Your analogy is almost as bad as the articles.
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about engines.
Except I didn't say that. You edited what I said, presented it as a direct quote, and then complained that it was a bad analogy. That is dishonest and stupid.
How the heck was I supposed to know that a 64 bit flat architecture would someday come along that still set int to 32 bits?
By reading the standard, which explicitly states that only a long is guaranteed to hold a pointer. Or by running "lint" which is designed to catch silly newbie errors like this. Or by not using casts when you don't understand how they work.
The link is paywalled, but programmers are not bricklayers. So just based on that one quote I can tell the article is stupid.
Indeed. TFA equates programming with bricklaying, and implies neither needs to be educated like an architect. But writing a program is much more like architecture than it is like bricklaying.
I have worked as a bricklayer. The first day, the foreman told me to pull the wall down and try again. The second day it was "good enough". By the end of the week, I could work as well (but not as fast) as the guys with years of experience. A programmer with a week of experience can not come close to someone with years of experience, and likely can't write a working program at all.
We have hired, and let go, 3 "computer science" majors who didn't know how to calculate a range of IPs given a single IP and a netmask.
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about plumbing. If you want a sysadmin, then hire a sysadmin. But that is not what a CS grad is, or should be.
You should also change your hiring practices. If there are basic skills that you require, you should test for that during the interview process. By failing to do that, you are wasting your time and theirs. Letting one slip through may be excusable, but three in a row is a sign of serious dysfunction.
Be nice if parents were paid for the time they had to take off to attend these meetings.
Poor academic performance is strongly correlated with poverty. Households in the bottom quintile have an average of 0.4 people employed. I doubt if the parents failed to show up because they were too busy.
My suggestion is, ante up on the compromise. Promise to build the new one on the site of one of the old ones.
Nobody would accept that compromise. The protesters don't really care if the telescope is built, they just want a payoff. Any compromise that does not include some cash, is not going to be accepted. They should have paid off these groups at the beginning of the process, not when they are ready to start construction. It would have been much cheaper.
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Doesn't the cry wolf effect make the predators of the aphids that much more effective?
No. The pheromone is normally emitted by the wheat when it is under attack by aphids, thus attracting predators. But the GMO wheat emits the pheromone all the time, so the predators show up, and
How does that work if there's multiple candidates? Do you simply hire the first one who passes the "thumbs-up" test or are you flexible enough you'll hire as many good people who shows up at the door?
The latter. You should always be in "hiring mode". If you hire smart people with a track record of getting stuff done, you can always find a place for them. The criteria I use is that they should be a "top third" prospect, with an expectation that they will be better than 2/3rds of current employees. If I don't have a vacancy, then I fire one of the bottom third people to make room.
So the duration is 12 days longer than the average, so what?
The problem is that while you are evaluating the job candidate, the candidate is evaluating your company, looking at other opportunities, and going to other interviews. It is the best candidates that are most likely to get other offers. You might think you are being more selective by dragging out the process, but the actual result is that you are losing the wheat and keeping the chaff.
There is little evidence that dragging out the process helps. Checking references doesn't really help, since you have no idea if you are talking to their ex-boss or their roommate. Even criminal records have been shown to have no correlation with job performance.
When I schedule an interview with a prospective hire, I prepare the paperwork to make a job offer at the end of the interview. If they look solid, and everyone involved gives a thumbs up, I make the offer. More often then not, they accept on the spot. Others sleep on it, and call and accept the following day. But we lose a lot fewer good candidates that way.
the whole incident was specifically meant to cause a chilling effect
It is likely to have the exact opposite effect. The readers of Reason are mostly libertarian kooks that are already highly prone to conspiracy theories. Actions like this are just throwing gasoline on the flames.
Disclaimer: I am somewhat of a libertarian kook myself.
As long as there's a plausible rationale for why the text is the way it is
The reason the text is the way it is, is because of the election of Scott Brown to fill the seat of the recently deceased Ted Kennedy. The Democrats lost their 60 seat super-majority required to override a filibuster. So congress had to pass the bill "as is" with no changes or edits. It was either a flawed law or no law.
The USA had been in existence as a country for less than 100 years by the time slavery was abolished.
... and the slave trade was abolished long before slavery itself. It was banned by America in 1807, and banned by the British Empire about the same time. There was still some smuggling, but after the Napoleonic Wars, Britain established a naval squadron to patrol the coast of West Africa and suppress the trade.
The American Civil War most certainly was fought over slavery.
Indeed it was. Here are the official words of the southerners themselves, expressed at the time of secession:
From the Mississippi declaration of secession:Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.
From the Texas declaration of the Causes of Secession:
From the South Carolina Declaration of Secession:
From the Georgia Declaration of Secession:The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition [of slavery] to the last extremity.
In every declaration of secession, slavery was given as the first and most prominent reason for secession. Secession was popular in flat states, where large plantations were viable. It was less popular in mountainous areas, where slaves were less common, including what is now West Virginia, and the mountain state of Tennessee which was the last to secede and the first to rejoin the union. There was a rebellion within the rebellion in the hilly areas of northern Alabama. By the end of the war, every state but South Carolina (the flattest state, most dependent on plantation agriculture) raised volunteer regiments to fight in the Union Army, mostly from mountain areas.
CMU saving money for itself doesn't help the students.
If you feel that attending a university that does more and better research has no value, then you should not enroll in CMU. Go to a community college instead.
Especially when CMU isn't even discounting their tuition for this.
Why should they? In many fields, CMU is considered one of the best universities in the world, and they have far more applicants than spaces. Prices are driven by demand, not cost.
Except that this still requires students to enroll in a university to take the class. And $6000 is hardly "nothing" to most people.
The MIT Courseware is available on Youtube. It costs $0, which is "nothing" to most people.
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
