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The difference is Amazon is opt-in. If you don't want them collecting data on you, you can simply decline to use their products or services.

Unfortunately there's nothing simple about it. As they get their tentacles into more and more areas, your choice evaporates.

I'm an author. (If you're interested in Neopaganism or Buddhism, buy my book.) Not dealing with Amazon is not a practical option.

I'm a developer and system admin for a small company. The boss -- non-technical -- keeps talking about wanting to use AWS, because "it's what everybody's doing". I have to keep explaining why it's a bad move, both technically and because Amazon Is Evil.

Brick and mortar stores are closing. Sports Authority is the latest. Why? Competition from on-line sellers. Your alternatives to Amazon are dying off.

Amazon is a corporation -- a beast created by state fiat. The state has a duty to keep it leashed.

So what's the point in making more? Either TV or books. The amount we have seems to be sufficient for our needs

And what are our needs? If it's merely "something to put in front of our eyes for momentary distraction", sure, there's more than enough. If it's "something that speaks to the human condition as it exists today, that evokes an aesthetic experience, that's a different matter.

Also, of course, there is the joy and reward of having created something. I hope to sell a lot of copies of my book, but even if it never sells more that 100 copies I learned a tremendous amount in the process of writing it.

i'm not talking all FOSS and this doesn't include Android...I'm asking specifically about the Linux OS

So, you want to know who runs Linux, and you don't know what Linux means. Facepalm.

My desktop runs Fedora, and my laptops run Ubuntu Studio, which are versions of the GNU/Linux OS. My Transformer, my no-name tablet, and my phones run Android, an OS based on Linux.

I also have one cheap second-hand laptop that runs Windows, bought only because I had to make precise changes to the layout of a Word doc for my book. Gross incompetence on the part of the person doing layout for my publisher.

The "PC" term for psychopaths is now "anti-social personality disorder."

Not exactly. While the DSM claims psychopathy is equivalent to antisocial personality disorder, the broader literature finds psychopathy to be a more specific concept.

I'll skip the SF and tech and famous literature, since they're sure to be represented elsewhere in this thread, and give a few from the remainder of my required reading list for humanity:

The World's Religions, Huston Smith. (Originally published as The Religions of Man, the original is not as complete but if you find a cheap copy in a used bookstore grab it.) Whether you're a Xian or an atheist or whatever, you're going to have to eventually deal with people from other religions, and this is an excellent orientation as to what the world's major faiths are about.

The Book: on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts. There are some other books by Watts that I personally like better, but this is a good introduction to some of the concepts of Eastern philosophy.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig. Anyone who works with technology ought to read this.

The Cartoon History of the Universe and The Cartoon History of the United States, Larry Gonick. Gonick really hits the sweet spot, giving you an overview of history that's lighthearted and breezy while still informative. Also his The Cartoon Guide to Sex is a book I would give to teens and young adults.

Chocolate to Morphine, Andrew Weil & Winifred Rosen. It's targeted at high school kids, but this is a book everyone should read to understand why people use drugs and why drug prohibition is doomed to failure.

Also, in my completely biased opinion everyone should read this. :-)

I'd be willing to bet money that 90 percent of you would wilt like a daisy dropped in Death Valley.

Maybe so. One never knows until one's in that position.

OTOH, I do know that when the "Communications Decency Act" passed, I and a whole bunch of other people got pissed off and engaged in civil disobedience (strong language NSFW) at the (small, but we didn't really know at the time) risk of federal prosecution. I was younger and more full of fire then, perhaps; but I like to think that if I received a "National Security Letter I'd still have the testicular fortitude to post it far and wide, snail-mail out as many copies as I could, stand on the street corner handing them out to passers-by until they came to get me.

And then? Go out in a blaze of glory, or let them drag me off to prison in hopes of being a continual embarrassment to them? I don't know. Maybe that's when I'd wilt and say, "ooh, so sorry." But I hope I'd still stick a thumb in their eye first.

I'd be willing to bet money that 90 percent of you would wilt like a daisy dropped in Death Valley.

Maybe so. One never knows until one's in that position.

OTOH, I do know that when the "Communications Decency Act" passed, I and a whole bunch of other people got pissed off and engaged in civil disobedience (strong language NSFW) at the (small, but we didn't really know at the time) risk of federal prosecution. I was younger and more full of fire then, perhaps; but I like to think that if I received a "National Security Letter I'd still have the testicular fortitude to post it far and wide, snail-mail out as many copies as I could, stand on the street corner handing them out to passers-by until they came to get me.

And then? Go out in a blaze of glory, or let them drag me off to prison in hopes of being a continual embarrassment to them? I don't know. Maybe that's when I'd wilt and say, "ooh, so sorry." But I hope I'd still stick a thumb in their eye first.

"If you're pointing out your virtues to others, you have none to speak of."

Try that in an interview sometime.... If someones life is on the line, and you are more competent than the person or people trying to save them, then it would be not only bad, but possibly deadly, not to point out your virtues.

Yes, but there's a difference between "virtue", in the ethical sense, and "skill" or "knowledge".

I've actually been in the situation you describe. Yelling out, "I used to be a CPR instructor, she's a nurse, anyone better qualified? No? She's in charge!" may have helped save a life here by cutting through the "OMG whut happened?!?!" confusion of the moment. But that's different than "I am an exceptionally honest person, and she is very charitable!" :-)

is there ever a time when DRM is justified?

No. It's defective by design. It cannot co-exist with general-purpose computers, and so the content cartel seeks to eliminate general-purpose computers and put them under some form of centralized control. That is, in a word, evil.

My focus here is the aspect of how DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation.

There is no "right" to prevent others from reading or copying a work. I'm all for authors and musicians getting paid, but I've been arguing for over a decade now that the way to do that is to eliminate copyright and establish a royalty-right, modeled after songwriter royalties. I can sing "Tangled Up In Blue" for free at a party; if I play it at the bar, using it to make money, Dylan gets his nickel. I'm happy if people share my book or my album for free; if they make money off of it (putting it on an ad-supported site, for example), I want a cut. (The book is not CC licensed but will be DRM free; I intend to CC license a later edition after my publishing contact expires.)

but the sheer number of people that try to cite Wikipedia as a reference demonstrates that said hope is misplaced.

In formal writing, one should never reference an encyclopedia. (I say that even though I referenced the wik on one very minor point in my forthcoming book.) In an informal internet discussion, depending on the topic, a wik reference can be quite appropriate.

No, self delusion is what brings us religion.

That, of course, depends on what we mean by "religion". If we mean supernaturalist dogma, sure, that's all about delusions regarding the external objective universe.

If on the other hand we mean a set of practices and attitudes meant to create an experience of connection to ourselves, our fellow sentient beings, and the universe in general, then no; what brings us that sort of religion is the removal of delusions regarding the internal subjective universe. Consult your local Zen master or pantheist for more information. (Or read my book when it comes out.:-))

Separating these two component of religion is part of our task for the 21st century. If supernaturalist dogma prevails, humanity fails, unable to use science; but if spiritual and social alienation prevails, humanity also fails, unable to know to what use science should be put.

No matter how fast you can type, you still have to hit those curly braces with your right pinky and that grinds you straight to a halt!

Actually, no, you can hit that key with any finger and it still works. And that's why standard "touch typing" is broken for computers, especially for coding: it's meant for English text that makes very rare use of characters like {}[]/\, whereas code uses them frequently; and futhermore it's meant for a keyboard without cursor control keys.

I mostly I type with two fingers on each hand. I took my first programming class in 1981, and have been making a living at it since 1991. I've also written probably a million words of BBS, USENET, email, and web forum postings, plus a book of significant length. Four finger typing has gotten me by so far, because it takes me much longer to figure out what to type than to type it.

You read a LOT of Ayn Rand as a lonely, insecure teenager, didn't you?

Ha! I loathe Rand's work, and since I'm rather anti-capitalist, I'm sure she'd loathe me.

As for the Constitutionality of the Census, Article 1, Section 2. I'll wait while you look it up in your copy of the Constitution.What? You don't have a copy?

I was hosting this on-line copy at an FTP site before the Web existed, thanks.

Article 1, Section 2 authorizes the Feds to conduct an enumeration. That's a count. I don't mind being counted. It does not authorize an investigation into lifestyle. That's why I decline to answer anything on the census form beyond how many people live in my house.

Diverse courts, up to SCOTUS, have affirmed that the Census can ask whatever questions it feels germane to its mission.

The illiteracy of the courts does not change the meaning of the document.

As for the 'toilet' question. Statistics. Watching trends over the decades are very useful.

Except that "statistics" is not an excuse for demanding, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, personally-identifiable answers to questions about my plumbing. Anonymous voluntary surveys can gather the info.

It's not that I think there might be some conspiracy to, ahem, flush out certain groups based on toilet info -- though I would be concerned about local governments, or worse yet private homeowner associations, trying to use the data for code enforcement; it's a matter of principle. If you stand up for the little infringements, you're in practice when a big one comes along; if you're in the habit of doing whatever those in Authority ask of you without analysis, you will do horrible things at the request of anyone who can put on the attitude of power.

So, the bottom line is, you just proved yourself to be one of those morons who got their Official Libertarian Panties in a wad over a legitimate question in the Census.

Considering that census data was, in the past, used to herd innocent Americans into concentration camps, anyone who doesn't have at least a tiny drop of concern about census data is woefully ignorant.

"But that data is protected by law!" you protest. It was protected before WWII also. Then the law changed. Anyone who doesn't think that it's at least possible that it could change again is woefully ignorant.

No. Libraries paid the author when they bought their hardcover copy.

So what? I'm still using the product of the author's labor without compensating them -- the fact the someone else threw a few bucks their ways doesn't change that.

is that what we really want? All the authors to leave the profession and get jobs at a factory, because they no longer earn any money from their books (which everyone takes for free)? I hope not.

As a budding author, I also hope not. (If I self-publish, my book will be available under a Creative Commons license; but I think the best way to get it out to as many people as possible is still the traditional publishing route, so I expect I'll be limited in what I can negotiate there.) But I repeat: wanting authors to be paid does not imply that the best way to accomplish this is to have the government create an artificial monopoly on the making of copies.

For years I've been advocating the songwriter model: I can sing a Bob Dylan tune in the shower, or at a party with friends, and not pay anything; but if I play it at the bar to bring in customers, or record a cover version and sell the CD, I owe Bob a cut of the money I make. While the implementation with BMI and ASCAP has problems, I think the basic idea is sound. Not a copy-right that restricts sharing, but a royalty-right on for-profit use.

Similarly: One cannot "steal" from a slave.

No, not similarly at all.

Copying is not theft, because the author is my personal slave...

Except that no one is enslaving any authors. Enslavement requires force -- if the "slave" is free to leave without threat of force, he or she is not a slave. No force is being applied at all if I (hypothetically) make a copy of a book. Force is only being applied if the author, or the government on behalf of the author, applies force to prevent me from making a copy. If anything, copyright is closer to slavery than is unauthorized copying, though it's a stupid and useless comparison in either case.

Copying is not theft because theft deprives someone of the use of the stolen thing; copying a book does not deprive anyone else of the use of that book.

Theft of another human being's labor, or the product of that labor (cotton, books), without compensating them is the very definition of slavery.

If you believe that using the product of another person's labor without compensating them is "theft" and "the very definition of slavery", then you must be against libraries in the first place -- or any other loan of a book. You must think the world that RMS outlines is a utopia, then. Indeed, you must think that everyone who's ever heard or read one of my poems, or heard one of my songs, owes me money. Hell, according to that reasoning you owe me money for reading this post -- it's a product of my labor, after all. You can pay me here.

Or, more likely, you haven't thought the issue through in any sensible way. Comparing making a copy to holding slaves is kind of a dead giveaway about that.

"It is good that authors of quality work are compensated" does not imply "the best way to see that authors of quality work are compensated is to use government force to create an artificial monopoly on the making of copies," nor does it imply "All persons viewing a work should be forced to pay a tithe to that work's creator."

Zen came to fruition the Tang Dynasty, at the height of development of Buddhism in China.

I don't know what you mean by the "height of development"; certainly Buddhism was popular, but it was a version encrusted with superstition and metaphysics and nonsense about accumulating merit ("good karma") to get a better incarnation the next time around. In large part Ch'an developed as a corrective to this. The whole idea of "highest practice" is completely antithetical to the point of Zen: what you are doing right now this moment is your highest practice. Chop wood, carry water, write code, say stupid shit on /. -- this is IT.

Without a solid foundation, studying Zen (especially in the West) is simply nonsense.

One doesn't study Zen, one practices Zen. It's a matter of experience. Consider why the Sixth Patriarch tore up the sutras. (Supposedly. If he ever really existed.)

If anyone's interested, here's a quick sketch of the history of the two most significant teachers in the development of Zen, Bodhidharma and Hui Neng.

I'd be amazed to meet a developer born in the US with a masters in CompSci.

Hi there, lgw. Always happy to amaze people. MS, Computer Science, University of Maryland 1993, and as Born in the USA as anyone can be.

The only legitimate excuse for a giant library is if you are an academic researcher or an author. A good writer is a good reader, as they say. I am not a writer so I have no such need to keep things on file like that.

That may be part of it; though I'm a poet, my style is definitely informed by the prose I read. And certainly my book collection has swelled a bit the past few years as I've been doing research for the historical sections of my non-fiction book. Though for that I've also made extensive use of Google Books, the Sacred Texts archive, and Project Gutenberg, as well as some more specialized sites. Nothing like being able to find rare, long out-of-print original sources on-line.

Also many of my books pertain to my "other jobs", references related to martial arts and acupressure and massage. (For the day job, software, I have a few dead trees, but most of them I acquired pre-Web, or at least back in the days of dial-up.)

But I do enjoy just having books around. I prefer "collector" to "hoarder", thank you very much. :-)

Note the first abduction didn't happen until it had already been in pulps and film.

I was really into UFOs when I was a kid in the 1970s. Back then, people saw all sorts of different aliens: tall ones, short ones, reptilian ones, green-skinned humanoids, and so on. It's interesting how, since Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, pretty much everyone sees those short, anime-eyed Grays.

It's fun stuff to read about and write tall tales about ... and nothing more.

Oh, definitely something more: studying UFOs and similar phenomena can tell us a lot about how human minds assemble reality.

Crowley was every bit a genius. He had chunks of guys like L.Ron Hubbard in his stool. His work is very very hard to read, and you always get the sense that he's laughing atyou, the reader, but there's much to learn in what he had to say. His "Magick Without Tears" is still one of the greatest works for young sorcerers.

When he was at his best -- and parts of Magick Without Tears are there -- yes.

When he was deep in the grip of his Aiwass delusions, well, not so much.

Chaos Magick works. I am absolutely convinced that you can change your external reality in significant (even measurable) ways using Magick.

You can certainly change your experience, your own subjective reality, with magic(k).

Of course, you can also do that with LSD.

And since "consensus" reality is a social construct, if you've got a crowd that's susceptible to manipulation, under some circumstances you can change the consensus with magic(k).

But if you think "objective" reality -- that is, consensus reality as observed and experienced under carefully controlled conditions by skeptical observers in a reproducible manner -- can be changed by magic(k) in ways not already accounted for by physics, well, prove it and the JREF has a fortune for you.

The true believer's approach makes claims about the objective universe that don't hold up to controlled experiment and observation. The skeptic's dismissal of all this as hallucination or delusion neglects the fact that most events in the universe occur outside of laboratory controls, and ignores the person to whom the experience is happening, flattening out the subjective dimension. The challenge for the industrial-strength shaman is to move between these models, from reality tunnel to reality tunnel, as needed to be effective in any given situation.

Crowley was nuttier than a Snickers bar.

...half the time. When the wind was southerly, he knew a hawk from a handsaw.

He's an interesting character. He was one of the first Westerners to take an interest in yoga and in Buddhism, and his early writings on these are insightful. Some of his work shows a understanding of ritual magic as psychological exercise -- for instance, in a preface to his and Mather's version of The Lesser Key of Solomon, he wrote that "The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.... If, then, I say, with Solomon: 'The Spirit Cimieries teaches logic,' what I mean is: 'Those portions of my brain which subserve the logical faculty may be stimulated and developed by following out the processes called "The Invocation of Cimieries."'"

And then he had a nervous breakdown and started top believe that he was "the Prophet chosen to proclaim the Law which will determine the destinies of this planet for an epoch," and "in a class which contains only seven other names in the whole of human history".

Some more thoughts on poor ol' Aleister here.

So: wacky, yes, but I'd take Crowley over L. Ron any day.

It's very simple: a person has the right to profit from their work if they choose.

Oh really? I choose to profit from this post. If that's my right, who owes me the check? I guess as reader, you do...you can pay me here, kthx.

Tell me, from what principle do you derive this "right" to profit?

It's very, very easy to copy an artist's work nowadays, so the only way to preserve their rights is through the legal construct of copyright.

No. The ease of making copies makes a government-created monopoly on doing so a piss-poor way of achieving the goal of getting artists paid.

I'll repeat the same recommendation I've been making for year now: eliminate copyright. Replace it with a royalty right modeled on songwriter performance royalties.

I can sing "All Along the Watchtower" in the shower, or at a party, and not owe Bob Dylan a cent. I can share the son without limit. But when I play it on stage at the local bar, Bob gets his nickel of royalties -- when we're selling it (you're paying for the music with the beer), the author of the work gets a cut.

by objective measures their systems leave a lot to be desired and often don't justify the TCO, or the inevitable lock in to the providers total solution suite.

While vendor lock-in is a common feature in products from established Western vendors, folks in the far East have been building their own custom solutions from a variety of providers for a long while now. Some newer, upstart Western vendors also eschew lock-in.

Of course, at some point in deciding whether the TCO is justified or not we need to ask just what is religion, anyway?

I heard of dogs eating vegetarian, but I thought that it was just anecdote.

Dogs can do quite well on a vegetarian diet - left to their own devices they're pretty omnivorous. Mine love carrots, broccoli, and chickpeas.

you can check buddhism : since the world only exists as part of the mind of people, it is not possible for people to cause accidents due to "not knowing" something, since they know about the entire world. So dig a hold in the sidewalk, camouflage it, and if someone falls into it you're sure buddhism is wrong.

Uh, no. The hole exists in the subjective world of the person who falls into it, as soon as they discover it. That subjective world exists only in that persons mind.

Whether an "objective" world exists or not is irrelevant to the core teachings of Buddhism, which are concerned with the nature and relief of human suffering. If the hole is on a holodeck, or if the whole thing is some Matrix-style illusion, doesn't matter: the relevant question is, what you you do now that you're having this experience of being at the bottom of the hole with a broken ankle?

Of course some stupid ideas have been glommed on to the various schools over the years, but the essence of Buddhism is that 1) suffering exists, 2) suffering is caused by the mental activity we call "desire" or "attachment", 3) a solution to suffering exists, and 4) the solution is the cultivation of a lifestyle and mental habits that reduce desire and attachment-thinking. (More here, if you're interested in my take on it.)

This is not something that can be disproved by digging a hole and watching to see if people fall in.

The problem of doing this with the bible is that it hardly makes any direct claim at all.

It makes plenty. Your apology for the contradictions as "over-analyzed" is curious indeed; given the significance of the book to many in the Western world, of course it's been analyzed a lot. Doesn't change the contradictions. Like "No man hath seen God at any time" in John 1:18, and "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." in Exodus 33:11. Things like that blow the doors off of Biblical inerrancy.

Of course, not all Christians believe in Biblical inerrancy. Nor do all Muslims belief that the Qur'an is a literal document.

Personally, I think the question of whether or not some religion is actually true is a pretty interesting one. From your tone I'm going to guess you've already decided that none is, though.

That's making a whole lot of assumptions about the definition of religion, what (if anything) it means for a religion to be "true", and what my opinions on the subject are.

I have been giving the matter much consideration here.

On the specific topic of religion and sex, I'm working in a chapter about that. Suffice it to say I'm taking a rather different tack than Matthew.

Personally, I think the question of whether or not some religion is actually true is a pretty interesting one. From your tone I'm going to guess you've already decided that none is, though.

That's making a whole lot of assumptions about the definition of religion, what (if anything) it means for a religion to be "true", and what my opinions on the subject are.

I have been giving the matter much consideration here.

On the specific topic of religion and sex, I'm working in a chapter about that. Suffice it to say I'm taking a rather different tack than Matthew.

Why not write in Tom Cruise or Bugs Bunny?

Actually, might write in myself this year. I am now old enough to be Constitutionally qualified, and I find I agree with myself on most major issues.

If you're looking for a candidate who was against the Iraq invasion from the start and wants to get us out of there as soon as is practical, who would end warrantless wiretapping and torture and close Gitmo - and would prosecute those in the current administration for their crimes; who is against the War on Drugs and in favor of the RKBA; who is pro-choice, pro-privacy, pro-separation of church and state, and anti-censorship; who's willing to restore a fair level of taxation on the wealthy, who would reduce federal spending by slashing the bloated defense budget feel free to write me in: Thomas Mark Swiss.

The reason for a piss test would be to weed out the people who would potentially come into work under the influence of drugs or alcohol

Except that a piss tell tells you no such thing. A positive result tells that either 1) it's a false positive (very likely) or 2) that someone used cannabis sometime in the past month or other drugs within the past few days. It tells you nothing about present impairment.

People subject to drug testing who want to use drugs often use LSD, which is just about impossible to detect via urine testing; so you're encouraging people to drop and spend a whole day tripping, rather than relaxing with a bong hit Saturday night. Brilliant.

If the only way you can tell if I'm using drugs is to test my urine, then my (hypothetical) drug use is not affecting my work and is none of your business. If you want to prevent people from coming to work impaired, then institute an impairment testing policy.

Employers who perform chemical drug screens demonstrate their own ignorance and incompetence; I will not even consider working for them.

They also include a lot of software, which is the livelihood of many slashdot posters. Are you sure we can live without commercial software development?

The majority of software is bespoke. We could (and should) eliminate copyright on computer software and still have plenty of jobs.

I've been developing software, and getting paid for it, since 1990. Only about one year of that time was spend developing software that was "sold" as a commerical product, and even there we probably could have arranged it to give away the software and selling support contracts.

the FSF position is incompatible with a company that wishes to produce software and sell a license to use it. It completely destroys that business model.

I think that's correct, yes. Since the software produced by that business model is mostly a large pile of suck, and since that business model requires draconian measures to supress people's natural inclination to share information and does not respect freedom, let it die. Why in the world should we make and enforce copyright laws to prop up a model that's not in the public interest to benefit the stockholders of COTS companies?

There would still be plenty of software jobs. As I said, most software is bespoke - ESR estimated that 90-95% of software produced is not meant for sale.

I'm not interested in putting myself out of work. (Even though, as I see outsourcing and age discrimination playing a larger role, I have decided to get skills in another field.) I've made my living from creating software since the early 90s, and only about one year of that was in environment where we were selling "licenced" software - and really, even there we were more selling a supported system to a handful of customers, and probably could have GPLed our software without affecting revenues. (That company failed anyway...opening the source might have prodded them to fix their code before it got so ugly it couldn't be maintained.)

Make it one page with a short work history (past 5 years only)

Why just the past five years? Stuff I did in 2000 might be quite relevant to some need an employer has, or might get a foot in the door through networking ("Hey, Joe! Says this guy worked at XYZ corp in 1999. You used to work there, you know him?").

BTW, I'm not in the market but get a fair number of calls each month from recruiters. My resume's format must be ok.

Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law.

No, it hasn't. Teaching people songs is fair use. If we're jamming at a party and I tell you, "Let's play `Knocking on Heaven's Door'. Oh, you don't know it? It G, D, and a little Am7/C hammer on thing," that's the way music works. Are you going to put a gag order on every guitarist?

Songwriters get paid royalties when people sing their songs in for-profit performaces. (Yes, the details are tricky, but the idea is IMHO basically sound.) OLGA is not just fair use, its existance is actively in songwriter's interests. Neil Young gets a nickel every time I play "Needle and the Damage Done", which I learned off of OLGA, at one of my gigs. (But not if I sing it in the shower, or at a party where I'm playing just for fun.) The people against this are parasitic "music publishers". Fsck them.

We've been through this before. (Note the date on that article.) OLGA's contents have long since been distributed to scores of other tab sites.

It's not that people past 30 can't think, it's just that it's slightly harder for them to learn. It's not that they can't learn either, it's just harder.

I went back to school to study shiatsu ("acupressure massage") when I was 33. This involved a rigorous study of both Western anatomy and the principles of Chinese medicine. This year, at 36, I took my first class in the Japanese language.

I found it easier to learn now than I did when I was in college or graduate school. I had a richer variety of knowledge and experience to which to tie new ideas; I had clearer motivation; and I certainly had better study skills.

I think the idea that older people have difficulty learning comes from observing people who go to school in their youth, then stop any significant learning for many years; and then try to pick it up again.

The ability to learn is like anything else - use it or lose it. Be a lifelong learner. In those years between graduate school and massage school, I'd taught myself C++, PHP, SQL, a bit of Perl, Java, and Javascript, and some more general technical stuff; I continued to study karate and music and poetry and history and politics and philosophy; taught myself to juggle devil sticks, at least enough to impress young kids...I think I kept the grey matter tuned up enough that new learning is no problem.

There are some areas where certain modes of perception can be best shaped while the brain is still young, language and music for example, but it seems that "young" in this case means single digits. There's a big difference between starting to learn a new language at 5 versus 15, but I think little difference between 15 and 35.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- The Once and Future King, T. H. White

It's not that people past 30 can't think, it's just that it's slightly harder for them to learn. It's not that they can't learn either, it's just harder.

I went back to school to study shiatsu ("acupressure massage") when I was 33. This involved a rigorous study of both Western anatomy and the principles of Chinese medicine. This year, at 36, I took my first class in the Japanese language.

I found it easier to learn now than I did when I was in college or graduate school. I had a richer variety of knowledge and experience to which to tie new ideas; I had clearer motivation; and I certainly had better study skills.

I think the idea that older people have difficulty learning comes from observing people who go to school in their youth, then stop any significant learning for many years; and then try to pick it up again.

The ability to learn is like anything else - use it or lose it. Be a lifelong learner. In those years between graduate school and massage school, I'd taught myself C++, PHP, SQL, a bit of Perl, Java, and Javascript, and some more general technical stuff; I continued to study karate and music and poetry and history and politics and philosophy; taught myself to juggle devil sticks, at least enough to impress young kids...I think I kept the grey matter tuned up enough that new learning is no problem.

There are some areas where certain modes of perception can be best shaped while the brain is still young, language and music for example, but it seems that "young" in this case means single digits. There's a big difference between starting to learn a new language at 5 versus 15, but I think little difference between 15 and 35.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- The Once and Future King, T. H. White

It's not that people past 30 can't think, it's just that it's slightly harder for them to learn. It's not that they can't learn either, it's just harder.

I went back to school to study shiatsu ("acupressure massage") when I was 33. This involved a rigorous study of both Western anatomy and the principles of Chinese medicine. This year, at 36, I took my first class in the Japanese language.

I found it easier to learn now than I did when I was in college or graduate school. I had a richer variety of knowledge and experience to which to tie new ideas; I had clearer motivation; and I certainly had better study skills.

I think the idea that older people have difficulty learning comes from observing people who go to school in their youth, then stop any significant learning for many years; and then try to pick it up again.

The ability to learn is like anything else - use it or lose it. Be a lifelong learner. In those years between graduate school and massage school, I'd taught myself C++, PHP, SQL, a bit of Perl, Java, and Javascript, and some more general technical stuff; I continued to study karate and music and poetry and history and politics and philosophy; taught myself to juggle devil sticks, at least enough to impress young kids...I think I kept the grey matter tuned up enough that new learning is no problem.

There are some areas where certain modes of perception can be best shaped while the brain is still young, language and music for example, but it seems that "young" in this case means single digits. There's a big difference between starting to learn a new language at 5 versus 15, but I think little difference between 15 and 35.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- The Once and Future King, T. H. White

Either the platform was developed in-house, in which case the respective team should be shot

It seems that out in the "real world", there are many development teams who should have been put up against the wall ages ago. I've worked on a fair number of projects, and useful documentation has been the exception rather than the rule.

Once there was a farmer who had only one horse. One day the horse got loose and ran away. "What bad luck!" his neighbors said. "Well, good, bad, who can say?" said the farmer.

The next day the horse came back - leading several wild horses that it had befriended. "What good luck!" his neighbors said. "Good, bad, who knows?" said the farmer.

The farmer's son, trying to tame one of the new horses, fell off and broke his leg. "How terrible!" said the farmer's neighbors. "Perhaps. We'll see."

A few days later, the army came through looking for young men to conscript, but they couldn't take the farmer's son because of his broken leg. "How fortunate!" "Maybe. Good, bad, who knows?"

- old Taoist story, stolen from here: http://infamous.net/election2004msg.html

It is *never* correct to link something like "click here" - unless you're linking to the Click Here(R) Inc. home page.

Sorry, but just who is the arbiter of correct hypertext conventions? It's entirely too new a form to make such strong statements.

It's correct to write hypertext that's clear to the reader. Occasionally - not often, but occasionally - it may clearest to say something like, "If you want more details, click here".

If the article is on CNN about flying monkeys, "flying monkeys" should be linked because that's what the link is about - it's not about CNN.

For CNN, I'd agree, since we all presumably know what CNN is. If the article is from Joe's News Service, about which people have no information, it might be appropriate to link that also, i.e. [a href="www.JoesNewsService.com"]Joe's News Service[/a] reports that [a href="www.JoesNewsService.com/flyingmonkeys"]flyin g monkeys[/a] have been sighted over Washington D.C.". That first link might help readers understand that Joe's News Service is one notch below the Weekly World News in terms of credibility. (Or maybe a link to "www.MediaWatchdog.com/JoesNewsService" would be more appropriate as the first link.)

The problem is that the world is ruled and owned by fucking morning people.

Would that I had mod points, brother. (Er, sister? Can't tell from here.) Amen!

"Morning people are respected. Night people are feared." - calligraphic button I have

"You can look at the moon / Not the sun, it's too bright / Take it as evidence / We were made for the night" - me

Many people will suggest otherwise, but they are often those who lack a formal education and background in designing secure, scalable, high-reliability software systems.

I have an M.S. in Computer Science, spent my first three years as a professional developer working on the development of a secure (TCSEC B3 targeted) operating system, then another year and a half on a firewall project based on a secure OS. I've also worked in the telecom and space sciences fields for well-known companies such as Hughes, IBM, and TRW, designing and developing secure and reliable software. These days I work for a small company, still doing my best to design and develop secure and reliable software - now in PHP.

I don't claim to be a security expert - I've met some of the experts and they're far beyond where I'll ever be on the topic. But I certainly don't fit your description of uneducated or inexperienced. And I find your claims wrt PHP bogus.

Taking a quick look at the http://www.hardened-php.net/advisories.15.html"> advisories for the "Hardened PHP" project you mention, I see 1) issues with applications written in PHP - not the language's fault; 2) people doing stupid things with the language (for example, leaving phpinfo() called in deployed scripts), which is not a language issue; or 3) addressing implementation bugs, which is no different than those found in other languages - except that with PHP we call something a "PHP bug" that in, for instance, C, would be a "libc bug".

If you've got specific claims, please, put them out. But all I see in this thread so far is vague allegations. Or maybe trolling.

No, you do not need to understand the mathematics of finite state automata to make good use of regular expression.

I said "understand". Not merely "make good use of". You can make decent use of a thing without fully understanding it - I have little understanding of how my car works. But if I wanted to get the best use out of it, high performance, I need to understand it as fully as I can. You also have to know the limits of that tool, which means learning about the difference between context-free and context-sensitive languages (when to use lex/flex and when to use yacc/bison).

I don't want to flame, but I am 90% certain that you are either a student, or working in academics.

Pagan Meetup Group...All I can say is WTF?

Uhhh...

• this,
• this,
• this, and
• this

Next is a vegan meetup group with a whole 3 members. I see no interest in meeting with people based on what I eat. What's next? A steak eaters group?

I like to meet other vegans: swap recipies, talk about retaurants, where to find good non-leather shoes, etcetera. But more importantly, I prefer to date vegetarian women. :-)

I'd rather just hang with normal people, TY.

How boring. I prefer the company of interesting people, stimulates the brain.

Where do you draw the line? Shouldn't you also avoid tables for the benefit of those still using NCSA Mosaic? What about the small but significant CERN Linemode demographic?

I don't have any Mosaic hits in my logs. I do have Netscape 4 and IE 4 hits - not a lot, but some. If you want the maximum audience for your content, that suggests where to draw the line.

Now that modern, standards-compliant browsers like Firefox exist and are freely available, it's more than about time to knock Netscape 4.7 on the head and tell those still using it to upgrade or be left behind.

Firefox requires a 233Mhz Pentium, and recommends a 500MHz box with 128 MB. Believe it or not, there are still people out there with computers that don't meet the required, much less recommended, spec.

For my personal websites, it's all content, and there's no reason to leave anyone behind for the sake of eye candy.

For the site that pays the bills, our members are antique dealers, and (at least according to the boss) as a whole they are a significantly non-tech-savvy bunch, so suggesting any sort of upgrade is right out. (Maybe antique dealers like using "antique" software and hardware, I dunno.) I pitch it to the lowest common denominator. I keep Javascript to a minimum and don't use the newest features.

The highest hourly rate I've had for a steady job was $55/hour. I've made much more for a short-term consulting gig, and I'm making much less now, but trading for flexibility, telecommuting, and lower stress.

That was for a W2 contract position (that means I'm an hourly employee of Company X, but as a practical matter I work for Company Y, which sends a lot of money to Company X, which sends a much smaller amount of money to me), for a pretty good C/C++/Unix geek with a Master's degree and over a decade's experience, in the relatively well-paying Baltimore/DC area. During the boom I could probably have gotten $60/hour or more if I wanted to spend a lot of time commuting from Baltimore to Northern Virginia.

As an average, though? Not unless they're talking about the cost to the employer rather than the actual salary of the programmer.

No job I've gotten has ever come from following up on an advertisment, anyway. They all came from networking.

For a contrary view: I've never gotten a job through "networking". Mostly I've followed up on ads, a few times I've been hired by people who found my resume on the net or on a job site.

It's worked well for me. My social circle and my work circle don't intersect much, and I like it that way. I don't intend to start going our for beers with management types.

And in my experience, no, employers don't negotiate employment contracts for any jobs below the Director (possibly Group Manager) level.

I'm no Director or Group Manager, just a hacker, but I've had such "All your time are belong to us" clauses striken from contracts twice.

I just pointed out that, under the clause as written, I couldn't teach my karate classes, or write my poetry. Surely they didn't mean such a silly thing as that, I know it's not their intention, but I can't sign a binding document that means I'd abandon my poor students, think of the children in my karate class, or the college kids in my writing workshop...

Of course, the increasing prevalance of bullshit like this is part of the reason I've cut back to doing tech work part-time, and am now studying massage and shiatsu. (Though it was not even an issue at my current tech job.) Do bodywork part-time, do some tech consulting on the side, and never again have to argue with morons about who gets to control my ideas and my spare time. (Or about peeing in a cup. Or have to worry about some guy in India doing my job for half the pay.)

A drug screen is meant to pick up illegal activity which poses a tangible safety and liability issue to a potential employer.

Bullshit.

Chemical screens for drug metabolites say absolutely nothing about whether you are a safety issue. If that was the issue, impairment tests would be used. (And a few intelligent employers do use impairment tests.) Drug screens are about what you're doing in your own time - they are a lifestyle screen. They're a loyalty oath to the Drug War.

(They're also surprisingly inaccurate for something that can ruin your life.)

I got my first job in high school, 17 years ago. I've been in the workforce ever since. I've never pissed in a cup for an employer. I've turned down job offers over it. I've still done ok.

Drug tests: just say no.

The shirts should come from a nice mens store with hardwood floors and not cost less than $80 apiece.

Let's see...for $240, I could by three of your dress shirts, and work with people who think that expensive clothes make you a better person.

Or, I could buy a decent second-hand guitar, and wear t-shirts to work, and get to work with very smart people on very interesting projects.

I know which liefstyle I prefer...

I have used your basic Word docs and Excel spreadsheets in the past for this but it just simply wasn't up to snuff as far as I'm concerned.

Why not?

Seriously. I've worked on a few projects of some magnitude and we never used any "requirements management system" more special than standard document files. (Of course, you shouldn't be putting any data at all in proprietary and virus-ridden Word or Excel formats, but there are safe and open alternatives.) Heck, they managed to put a man on the moon with a "requirements management system" that probably consisted of three-ring binders.

Ask yourself: is using an fancy-pants automated system going to simplify or complicate the process?