean alive in the 'that thing has a mind of its own' sense?

I would submit that one will not experience a universe in which someone else discovers a theory of everything. The act of experiencing the universe, the singleness of the consciousness, and the determination of how reality unfolds are all properties that only the mind experiencing the universe will be able to examine. So, it is very likely that these properties are pivotal in developing an all consuming theory. There could be a paradox in which only the person experiencing the universe could develop a theory of everything, having access to all the information both physical and beyond physical. While the mind might observe people theorizing and coming close to developing a theory, it would be impossible for them to actually succeed.

Theorists in this universe may have very different notions of what a 'mind' is. Most people look at other people and theorize that there must be a hidden metaphysical consciousness that goes along with each physical body, a soul. However, if something is metaphysical is it even possible to hide it? Hidden things and hidden information is a physical world concept that most likely doesn't apply to things like minds or souls. That is, if you experience the universe with one mind, you must experience the universe with all minds or those other minds don't exist. So there is evidence that there is no such thing as other minds or souls. People are just physical objects, and thus their concept of a mind is that of a computer, able to take input, process, and form output but they are strictly of the physical universe. So other people, being strictly physical objects, could never understand what a true mind is, and thus not be able to complete the broader puzzle of what gives the universe form. It's telling that most people are willing to attribute a mind to a physical human, but not to other animals, bugs, plants, etc.

If you believe in a multiverse or multiple minds, then the paradox allows that the person can experience themselves having a Eureka moment but will never experience another person, animal, or thing solving the puzzle.

This article relates everything that is wrong with IT. It provides a very good perspective of how utterly clueless people who shouldn't even be in IT, or management for that matter, think. After reading this article you will have a better understanding of why the majority of IT projects fail and why companies of any significant size only grow by buying small companies.

There is tons of awful, awful people working in programming. Fakers, posers, kiss-asses, sociopaths, narcissists, liars, and otherwise generally crappy people.

There's nothing ethically wrong, but if someone does ask for a raise there is a good chance that person will be verbally reprimanded for doing so. Some managers do take it personally because their job is to keep employees happy with low pay. Asking for a raise can be seen as an accusation that they are failing in that task.

I think an employee should first determine the intelligence, temperament, and maturity level of the manager,

"Unless the manager knows the company will go bankrupt if they fire you, they'll kill the company rather than admit you are irreplaceable."

This piece of wisdom is hard fought for and very valuable. Greenhorns sometimes think that managers will do whatever is in the best interest of the company, and that is far from true. It takes a half dozen projects before this can really be seen.

A better option is to plan on changing jobs at fixed intervals. Irreplaceable doesn't work because managers can talk up a project they killed long enough to find another job.

Unix command line utilities are available have been available for Windows machines as well through cygwin for the last decade. Java development on a Mac has some oddities not shared with Windows/Linux/Solaris due to their development environment being supplied by Apple.

Labor competition. When a tech worker or manager feels threatened and wants to belittle a coworker's skills they start on about the coworker's 'communications skills' and so forth. In reality they are trying to paint themselves in a relatively brighter light, but are going about it in a wrong way.

These type of rants are ALWAYS from whiny insecure non-degreed programmers who have maxed out their career potential. It's obvious that programmers without degrees would desire to mitigate the value of their competitors CS degrees. If put into a hiring position, they will be reluctant to hire someone more qualified than themselves. Non-degreed programmers effectively try to "unionize" against degreed programmers through hiring practices and propaganda such as this topic.

The heart of the matter is that being layed-off means that a former employee can collect unemployment benefits. Fired with cause means that benefits are unavailable.