The common thread in most of these is dematerialization: like the phone example, discrete physical objects have been replaced by software functions running on generic computing devices, i.e., the main cause of obsolescence is the system itself.
So what can the system use for icons? Rows of "smartphone" icons or "computer" icons?
(As a text-mode purist, I am not too sad about this.)
Aside from the rule against incorporating, the Glass-Steagall Act was very helpful in preventing the Too Big To Fail bailouts for many decades.
While the author may have omitted some specifics (in part due to column length), to those who follow the industry even casually, it's hard not to consider the changes self-evident, like a statement "CPUs are more powerful today than in 1990".
Even if the regulations were unchanged, top levels of government are almost 100% Goldman alumni and/or future Goldman people, so enforcement is comical. Imagine if Ford and GM executives had been running the EPA for the last 20 years.
And in addition to a predictable revenue stream, the monopoly made Bell research more visible because the 1956 Consent Decree prevented Bell from entering other industries, leading them to publish or give away their inventions rather than holding them for maximum profit. (the transistor predates the Decree, so it may have been partly cultural)
I believe that this is intended to preserve the principle of local _control_ over education. I don't see how that would prevent the DoEd from creating a series of reference textbooks, adoption of which would be voluntary.
By way of analogy, the FAA produces an ab initio flight curriculum: students are free to use Cessna's curriculum or Bob Gardner's curriculum, or can use the FAA's curriculum (which is probably free online and available cheap in paperback form).
"As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are."
As a ctiizen, I believe the opposite. In a representative government, the state exists for the benefit of its citizens ("ourselves and our posterity") much as a corporation exists for the benefit of its shareholders. It's called a "social contract," and society will become increasingly disordered as more people reaize that nobody is holding up the other end of it.
And my "share" wasn't free: I pay taxes and was required to register for Selective Service to get my education (as have my male ancestors for many generations).
Not quite; Engineering Society of Detroit job fairs of the past few years feature hundreds of unemployed people with degrees and masters' degrees and experience.
You can say "it's their fault!" but was it really "stupid" to go to college, get an engineering degree, and get a good job at a Fortune 10 corporation that was considered "widows and orphans" stock? And, no matter how excited you are about your own company, wasn't it an objectively safer choice than joining a Web startup with no barriers to entry, no economies of scale, no brand recognition, no customers, no earnings, and no revenue model?
And yet what would a SV startup say to a 30, 40, or 50 year old automotive engineer who said "well, I don't have much Web development experience, but I have taught myself some frameworks through blogs and Websites and Kahn Academy?"
And not just his art, but his life as well:
"they lived off his wife's teaching salary. During the 1970s, Gibson made a substantial part of his living from scouring Salvation Army thrift stores for underpriced artifacts he would then up-market to specialist dealers" [Wikipedia]
Because we are politically powerless. This the wage for an entry-level programmer/engineer at $36,667: $30k/year salary and $20k "investment."
In contrast, the American Medical Association (AMA) restricts the number of medical schools to keep doctors' wages high.
As to why not business majors:
1. Nobody has spent decades building a propaganda base for "business major shortage"
2. Many more donors / politicians have a business major in the family to protect; relatively few have personal experience with a mysterious "STEM graduate."
In fairness to the grads, they have just "invested in themselves" for 4 years plus a direct cost of possibly $200k or so, and really have nothing left to give at that point.
Seriously: if 4 years of expensive, official, organized training didn't produce results (other than "come back in 3 years when you have PAID PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE in exactly this industry and geographic region and in exactly the domain that I'm looking for at that time, and I'll let you compete with 300 other resumes"), what should they reasonably expect from self-study?
I'm very pro self-study and self-improvement. But I don't see it as a realistic solution to unemployment, particularly when the overwhelming majority of employers insist on an exquisitely precise blend of paid experience (often with equipment or information that is not available to a layperson).
I found his honesty refreshing, and didn't see much bragging, only a description of the lifestyle and sacrifices that are necessary to achieve success.
Claims of effortless success are a more intense form of bragging: "Not only am I successful, but I'm so naturally gifted that I didn't even have to work at it!"
And discussions like this help people feel better about their lifestyle choices: maybe a well-balanced and more relaxed life is a fair trade for not being an Olympic athlete or billionaire.
Because it is an extremely expensive "relationship" if it happens "regularly."
Even if his specific tactics are wrong, he is correct that it is very difficult to operate profitably in certain industries if you hire an attorney for every little routine legal matter.
But if 40 is the best data that we have, why is it so commonly treated as an "absolute minimum?" Why are so many "professionals" "expected" to work far more, when hundreds of years of data shows that routinely working significant overtime leads to lower output?
It really varies by company and region, and it's very much a "guideline." "9-5" is mostly an archaic figure of speech anyway: in the Midwest, arriving at 7:30 is not unusual, but arriving at 9:05 can be grounds for termination (this surprised me when I started working).
One large software company, known for being a "best places to work" said that 8:30-5:00 with a half hour for lunch made sense. Of course, many people worked far longer than that.
I once defined a class of 3-D vectors and overloaded operators to them, but I agree with the problem.
The problem is that redefining core symbols creates a larger communication problem than defining new symbols: if I see sort(), then I'll go look up the definition of the function. But if I see (-a + b || c) in some languages, I have to check that you didn't overload - to your sort() function and || to transpose.
Redefining language is one characteristic of cults (http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_a0.html#ca_cult_spe...). I say this not to cast aspersions, just to communicate the damage that can be done when symbols are redefined. Better to invent a new symbol for a new idea.
Jason, thanks for articulating "show progress." That is really profound and applies in many areas of life. I've seen a lot of posts about "iterate" and such, but none of that directly attacked the old advertising slogan "you never get a second chance to make a first impression," until you did.
There's actually an upside, though: labor laws force kids to get creative and pursue activities which are at least entrepreneurial and generally more educational than the dead-end McJob that might first come to mind for them. But I do think that kids should be better educated about the limitations on what they really can and can't do rather than just suffer under a blanket misperception "you can't work until you're 16."
I really think that experiences such as yours, where you were invited into a white-collar world, are the rare exception (heck, people with solid bachelors' degrees have trouble getting that sort of job now!).
Yes. Experience is great, but everyone has to start somewhere. The unemployment rate for under 25 is extremely high.
Society doesn't focus much attention these days on "upward mobility." But but an overreliance on "experience" (generally "paid, professional experience"), in extremis, will permanently shut out an entire generation from the world of middle-class employment. Is that really a good idea?
"Resolved: Individuals who did not have a good (preferably government) job on July 31, 2007 and a record of unblemished professional success with progressive experience and responsibility and no failures or false starts should abandon all hope."
So what can the system use for icons? Rows of "smartphone" icons or "computer" icons?
(As a text-mode purist, I am not too sad about this.)