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Comment: Better chances if you do not have one? (Score 2, Interesting) 343

by garcia (#45475223) Attached to: Elon Musk Talks About the Importance of Physics, Criticizes the MBA

As a one-time worker bee who is now a part of senior management (with an MPA and not an MBA, although they are pretty similar) I understand what he is saying but I disagree that people should have a better chance of being hired because they have the three letters next to their name.

I hire for open reqs based on the PERSON and their SKILLSET, not the degree they may or may not hold. You know, the way it should be. What Musk is promoting through another one of his ridiculous soundbites is that we should pay more attention to degrees (good or bad) than the skills someone brings along with them.

Musk can be absolutely brilliant and incredibly and insanely stupid all at the same time.

Comment: Re:The reason is private insurance (Score 3, Insightful) 786

by garcia (#45258425) Attached to: Why Can't Big Government Launch a Website?

No, the problem is that the public sector does not operate anything at all like the private sector all the while trying to emulate it under the overhead and red tape that comes along with requiring the public's input.

In addition to the issues seen with how the public sector operates, we have the requirement of outsourcing to the private sector to do the bulk of work through private/public partnerships which the public sector cannot and will not effectively manage,

The competing interests of these partnerships leans heavily on the private sector to make loads of money while the public sector expects them to operate within the bounds of the red tape the private sector is not accustomed or willing to accept as part of their business model.

If the government took this upon themselves to do anything in its entirety, it would likely be done slowly but correctly. Unfortunately, we end up with the result we did: a quickly cobbled together, expensive, and poorly implemented product which would never have seen the light of day in the private sector.

This happens ALL THE TIME with public/private partnerships. Take a look at the website redesign for the City of Apple Valley, Minnesota which was originally budgeted at $76,000 but later reduced to a much more reasonable, although still incredibly expensive $30,000. The resulting site is basically unusable, slow, horrendous to update, and slightly more useless than its predecessor (lipstick on a pig).

Comment: Re:Red state (Score 4, Interesting) 470

by garcia (#45201951) Attached to: Would-Be Tesla Owners Jump Through Hoops To Skirt Wacky Texas Rules

I'd love to see the Tesla sales numbers from Austin vs the rest of the state. Austin residents have long been at odds w/the rest of the state and their politics and as such I have a feeling we'd see a pretty high correlation with Austin vs Tesla ownership when compared w/the rest of the state.

Comment: Re:Programmer Troubles (Score 4, Interesting) 473

by garcia (#45166847) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Are the Hardest Things Programmers Have To Do?

I once had a non-technical manager and she told me what I did was simply "magic" to her and others and while she knew the results provided weren't as simple as it seemed to them, others in the organization felt it was.

It's a very difficult concept for non-technical people to understand and part of the life of any developer to deal with. It's the same thing many developers feel about management and administration and we all need to share in the responsibility of not assuming it's easy and/or "magic".

Comment: Re:I get to bust this one out again. (Score 4, Interesting) 209

by garcia (#44623117) Attached to: San Francisco Fire Chief Bans Helmet-Mounted Cameras For Firefighters

I have repeatedly requested camera views from publicly owned but privately operated buses in the southern suburbs of the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area.

These cameras exist both inside and outside of the buses but whenever an issue arises which negatively impact the bus drivers or the system itself, the camera feeds are unavailable, usually due to some sort of unknown malfunction: http://www.lazylightning.org/bus-2-0-directs-mvta-driver-onto-dirt-shoulder

However, when they are not at fault, the videos are available to me right away and without question: http://www.lazylightning.org/mvta-rider-alleges-racism-over-bus-incident

Comment: Re:Students have to take some of the responsibilit (Score 1) 827

by garcia (#44587175) Attached to: The College-Loan Scandal


1. I went to a state school in Ohio which offered me a scholarship for athletics during undergrad. We paid very little.

2. I delayed grad school until I found a company that would pay for my education. I left that company with about 5 classes remaining but only had to end up paying $5200 total for a $28,000+ education.

3. This is being compared to the home loan situation. People were doing things that were stupid then too such as buying homes beyond their means, not educating themselves about the types of loans they were obtaining, etc. This is no different.

Do not go to a school you cannot afford and most definitely don't go into a major which will not provide you with a working wage afterward.

Comment: Re:This is yet another example of why it is import (Score 1) 217

by garcia (#44257783) Attached to: Iris Scans Are the New School IDs

What sorts of public campaigns have you witnessed for school boards where these sorts of asinine discussions are raised? This would be injected into the meeting agenda as a minor item lumped with a bunch of others which would have all been approved with a single quick vote so they could move on to much more important topics such as wasting money on some frivolous sporting event or booster club meeting.

These sorts of discussions only come up during campaigns AFTER they've been put into place and one person in the community stands up to say WTF and is ignored at meeting after meeting by the administration who put it into place with the consent of the morons on the school board and then runs solely on the platform of removing this one item.

After they spend $1500 running, get on the board and abolish the decision, something else comes up which is possibly worse and they are powerless and clueless to stop it.

This is the problem with all local level government bodies (city, county, etc). People run on a single stupid platform, are elected, and stay there forever or are booted out because someone else has another single stupid platform of the day.

Most everyone else just shrugs, says ok, and their kids get scanned.

(As an aside, my kid is NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER getting their fucking eyes or fingerprints or any other biometric data scanned for school -- fuck that noise).

Comment: Re:Very nice (Score 2) 136

Yesterday I got a scam call for a free resort stay if I was over the age of 28 and would provide them my credit card number.

While this particular scam is nothing particularly new, what was surprising is that the call appeared to originate from my area code. When I called the number back it went to a woman's voicemail. I'm guessing the entire thing was spoofed and she's an unknowing accomplice to this scam. Hell, they could be choosing numbers entirely at random.
