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Comment Re:A song for a meal... (Score 1) 178

I have nothing particularly against piracy, but if you think that making entertainment isn't work, then I cordially invite you to enter the industry and pay your dues. You will enjoy not having a family life anymore, when you're pulling 12+shifts sitting in front of a screen doing repetitive tasks without any glamour whatsoever. Just because it's fun to watch movies doesn't mean it isn't real work to make them. The vast majority of people who work in entertainment don't make millions. For every wealthy actor there's thousands of people you never see behind the scenes.

My reasons against hating piracy are that 1: I think it's gone too far, it stifles innovation and breaks with thousands of years of history where humans could freely share ideas 2. If you are a student and want to break into a field, the cost of educational materials can be kind of shocking---you may have no other means to be competitive other than to pirate software, or the hundreds of movies you might need to watch to become knowledgeable in your field. 3. broke people can't afford to buy the movie anyway

Comment Re: as usual, piracy fears are nonsense. (Score 1) 178

Piracy would be if I looked at the car, took detailed notes and photos and then made a copy of it. Theft is depriving you of your property--hopping in the car and driving away. They have entirely different consequences, and as far as I know most legal systems rightly distinguish between them, which is why p2p is charged under civil, not criminal law (so far).

If someone steals my music, that means they've come into my studio and stolen the multitrack files off my hard drive, or claimed my work as their own, for profit.

Just because two things might be (debatably) bad doesn't mean they are equivalent, and just because Hollywood makes videos about piracy equaling theft doesn't mean they are true.

Comment Re:Friday on the east coast (Score 1) 196

"Shhh...someone at AVFM told me 'mangina' was a dire insult.. weapon deployed! Impact in 5..4..3..2.. *fizzle*"

(because the best way to prove you like women is to think that "pussy" and "mangina" are insults) Can't say I feel guilty about anything. Your rage might indicate you've some subconscious guilt though.

Comment Re:Too many "competent" people (Score 1) 196

That's argumentum ad absurdum, which isn't inherently good or bad, it just depends on whether or not the issue is adequately represented.

For example, if out of two hundred applicants ten are more than qualified, diversity doesn't lead to lower quality applicants. 'Best' can depend on subjective things like how you tickled the interviewer's fancy or whether or not you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Programming

Boot Camps Introducing More Women To Tech (dice.com) 196

Nerval's Lobster writes: A new study from Course Report suggests that boot camps are introducing more women to the tech-employment pipeline. Data for the study came from 769 graduates from 43 qualifying coding schools (a.k.a. boot camps). Some 66 percent of those graduates reported landing a full-time job that hinged on skills learned at the boot camp. Although the typical "bootcamper" is 31 years old, with 7.6 years of work experience, relatively few had a job as a programmer before participating in a boot camp. Perhaps the most interesting data-point from Course Report, though, is that 36 percent of "bootcampers" are women, compared to 14.1 percent coming into the tech industry via undergraduate programs. Bringing more women and underrepresented groups into the tech industry is a stated goal of many companies. Over the past few years, these companies' diversity reports have bemoaned how engineering and leadership teams skew overwhelmingly white and male. Proposed strategies for the issue include adjusting how companies recruit new workers; boot camps could also quickly deepen the pool of potential employees with the right skills.

Comment Re:Finally! This is good policy (Score 1) 628

Yeah, the responder to you is clueless. In large enterprise situations (such as where I work) lots of people bring in their own laptops for presentations.
Popups and forced updates are extremely disruptive.

Updates should be in the background, seamless, and not hijack your computer for 10-15 minutes at a time when they install, inevitably right before a student is in front of their PhD committee or the admin staff is about to unveil their latest strategy.

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