ytinas

I would submit that the reason we still don't do async very well is because callbacks are just not a very good technique for some reason.

If you look at Erlang (which the article mentions), I don't feel like I ever do the kind of Async programming he talks about here. I break the work flow into a pipeline of processes that do a specific job. I never have a process send a message to another process and waits for the answer. Every process receives some message, does it's job and then forwards the resulting message to another process.

I guess I just find this style of coding easier to reason about because every part of the pipeline is completely stateless and has a straightforward job.

Personally I find it more of an example of how screwed up the US government is at this point. They seem to ruin everything they try to do. A lot of other first world countries have reasonable protections for workers without killing the "little guy".

I also don't buy your analysis of France. Large amounts of immigration always create a lot of unrest (just look at the otherwise pretty progressive Swedish).

This isn't reddit. Disagreement doesn't equal downvote.

Having unemployment benefits is not optional. Even 3rd world countries have this. However, I don't know that charging the companies directly for the unemployment is the best. Where I live workers pay an "unemployment insurance". The employer pays it, but it's part of the compensation like vacation etc. So when an employee is let go he draws from this insurance, the company is out of it.

You're confusing a few issues here. Your story highlights a problem with the law system in the US. Plenty of countries with more worker friendly labor laws deal with these situations without forcing people to defend themselves in court.

Companies tend to make NDAs that are much more restrictive than what they could actually enforce.

"Windows today is so much more secure than OS X"

That's a pretty bold statement. The security model might be theoretically better but since most applications force you to run as administrator anyway I don't think it's currently buying you that much.

Wait, what? I would be just as happy as the next guy to see MS go down in flames, but "Linux is much nicer to program for"? In what way exactly? GUI? Nope, the opposite. [1] The server? Not so much. I mean, if you were actually writing to sockets and things then easy use of epoll, etc. might be an issue but in business you're mostly doing REST or web services or something in which case programming the server on Windows is much easier. The environment provides so much for you here. Scripting? Maybe, but who cares?

Right now I really find Visual Studio the best IDE. I would like to see that change (and VS has lots of problems) but it's currently head and shoulders above the rest.

[1] Further, the Linux GUI has to be one of the worst cases of optimizing for the nearly nonexistent use case ever. If you look at all users of computers today how many of them need X? A number so small as to be statistically irrelevant.

Does it not occur to you that if good governance is impossible than perhaps we should consider that governance itself might be a flawed concept?

If you're storing people's password in plain text in your db you should make your potential users aware of this so people (like myself) can avoid accidentally using your site.

Ironically your post has shown the true power the US has. Abnormal levels of patriotism. America has declined. Drastically. Look at what the middle class has today compared to years prior. Did you know there was a time that middle class in the US meant you had servants? Money has vacated the middle classes and flooded into the upper classes in the last 20 or so years.

I grew up in the US and I live in western Europe now. I don't see myself ever going back long term. I feel like my standard of living here is much better.

You say things like "investor experiences a real loss of assets (decreased net worth) whereas an unemployed person merely ceases monetary gain" and say my logic is terrible? The investor, in most cases, lost some number in a computer somewhere. The employee may lose his home. How can you possibly suggest that the investor lost more? In fact, if he's properly diversified it is possible that while this investment failed, he made extra somewhere else.

If you think the investors losses are more damaging to the market as a whole I still disagree. The employee was likely injecting most of their income right back into the economy. An investor is probably just buying stock from other stock holders (much safer way to make money than a business venture). Unless the stock holder is the company, this is just money changing hands between rich people, i.e. zero gain for the economy.

So they can go back to themselves and their family having almost literally nothing.

What is offensive about your post is the suggestion that the US is somehow "not good at" production because we don't have the option to utterly disregard human rights and abuse the employer power to give people an "offer they can't refuse".

We all buy, indeed rely on being able to buy, this cheap stuff, so I didn't intend to single you out as evil for also doing so. One just has to remember we have such low prices now because humans somewhere far away are being treated inhumanely. It is unlikely that this will continue indefinitely.

Yea, from my perspective the "company man" doesn't exist anymore for the most part. There are people who buy into the cool-aid, but most people treat the company they're with with the same loyalty it treats them: almost none. When a better opportunity comes along they tend to jump. I can't recall more than one or two cases where the person announced they were leaving and got a counter offer good enough to make them stay.

It was posted 6 hours after my post. :)

Fair enough. In your case it makes sense then.

Wow, that's a pretty arrogant/offensive post. I would assume you were trolling if I saw this on any other site.

You are really suggesting that violating countless human rights laws, more or less using slavery, etc. is how one can "manufacture cost-effectively"? I wish people who felt like that were apprehended and forced to work in such places...

So they have a lot less to risk than you do (for most investors, losing the entire investment wouldn't hurt them bad enough to force them into the work force. If you lose your job however...)

Has this actually been verified? I haven't happened on any stories yet about someone "doing their time" at google to go pick a job making way above their normal range.

Companies always have rules about raise limits and such. If you want to get an increase in pay you nearly always have to switch to another company.

Is the work you will be doing on these "interesting projects" the thing you would pick if you were a multimillionaire and didn't have to work?

If not making as much as you possibly can, with the lowest living standard you can get away with is a better bet imo. I can't imagine any place letting me work on what I want when I want to all the time, and even if there were such a place what happens when I invent something? My name is on a list with a bunch of other mostly unrelated people?

Well, the very obvious difference between the made up $100k and $200k is that you can build a much bigger nest egg.

You're saying half your pay now, so lets say this would let you live off your savings for 2 years to try and make a start up. Well, if you keep the same lifestyle than $200k gives you nearly 3 times as long (you're saving half now, so the extra $100k would all be savings, aside from the extra taxes).

Exactly. I'm not flying through intersections without even touching my brakes. My point was about following the law to the letter.

You misunderstand me. I slow down at stop signs to thoroughly verify that no one is coming (and if it is a dangerous stop then I tend to stop completely), but I simply don't follow "the letter of the law". There is no logical reason to insist that my wheels come to a "full and complete stop" when I can clearly see the way is clear. If I somehow didn't perceive an oncoming vehicle normally I would be about as likely to not perceive it if I followed the law exactly.

I think you really underestimate the desire of people to not have to be bothered with this kind of stuff. No matter how insane things get people tend to say "well, it could be worse. We've still got beer and football".

I would, for example, never consider moving to the UK with their surveillance, etc., but they obviously have a large populace that disagrees.

Trying to force people into doing something they just don't want to do never works.

Are you sure you wont get that regardless? I guess my perspective comes from just seeing the US government as a failed experiment at this point. It has so many problems and those problems themselves prevent any solution (e.g. how are you going to get politicians bought by lobbyists to ban lobbying?). Given that, the only option is to make it harder for the government to enforce their ridiculous legislation.

Sort of buying more time for the hero to make his appearance and fix everything.

>I know its fun to rag on public officials on Internet forums. But most of the ones I know have been fairly decent people who are just doing their jobs.

This could be said about a lot of people who did incredibly horrific things. Virtually no one, no matter how evil they appear to everyone else, really thinks of themselves that way. They always justify their actions in some way (e.g. "The world will be better off without this race", "no one else is smart enough to see what I see, so fudging a little bit is completely justified. They are too simple minded to understand anything else", etc.).

In regards to rule following, people fall into one of two categories: "Rule followers", people who follow what the rule says, and people like myself who follow the sense behind the rule, not the words specifically and even then only if it makes sense [1].

People from e.g. your TSA example are clearly "rule followers". Here is an article that outlines some of the issues with following rules to this degree: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6433397/The-Authoritarians

Basically, if you can get people who will blindly follow rules you can accomplish just about anything with them. It's also a very handy justification for highly antisocial behavior. Of course people in my category can also use shaky justifications to engage in poor behavior but I can't claim "I was just doing as I was told".

I have plenty of "rule follower" friends (whom I constantly annoy with my heretical suggestions that rules are just guidelines). But at the end of the day we can only judge people's actions based on what they did (rule follower or not). Not how friendly they are doing it. Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors thought he was nice enough.

>and they risk losing their job when they deviate from it, even if they personally believe the rules are stupid.

If everyone would avoid rules that are, from a common sense point of view, stupid then their job wouldn't be "at risk". They couldn't be replaced with anyone who wouldn't do the same thing.

>Same with the private sector. Companies that have the best reputations tend to be those that empower their employees to solve the customer's problem, like Virgin or Nordstroms. Companies with the worst reputations tend to be those where the employees can't do anything but follow the playbook, like most telecoms.

Interesting point.

[1] e.g. I don't stop at a stop sign if I can clearly see that I can go without impacting anyone else. For me stop sign means "the other people have the right of way, don't impact them". I find following the letter of the law "all four wheels to a full and complete stop" irritating, insulting and of little or no value.

Given the track record which is more likely to be effective? Continuing to wish for common sense and latitude in our public officials or protecting yourself from their normal behavior?

I think by "Western nations" you mean North American nations. Even in the UK (probably the most "US-ized" country in Europe" make-from-scratch food is common.

In much of Europe you will find that instant foods make up only a slightly larger part of a grocery than make-from-scratch does in the US. Very minimal.

Fair point. But I would point out that the only things this works with are things we have thoroughly mastered (e.g. walking). People have issues talking and driving (e.g. in parts of Europe it's illegal to talk on a cell while driving because of all the accidents it causes).

In my experience it depends on the amount of processing required. If I'm driving a straight away with traffic going mostly the same speed I can hold complex conversations. As soon as something happens on the road I drop the conversation until my attention isn't needed on the road anymore.

I don't think you need full multitasking for this. If the OS handles that situation (e.g. one app is allowed to access the screen, one the speaker) then that's enough and it avoids the complexity of having full threading.