This is, in general, close to what the Australian NBN model was aiming for; the fibre capacity was to be "leased" wholesale to the commercial entities, with the leases used for maintenance & upgrades. In theory it avoids special interests & provides a baseline platform.
Obviously the situation has it's differences, but the original form of the National Broadband Network[0] here in Australia was, in part, to help nip these kinds of problems in the bud. It was close to a nationwide glass utility, but still allowed for a competitive commercial market. There was a lot of excitement for both short-term technological gains & long-term economics. I'm still dirty it got so mangled.
As an off-topic aide: was "I'm not a communist" tongue in cheek? Or would such an infrastructure project be actually seen as "communist" &/or undesirable just for it's oversight?
Careful with the strawmen; it was never stated that there is no difference. The point I read was that unfair advantage should be discouraged in all forms, no matter how insidious or subtle. I think it's a very valid point: You don't need to be a moral absolutist, but it's only fair to keep an eye on the nuanced avenues of unfair advantage as well as the explicit ones.
If someone has a subtle point they want to make, they should make it explicit and as obvious as possible. The principle of charity doesn't require me to invent arguments for them.
If someone doesn't say what they think the difference is [1], and they ask me to apply all the implications about one to the other, it's not a strawman to say they are equating the two.
[1] between "doing Y would help improve your score" vs "the answer is X"
In my experience it has been declining in importance. In the past I'd see jobs advertised asking little more than a degree (or equiv. industry experience). Today I still see degrees listed, but often as "preferred" & always amongst a litany of other skill-based requirements.
Seems to be that there's at least some commercial pressure to value the "piece of paper" less. Of course it could also be that a degree is now the de facto baseline, & the wheels just keep turning.
In the US it's illegal to require a degree for almost all postitions that people around here are concerned with. Companies always try to elide this, but bizdev, marketing, programming, sysadminning, sales, and starting a company are not classified as the kinds of skilled positions for which a diploma can be required, such as engineering, finance, architecture, law, medicine, etc. I don't know if this maps perfectly to board-certified professions (IANAHR), but there does appear to be a pattern.
Illegal? Most employment in the US is at-will. You can hire or fire for any reason or none at all, as long as you're not selecting based on race, sex, religion, etc.
Where is it illegal to require a degree in Marketing for a job in Marketing?
There's legal notions that state you can't create arbitrary requirements. i.e. take a job where employees are on the phone with customers all day, it turns out that entrepreneurs would rather want your name to be John than Juan, Kwame or Mohammed. And given racial differences in socioeconomic standing, which create differences in educational attainment, it's easy to say a college degree is a requirement for the job, when you're really just using it as a proxy to hire a certain ethnic profile.
This is just an example, I'm not claiming here it's widespread (although it wouldn't surprise me in some industries, and many blind tests have shown preferences, but that's besides the point.)
Now this isn't new, so there have been court cases in the past. And they shaped a precedent which loosely states that you can't just say you need a degree for the job. You need to back that up with real data. This isn't common practice, but it's the law. So for a job where you need to do rudimentary work, there's technically quite a high burden of proof on the employer to require a degree for that.
The famous case is Griggs vs Duke Power Co[0][1]
There've been more cases since, it's not that hard to find. In any case, no it's not broadly illegal to ask for a degree at all. But there is precedent that unnecessary tests, e.g. a degree requirement for a telemarketing job, are indeed illegal.
I wouldn't know for certain how a judge would rule on the examples given by the person you replied to, like system admin or marketing, but I suspect the notion a degree would be required would be found entirely reasonable by a judge, like syst admin or marketing. But I get his point. I've got friends who work e.g. as a credit analyst, which is a job they say they and their peers could've done at age 16 without even finishing HS, yet it's a typical job that requires a degree and that a judge would probably be convinced of that it requires a degree.
I thought it was fun. What can I say, I enjoy pop psychology.
Further though, I find it has had a real effect on how I relate to others. Reading of the different MBTI's, particularly how different types communicate, forced me to seek to understand the nuances & preferences of individual styles of social interaction. Sometimes broad personality generalisations are all that are needed to establish a meaningful channel of communication.
I would recommend doing the test or at least reading the 16 types, if for no other reason than it forces you to be mindful of the fact that there are many large & small differences between individual personalities.
> it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society.
I'm having trouble getting past this comment. I don't wish to malign you debacle - I'm sure you're not being malicious - but it seems like a very unkind & privileged mindset. I hope this isn't representative of the community.
Paul Gionfriddo certainly doesn't consider his son to lack contribution.
My brother is mentally disabled. I love him dearly, and I've fight tooth and nail for him to have as normal a life as possible. However, I would not describe him as being a likely candidate for being a "contributing member of society." His affliction fundamentally prevents him from doing almost any job. That's just the reality of it.
I don't see any argument that his son with "no job prospects and a debilitating mental illness" is currently capable of doing work that benefits society. He's rightly only concerned with his son's survival in the crude conditions we provide, and how he might have turned out differently.
> but it seems like a very unkind & privileged mindset.
You think being of sound mental health is a privilege? In Europe we think health is a right, which is why we have public health systems. It may sound a bit strange at first, but it works quite well.
Reiterating the sentiment. Seems great so far, but there are some errors that could create confusion. The good news is the author left his email address, so I dare say he's well aware by now :)
Indeed! So now you've got 30 minutes worth of CO2 hanging around in your blood... Surely that's going to cause some issues? Anyone with some biology smarts able to explain if this would be a problem?
That aside, I wonder what the nano-med applications are for this. For example an implant for high-risk patients that injects a dose upon respiratory failure etc. Heck if it were feasible such would be handy for anyone to have.
The only way the CO2 can leave is through the lungs. If your airways are blocked, you're going to be facing some major blood pH issues with all that built up CO2. This can happen really fast too. Simply hypo-ventilating can cause the pH of the blood to drop due to buildup of CO2.
The more influential the channel gets, the harder people will try to game the system to push their own agenda. I.e. fake or hacked registrations, buying signatures, or trying to promote comments favorable to your point of view while burying opposing ones.
Right now the influence of this app is zero, so we don't have these problems. It's just a marketing dog-and-pony show where they can say "Look we're actually responding to people's questions" but the answers are extremely vague nothings and you have no idea if the President / Cabinet / anyone with real authority even reads the petitions that have 6- or 7-digit signature counts, let alone acting on them.
Oh I don't know, it isn't much different from a system which analyzes emails to see what motivated constituents with email are saying - it's just public. I think it's an interesting experiment and a starting point. I don't think it is ever wrong in a democracy to give people a way of publicizing a message or to give elected officials visibility into relevant things people are saying publicly.
I don't know where the high expectations came from. But I might speculate that many people are starting from dislike of the President's policies and then from there tarring the website, rather than actually responding directly to the idea of the website.
