So I know there's going to be someone coming in to complain that Software Engineers aren't "real engineers" and we need "real engineering" and real "certifications" so we can be "real engineers"
But I recently just passed my CISSP, had to for work, and it was one of the most obnoxious and pointless exercises I ever engaged. Most of the test involved questions about information that is hopelessly out of date, or incredibly pointless whose only value is for ivory tower PhDs to argue about in white papers whose only actual security experience is putting in their password to their laptop.
I used to be sympathetic to an extent about the value of having a professional certifying body for software engineers, or something like that. Especially after having to debug JS by "full stack developers" who had just become "software engineers in 6 weeks". But after the CISSP racket I am enduring, I've realized a certfying body won't make software developers any more capable, it will only allow those who are the least qualified, to force arbitrary and capricious requirements onto people who actually care about the craft and are capble.
The problem with CISSP and similar is that the US government wants certifications, the 'software industry' is totally disinterested in such a thing, so the 'certification professionals' have moved in and set up shop. It's hardly the same level as a Professional Engineer or similar accreditation that is required before you're allowed to sign off on 'real engineering' projects.
Is it the way it is for plumbers, electricians, physicians, lawyers, etc? I'm seriously asking and ready to accept a "yes", but the reality is a lot of other professions have certifications and controlling bodies. I wonder if, when being interviewed, plumbers have to jump through the same idiotic hoops developers have to suffer.
My wife used to work as a nurse, her interviews were usually: do you have your certification paperwork? When can you start? No white boarding, no " tell me about a time you had to deal with a very difficult patient".
Yeah yeah jobs are different but ffs, if I had a freaking paper to show that would save me 4 rounds of interviews I would be so happy.
And yes, "innovation" may suffer. That's the usual argument, to which I say: good. I think we've reached a point in the history of technology where we need to chill out, take a deep breath and untangle the f ing mess we've created over the past decade.
The cost of getting a license in the licensed professions is usually very standardized and reliable. You get the degree, you get your field experience, you pay a nominal fee, you pass the test, you get the piece of paper. If establishing a clear process like that would do away with the quagmire of poorly-designed and subjective interview processes that we currently deal with, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Which I got anyway and think most people who want to be in software should get. I've interacted with enough bootcamp grads that I'm suspicious of attempts to short-circuit the four year program.
(To be clear, my program was a proper Software Engineering program with overwhelmingly practical courses, and that's the kind of program I'd expect to be required for a license system. It sounds like a lot of what is available at most schools is theory-centric CS run out of the Math department, which I suspect is why there's such a strong sense among some that a degree is useless for software.)
I'm not discounting it, it's an hypothetical paper so I don't know. Some poor souls already spend tens of thousands of dollars to go to college and don't even get this said paper.
Well, the license doesn't cost much beyond the cost of the degree. A few hundred in fees, and possibly a, very optional, grand on courses for exam prep.
Most (? I assume?) software engineers have a degree anyway though, that's not an additional cost.
CEng is more of a burden of time and bothering with the admin than it is a financial cost, compared to the degree you already have anyway. (It used to be my plan, but nobody cares, so I stopped bothering to progress towards it. Regret it in a way, since I think it was a good personal goal even if nobody else cares.)
I found this document [0] which includes a bit more information about the audience and the structure of the handbook. The target audience is specifically engineers working for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
It looks like the gaps are because they're progressively updating the handbook, so "Sections" are chapters that have yet to be updated and "Parts" are chapters that have been updated:
> Many technical references are available to help NRCS engineers prepare conservation designs, e.g. industry
design references, professional publications, academic textbooks, and market literature. NRCS design engineers
with accumulated empirical experience have worked with academia, industry, and other government agencies to
develop technical references and procedures that are specific to conservation work. This knowledge base is
housed in the National Engineering Handbook Series, Technical Releases, and Technical Notes:
> General Manual, Title 210 - Engineering, Parts 600-659 are grouped together to form the National Engineering
Handbook (NEH) Series. These Parts can be found at http://directives.sc.egov.usda.gov/ under the browser
search column as “Handbooks - Title 210 Engineering.”
> The filing system for National Engineering Handbook Series was updated in 1998. As a result, old NEH
Sections are posted with the new NEH Parts. As the old NEH Sections are updated, they will be filed as Parts
under the new NEH Series.
It’s part of the USDA Directives system which is the online repository of all USDA Departmental Regulations, Notices, Manuals, Guidebooks, etc.
A lot of US departments, publish books like this.
I’m a non-American, but i still often read books published by your government
:D , they are certainly very cool. I wish our government had something like this.
An interesting sidenote i wanted to mention the US Military also publishes books on various combat skills and guides on making defensive weapons for your public citizen to defend their communities incase of an invasion or government collapse[1].
I’ve come to realise that a good portion of your government sure as hell cares deeply about protecting your citizen’s right to defend themselves whether by carrying arms, or publishing books on guerilla tactics, and home making arms to protect oneself in the event of a crisis
I get the right to carry arms is controversial in your country, It’s not allowed for common citizens here either unless they can prove a risk of life to themselves, but I always come across moments in history, where governments choose to genocide their own people [2] and it makes me think that maybe, what the american constitution creators thought of, which is now characterized as extreme civil liberty wasn’t a bad idea after all. People sometimes forget how unstable our freedoms truly are, and how often governments across history and in each country have betrayed their own people.
The right to bear arms in the USA is often most appreciated by citizens of foreign lands where life is lived on the precipice between democracy and tyranny. Gun deaths and mass shootings are horrible but the solution is not to abolish the 2nd amendment.
> The right to bear arms in the USA is often most appreciated by citizens of foreign lands where life is lived on the precipice between democracy and tyranny.
It's very dramatic to say, but do you have evidence of that? It sounds like a fantasy of the American gun rights crowd (like most of this discussion).
> Gun deaths and mass shootings are horrible but the solution is not to abolish the 2nd amendment.
Is that the only way to regulate guns, to recind the amendemnt?
I would say there are a few events in history and in the geopolitical world that support my claim. The first is the recent spike in gun ownership in Israel following the Hamas attacks [1]. Similarly, you have militias such as Hezbollah who have refused to lay down their weapons post the civil war conflict and have retained a disproportionate amount of power over the citizens of Lebanon. In one example, they have built their own telecom network which, when the state attempted to remove it, Hezbollah fought back by terrorizing the population [2].
In the first case, you see the population seeking to arm themselves to bring the balance of power back inline. In the second case you see the balance of power already tilted towards an armed group.
I am not saying guns are the solution. But they are a deterrent. An aggressor will think twice before attacking.
That's a pair of events that are not about the 'precipice between democracy and tyranny'. The argument is a trope of US gun rights advocates but it's not really based on much beyond frequent repetition. I don't mean this as some sort of opening for a gun policy debate, just that this particular thing is largely a slogan, not some meaningful historical pattern. One of its forms has its own Wikipedia page:
Wow. Try studying all of human history, especially the past century. There's many thousands of books, as a starter. Look at the history of disarmament and why it's done by tyrannies. Do you imagine for one nanosecond that North Koreans outside of the government own guns, to take one solid example?
> Wow. Try studying all of human history, especially the past century.
This has been done: surveying ~600 movements since 1900, researchers found those that used violence were successful about 25% of the time, while non-violent movements were successful over 40% of the time:
Further: movements that used violence, and happened to be successful, also were much more likely to become authoritative themselves, while non-violent movements were more likely to be non-authoritative.
The recent historical record shows that you're better off not using guns, the exact opposite of your claim.
All the most free, prosperous, and safe countries in the world have many fewer guns, and gun rights, than the US. The US is the outlier, and it's even the outlier now for its own history.
There are an estimated 20,000 gun laws in the USA. Do you not consider that regulation? Why are noise mitigation devices regulated, often taking a full year to be approved? These are known as suppressors (silencers on TV and movies).
I don't like to use the acronym LOL on this site, but here I am. As someone from the Third World, where gun violence is a problem. The USA is still mocked for its rampant gun violence, mass murders and police violence. Let alone for being on the precipice of democracy and tyranny - as seen by Jan 6 and the possibility of Trump being re-elected. That and the USA being responsible for much of the descent from democracy into tyranny in so much of the global South. So there you have it LOL.
I do believe you are living in a bubble, whereby your viewpoints are selectively backed up by "world events" that actually do not walk the line between democracy and tyranny.
On the other hand, the issue is of grave concern vis-a-vis being on the precipice between democracy & tyranny... Maybe it's not the solution said people think it is.
Accessible healthcare, social services for the impovershed, accessible education, really anything that lifts people out of the despair or anger that drives them to committing crime.
So instead of just not letting literally crazy people have high mag firearms, you just want us to fix all of society's problems and hope such a utopian society cures all ills.
The republican / Democrat divide in the US is best understood by using a 2D map. It not left or right. I wish I could remember what I put on the axis. Anarchy was at the origin with libertarians a bit above it. Democrats want to move up and Republicans want to move right. The extreme upper right corner was a totalitarian dictatorship.
The axis were something like spending on one and control on the other, but that doesn't feel quite right.
Freedoms are also betrayed by other citizens, including those with guns. I'm not too concerned with a Cambodian genocide happening in the US. I am infinitely more concerned that I'll be shot.
This seems plausible, but is this just a throwaway statement or is it supported by historical evidence? It's actually a pretty interesting question, that has never occurred to me until now, how well people have historically been able to judge the safety and stability of their own political situations. Perhaps there's some literature out there on this?
I have no explicit evidence. I suspect its a combination of "head in the sand" and "I have no voice". In practical terms, you have no control over your country's future. Your vote is insignificant relative to the populace. So your next move is manage yourself and your families affairs and hope for the best. Frankly, the US's debt will crush it in the near future. How near is the question. There isn't much I can do about it. So, I put my head down and hope the fallout doesn't impact my family as much as others.
I don't have references, but I don't think people are all that good at it. Why else do strongman dictators keep getting into power?
Before the whole WW2 and holocaust thing, Germans really laughed off Hitler. They believed they were too artsy, too cosmopolitan, and just too advanced for a dictator.
So my guts tell me we're not great at judging real threats politically.
"I am infinitely more concerned that I'll be shot." - for real? That is extremely illogical, given the facts. I realize this data is about deaths rather than shootings. But its still applicable.
This is a little dated, 4-5 years maybe. There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 324,059,091 as of June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.0000925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
• 65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified.
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – better known as gun violence.
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths.
So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Now lets look at how those deaths spanned across the nation.
• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)
So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.
This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.
Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equal, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.
Police are supposed to protect you from those problems, a society that takes care of its people wont have to worry about people causing a revolution or going around shooting people.
The point of rules like this is usually to make the government very afraid of it’s own people and to make sure they (the government) serve them (the people) well.
There are a 110 ways to kill people, if someone wants to kill you on the streets, not having guns aren’t what’s holding them back. It’s far easier to buy fetanyl in your streets, and just inject someone with a high dosage and leave.
> I'm not too concerned with a Cambodian genocide happening in the US.
I wouldn’t cast the concern aside that freely if I were you, I don’t think its productive to look down on Cambodians as less civilised or believe in a sort of American exceptionalism, where things like the Cambodian genocide is not a possibility.
As an example, I’d like to show the time when the government of California, was actively sterilising perfectly healthy american citizens for “eugenics” purposes [1][2] (a precursor to what could constitute genocide if those policies were nationalised)
This is however just one example, you could argue they are linked to racism and a race superiority complex from those times, but reasons and causes can change across different times, the communities targeted may also change, the outcome (the potential risk of a government turning its back on its own people) is always present.
The great governance (in comparison to nations across the world) that america benefitted from in the last century, was earned and paid for in blood, ideas and sweat by you’re previous generations of citizens, constitution designers, policymakers, independent organisations, and right groups (on both aisles).
I would say the concerns of a gov fallout is always ever present and the duty of every citizen in any democracy across the world to keep an eye out for, and put in all sorts of protections against such fallout whenever possible.
> The point of rules like this is usually to make the government very afraid of it’s own people and to make sure they (the government) serve them (the people) well.
What a violent fantasy. Can you show us any legitimate, serious source that says such a thing, or indicates that it has any basis? When in US history has the government or it's officials been "very afraid" of the citizenry? (Who would serve in such a government?)
And given that the government is chosen by the people to carry out their bidding, it would be odd for them to then threaten it.
> And given that the government is chosen by the people to carry out their bidding, it would be odd for them to then threaten it.
I don’t think its good to pretend that some holy god falls out of the sky every few years during election time and asks every citizen who they want to choose as their leader.
No one’s talking about slinging guns and start shooting up all the politicians. If one doesn’t like a policy, they should go to the courts, write a letter to their representatives or vote for someone else the next time who they agree more with.
The issue is in pretending as if all of this is a god given right. It needs to be defended every moment.
You dont want an elected representative to come to power, setup the military to be loyal to that leader and then pull the rug on everyone else, jail the opposition, enslave the public.
I’m not saying this out of some fiction book, it’s happening as we speak in Myanmar, happens every few years in Pakistan, essentially the status quo in North Korea.
A robust democracy should not depend on the good will of dear leader. But be based on the foundation of its public.
More people are dying in america from drug addiction (from hopelessness and neglect of society), obesity, drunk driving, suicides every month, than you’ll see deaths from the 2nd amendment rights of everyday citizens to have guns and the right to carry them.
You have to ask yourself, why politicians rile up the public so deeply about the 2nd amendment, but totally ignore the common public’s disheartening reality and abandonment.
The 2nd amendment is a worst case scenario law, if you read history of most countries across the world and the tyranny of governments who have 0 fear of public, maybe it might change your mind.
I’m not saying that the 2nd amendment makes american politicans shiver in their beds and make it hard to sleep at night, or prevent them from still disappointing the public.
But there are far more worse realities which would make the current “hell” look like a sweet ideal utopia.
Every country and its citizens should strive to improve the lives of the public, disarming the masses is an odd hill to die on while on that quest.
> Police are supposed to protect you from those problems, a society that takes care of its people wont have to worry about people causing a revolution or going around shooting people.
> The point of rules like this is usually to make the government very afraid of it’s own people and to make sure they (the government) serve them (the people) well.
Does the existence of the problems not demonstate that that idea has failed in practice?
No, it doesn’t mean it has failed, it just means it alone is not sufficient. Just like how a century of american prosperity wasn’t solely due to gun rights.
Like many other laws and policies, 2nd amendment alone is not sufficient.
The better question to find the answer to your query is.
Is removing the 2nd amendment and gun rights going to magically save america and stop its marching decline?
> Is removing the 2nd amendment and gun rights going to magically save america and stop its marching decline?
> I don’t think so.
I don't think that's the right question at all.
I don't want to make changes to "magically save America and stop its marching decline" (whichever decline you happen to be peddling).
I want to make changes to get fewer people in America shot in the short-to-mid-term.
Do you still believe that getting rid of the 2nd Amendment would hasten an American collapse? Because I haven't seen it effectively stop ANY so-called government overreach, and don't believe it will prevent any in the future either.
In the long-term, it also introduces its own existential risk: why should I assume "the citizens people with the most guns who do the best in a revolution" would institute a government better for me than the current American one?
Any armed militia (let alone a single citizen) would have no power to fight anything. A government army would crush them. Today, guns are mostly killing other law-abiding citizens: hence, they are the wrong approach to a 21st century society. 300 years ago, US people had to protect themselves (against all enemies, including their "government" of the time: the British army)
> Any armed militia (let alone a single citizen) would have no power to fight anything. A government army would crush them.
If this were true, then America wouldn’t have failed so badly in Afghanistan, guerilla tactics work. The objective isnt to defeat the military in a war, if that were possible it would lead to instability and random groups of americans from taking over the government anytime.
The objective is to give enough capabilities to everyday citizens to atleast be able to setup a resistance severe enough that no government would consider such an action.
For those abilities I think the liberties provided are helpful enough.
But I agree with you, there are far more dangerous instruments being used against common citizens now, that it makes people protecting themselves with guns a bad joke.
That calls for more policies to allow citizens to defend themselves, whether that’s a more robust education system to help citizens catch lying politicians, or a more robust system to bring in control the massive polarization spreading across all democracies, and defences against gutting out of the middle class that’s taking place.
But all of them call for more protections to be added, not existing ones to be removed
> If this were true, then America wouldn’t have failed so badly in Afghanistan, guerilla tactics work.
There is quite a gulf between making a democracy give up on occupying you (especially when the reasons for that occupation become kinda nebulous), and an internal rebellion or civil war.
Guerilla tactics are often successful in the former case. The latter situation is much more prevalent, and in most cases just devolves into long term suffering.
There will be no internal rebellion or civil war, if government actually works for its own people and serves them diligently.
More effort should be placed in helping people improve their lives, get access to healthcare, education, food, clean water, protect them from isolation and mental health issues, improve the civil discourse so people are kinder and gentler, more civil to each other.
The answer might not be present in taking people’s guns away or remove methods for people to protect themselves.
America has had a century of prosperity, while having the liberties to carry arms. You’re right a lot of democracies are right now at risk of an internal rebellion and civil war, including america. But the question is what caused it and how can we reverse the trend ? The answer surely cannot lie in removing something (gun rights) that was present even in years of prosperity.
The risk of foreign governments initiating civil war is real, and america itself has done this to other countries that once used to be democracies, civilians not having guns certainly didn’t prevent those civil wars, it’s not that difficult for nations to pump in guns to rebels and terrorists to cause instability in a nation. None of those countries had gun rights like america did, yet they all fell to civil wars.
The answer lies in government serving the people, and being afraid of the public.
Not in making gov fearless, and thus less concerned about working for the masses.
Think about it for a moment, you and I are worried about a civil war breaking out. Why ? Because the recent government on both party sides haven’t been too honest and diligent in working for the public.
Whether that’s in deteriorating public education, prospects of high tech jobs, destruction of good blue collar jobs for people to improve their lives without obscene college debt, bad healthcare policies.
These situations can only happen from an apathetic government structure that cares 0 about the masses.
How do you think, it’ll make those same governments more caring towards the public, by removing the first and second amendments ?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think gun rights are necessary or some messiah that’ll save mankind, I just don’t understand the obsession with trying to remove them.
I wasn't talking about what governments should and shouldn't do, or how they should behave. Or even anything US specific - I'm not American. I was just addressing the statement that guerilla tactics work and Afghanistan was the example cited. And I don't think Afghanistan is a good example in this case.
Guerillas fighting an occupier (especially a democratic one) have had a reasonable track record of success. Guerillas fighting their own government much less so - the world has been and still is littered with those conflicts. There's a big difference in what is at stake from someone who can just go home, and someone who is fighting for their own home/survival.
The point of armed citizens is not them winning a civil war, but making the restrictions politicians have to subject themselves to, to remain safe, sufficiently inconvenient.
No more cinema, golf, theater, water park, mountain hiking or yachting.
Not being able to take a walk within half a mile of your property's border, always waiting for security to check the cars you are about to use, often having them tell you that you cannot go to xyz, because they lack manpower (or whatever reason) to secure the routes.
Citizens having access to weapons is a deal with the politicians that their daily lifes will only be as great as those of their subjects.
As a non American, the expectation that your democracy only survives because your elected dictators-in-waiting are too scared to take the mask off is such a weird concept.
There are no (or very few) other democracies with that culture. From the outside, it seems that culture and those attitudes are more likely to erode your democracy than protect it. A tiny minority viewpoint could create that fear, get that protection enabled, and then you've lost that leverage over the politicians you're touting.
As democracies go, US politicians are already the most removed from contact with their citizens - it already seems like you're in a vicious circle here. Politicians fearing their citizens doesn't seem like a good basis to form a healthy democracy on.
Not all politicians are in DC. The US actually has a lot of local elections and votes. More than in many democracies. Yeah it doesn't get a lot of air time on CNN but local elections matter a lot in the US.
And yes, constitutions should be designed to keep representatives in check and afraid of messing with the people. A constitution should restrict the power of a government and empower the citizens.
It has been said many times before but tanks and planes cannot enforce a no-gathering order, they cannot stand on street corners enforcing curfews. Tanks and planes cannot defend the incredibly fragile (to attackers) US energy grid, which is too spread out and vulnerable to be defended by boots on the ground anyway. There's also the fact that a large amount of the US military would desert or defect from their posts if tasked with killing American citizens. Organized rebel groups would receive aid from our geopolitical adversaries, and the highways would be destroyed within weeks or months of the anarchy setting in. If the US ever suffered a civil war today, it would end as a country overnight, possibly permanently.
> There's also the fact that a large amount of the US military would desert or defect from their posts if tasked with killing American citizens.
I'm ex-military and I don't agree with this statement at all. It's even less clear when you look at the number of people involved in Jan 6 and their affiliation with police or military.
You can pull from history on what members of the U.S. military will do against their own citizens so long as those citizens are properly vilified.
Sentiment certainly would vary unit to unit, I work with a number of vets (mostly enlisted not commissioned so that might bias it a bit) and when I've asked them about it I've gotten various answers from "refusal of unlawful orders" to "sabotage and desert". I don't know if its all talk but I certainly never hope the chips are on the table to find out.
That, and one could make the case than countries with strict gub laws, and thus a theoretically less afraid government, actually serve their citizens better than US when it comes to stuff like education, health care, social security, housing and infrastructure. So I am not really sure the theory of an armed citizenry resulting in better government for the people actually holds water.
Yeah it's interesting that this is debated because we actually have real-world data on this. It's not like no country with relatively high indices of freedom and prosperity has ever instituted strict gun control.
> I don’t think its productive to look down on Cambodians as less civilised or believe in a sort of American exceptionalism, where things like the Cambodian genocide is not a possibility.
I think it's silly to pretend that different countries' institutions are all equivalent. Some have much more robust systems of checks and balances, justice systems, levels of corruption, etc. And no, it's not that Americans are 'more civilized' than Cambodians, it's just a byproduct of the circumstances of history that led to this point.
in fact, are not well equipped to protect anyone either. Police are minutes away once dispatched. Even upon arrival, they aren't required to put themselves in harm's way to save you, just hope to mitigate further damage to others around you.
First off I love Jeff Atwood's take on it https://blog.codinghorror.com/do-certifications-matter.
But I recently just passed my CISSP, had to for work, and it was one of the most obnoxious and pointless exercises I ever engaged. Most of the test involved questions about information that is hopelessly out of date, or incredibly pointless whose only value is for ivory tower PhDs to argue about in white papers whose only actual security experience is putting in their password to their laptop.
I used to be sympathetic to an extent about the value of having a professional certifying body for software engineers, or something like that. Especially after having to debug JS by "full stack developers" who had just become "software engineers in 6 weeks". But after the CISSP racket I am enduring, I've realized a certfying body won't make software developers any more capable, it will only allow those who are the least qualified, to force arbitrary and capricious requirements onto people who actually care about the craft and are capble.
/rant over.