I'm not concerned with video games changing peoples' behavior, turning normal people into psychopaths.
What I would like to see studied, is the potential for video games to make psychopathic and sociopathic people more efficient in their anti-social abilities.
For example, I don't think playing ultra-realistic first person shooters will necessarily make anyone want to go out and shoot someone, but it seems to me, if you're a psychopath and you're into those games, they can train you to be a much more efficient psychopath when it comes time to assaulting a school or public place.
There are "normal" brains and "psychopath" brains. A violent video game isn't going to turn a normal well-balanced individual into a psychopath. Quite the opposite, it's going to give them an outlet to get the aggression they might have out of their system in a safe, sanitary way. Now, if someone has a bit of an abnormal brain, not your average Joe on the street, but a potential future school-shooter, and they play a violent video game; rather than be a safe way of relieving aggression, might it cause them to become more aggressive. I don't know, but it is a plausible scenario.
I in no way, believe that violent video games make non-violent, average people become more violent. There have been way too many studies over the years that prove this isn't true. In fact, I recall reading one study a year or two back that showed the complete opposite; people who played violent video games committed fewer violent acts.
That said, people who are capable of shooting up a school probably aren't of your typical mental profile. It takes a certain kind of brain and thought process to be able to justify to yourself doing such a terrible thing. People do lots of bad things, but as a species we are mostly pre-programmed to be conscientious and cooperative (even though we all occasionally do jackassy things... the idea of being capable of mass murdering others is a foreign thought to us).
Could these atypical people who ARE capable of mass murder be "provoked" by violent games? It is possible. It is possible that a normal healthy outlet for normal people, such as games, could trigger already unstable people or make their condition worse.
I don't think it will improve their ability to carry out acts though. It won't make them better at shooting or killing. An already atypical mind might be desensitized to it though if they are unable to differentiate reality from the fantasy of a game.
That's more than double the average HOUSEHOLD income in the US. Yes, that's rich, even if you don't feel rich at that value and merely feel middle-class. At 120k you're making more than double what the average household in the US makes.
It's certainly a high enough bracket that you should be paying taxes. You think because you make only "120k" you shouldn't have to pay taxes? If you make that much money you shouldn't be exempt from luxury taxes. You may have fewer luxuries than people earning millions- but you still have some luxuries and SHOULD be paying more than people earning $20k or $30k and living on bare necessities alone.
Having a neckbeard results in police having probable cause to search your property for bitcoin mining rigs. The thing is, it's all a scam, they're just trying to steal their Cheetos.
And consumption isn't going to stop because it is taxed. All we're doing is shifting the tax burden from income tax (which primarily impacts lower and middle classes) to non-essentials sales-tax (which would impact middle and upper classes).
Rich people are not going to stop buying their several hundred (or several thousand) dollar suits just because it is taxed anymore than they stop trying to earn because of income taxes. The difference is, they can't hide as easily from a consumption based tax as they can from a income tax. A sales based tax (especially if placed on non-essentials only) means that we don't have this ridiculous system we have now where the poor and middle class pay a higher percent of their wages than the rich do; because the lower classes will never be able to buy luxuries to the same extent that the rich do.
In all reality though, there will probably always be a hybrid tax system, and that's probably for the best.
I recall back in the 80s when I was a child, we visited Switzerland and my father had to buy a road pass at the border. I was small so I don't remember the details but I think it was some sort of toll pass for all of the roads in the country.
Sounds great for most places. It would hurt me personally. I have to live about 30 miles (road distance not as crow flies) from my place of work because house prices in any desirable location near where I work are way too high. This would drive up prices even more around where I work. I'll always have an hour+ commute if I want to continue working there- I'll never save up enough to live nearby.
Wow, you are one confused or uneducated motherfucker. A tax on goods and services is very regressive. People who make very little money spend everything they make on goods and services; people in the 1% spend a fraction of their income on goods and services and invest the rest to make more money. You would not be solving the inequality problem; you'd be making it worse than it already is, which is quite a feat.
That's why you don't tax non-hospitality foods or goods. If the rich aren't consuming, and truly reinvesting- I'm all for that money not being taxed as it is going back into the economy.
The moment they buy a $500,000+ house or a $50,000 car or a suit over $100, or a $20 restaurant meal, etc- kick in the taxes. Poor people buy cheap food and cheap clothing and certainly don't spend $500,000 on a house or $50,000 on a car.
Necessities shouldn't be taxed, but luxuries should.
Like the single tax, the most fair and effective tax that exists: a progressive income tax.
I know we're wandering off topic a little here but- I prefer a tax on purchased goods and services. The rich have always found ways of circumventing income taxes. Most of the mega-rich end up paying a lower % of their earning on taxes than the average person (despite theoretically being in a high tax bracket).
Goods and services (exclude non hospitality food items) is a better idea because you pay more based on the more you consume. I would also suggest a progressive tax-bracket for items too to tax luxuries higher than necessities. Clothing over a certain $ amount is taxed higher than regular clothing. Cars over a certain $ amount taxed higher... etc.
I don't have much respect for people who sell their dignity for a few seconds of convenience. If you use PayPal, or Amazon or Google or Facebook or Apple, you're a sucker, plain and simple.
Or visa... or mastercard... or discovery... or American express... or shop at any store online... or visit any website... or have an ISP... or have a mobile phone provider... or have a bank account... or...
The problem is, it's not just one or two stores. It's not just one or two institutions. They're ALL collecting data on you. They're ALL sharing information about you. You don't use Google or Facebook... do you think that means they don't have copious data about you? They do.
You could limit who you do business with- but that means you have to do business with whose left- and they get more concentrated information about you (and share it with Google, and Facebook and...). The concern here should be that even if you're not a customer of "XYZ" - they're still buying your data from elsewhere, maybe your bank, maybe your ISP, maybe both... The world is one interconnected web of privacy violation.
Most of us around the world pay taxes on every liter or gallon of petroleum our cars consume. In some countries it's a pretty high tax. If electric vehicles start making up a larger and larger % of vehicles on the road will there come an end where to be fair you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity- take a certain % of your electricity usage and put it towards maintaining roads and public transportation?
We all benefit from roads and bridges, even those that don't drive.
Obviously we're still at the stage where most governments are still trying to encourage more electric vehicles, but eventually if electric takes off like planned, it's going to become unfair to place all the burden of taxes to maintain roads on drivers of ICE vehicles. Especially since it will most likely be the poor and impoverished who will be the last to adapt to the new electric-vehicle age.
I wonder if this means the 'premium' brands such as Evian, or Buxton Spring or whomever are actually okay?
Even expensive brands contained plastic. (although expensive brands probably use higher quality plastics...)
Whether these microplastics that we consume cause any problems health-wise is unproven. So, it might not be harming us at all- might be perfectly safe... or it might be giving us all autism and peanut allergies or some other weird 21st Century disease that everyone gets these days. I guess we'll find out when we're much too old to worry about it anymore...
Two bottled waters I purchase are from a local well or mountain spring where there are no sources of animal waste or industrial pollution. My community has a recycling program that collects cans, bottles, and paper so these things don't go into oceans, rivers or a landfill..
Microplastics do. That's the point of this study. When you open the cap, lots of microplastics deposit into the water (most too small to be seen with the eye, a significant portion small enough to be absorbed into your blood stream)- some are already in the water from the bottle and from other sources. Unless you pisas and kakas directly into a plastic recycling plant... all that plastic you are consuming passes through you and out of you in your waste... And eventually makes it's way into rivers and oceans. All those tiny microplastics will pass through many organisms...
The question is, do all these microplastics going around your body cause any harm? We don't know.
when we introduce a cheap alternative to natural products, there's always a hidden cost the greedy selfish and irresponsible manufactures don't ever want to acknowledge
Doesn't have to be artificial. Could be natural too...
Many years ago, when woody plants were first developing there was nothing in nature that could break down wood. There was a build up of wood all over the planet before organisms first learnt to devour them. I can't help but wonder if microfragments of wood and fragments of wood didn't "pollute" and "accumulate" in the world like plastic does today. Obviously, wood was created by biological processes, not man-driven processes, but it was essentially the same thing- an increasing volume of the planet's surface area being "polluted" by a product that can't and won't break down for potentially thousands of years and just accumulating.
Eventually organisms will evolve to devour plastic and break down those yummy hydrocarbon bonds. Until then, we've got a mess on our hands, like the world did when wood was an undigestable product.
“Discovering such regularity in galaxies really helps us to better understand the mechanics that make them tick,” he said. “You won’t find a dense galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the same size but lower density is rotating more slowly.”
OK, but why? It seems counter-intuitive that dense galaxies and sparse galaxies, big galaxies and small galaxies, would all rotate at roughly the same speed. The astronomy.com article is light on details and the Royal Astronomical Society's abstract is somewhat incomprehensible to a layman like myself.
Can someone explain?
Obviously, greater minds than mine were the ones to calculate this, but I can't help but wonder... could they have made a mistake? It's like when they found a particle that went faster than light- and it turned out they measured it wrong. When scientists announce something truly strange (no matter how smart they are), the knee jerk reaction is "are they right"?
If they are right, it's unlikely that this is all a coincidence.
Unfortunately for Bitcoin, it's a little bit too late. Bitcoin isn't going to go away, but it has soured in the fickle imagination of the world's population. Bitcoin isn't the golden boy anymore, now it's a dirty word.
Unfortunately with Putin you have a man who likes to hide behind his nuclear weapons sticking his tongue out breaking all the rules and niceties of international agreements and doing whatever the hell he wants knowing no-one will do anything too bad because he has nukes.
Obviously, I'm not going to say western countries are perfect, they're far from it; but Putin is dangerous because he doesn't play by the rules and he actively yearns for the good old days when Russia was subjugating many different nations and there was a cold war. Putin, to use a technical term is an immature jackass.
This is the first step toward simulating my commute. If I can do that in VR and open a virtual terminal where I can browse Slashdot, I'll have the full experience of working from home!
I wouldn't mind a 2 hour commute if I could do it from home.
It would be awesome if you could import real cities into a Sim City type game and improve and expand them.
Ahh who am I kidding? EA sucks and would ruin any chance of it being a decent game...
Sim City isn't the best city simulation type game anyway and hasn't been for a long time. "Cities Skylines" is the most popular and best in that genre. I don't think you can import cities from Google Maps- but you can import topographies into Skylines- and have a realistic topography to build your city on. So your city could be built on the realistic topography of London, New York, Oslo, or wherever.
Seriously none of that stuff can be proven with existing technology, so how can we know all of this is not random babbling.
That's why it is called theoretical physics. A lot of his claims can't be proven or tested but there are a lot of mathematics in place to support his claims- he's not just randomly suggesting things.
Tech is over for white males, only H1B Indians and Afirmative Action women get in. Been this way since after the dot com bust.
That's bull. I live in a city that is 2/3rds minorities. My coworkers: Mostly white men, a couple of Asians who are also citizens of this country. Not one person on an H1B visa.
Looking for jobs in Europe there are plenty, and they seem more than interesting in non-female non-minority candidates.
Is the US really that bad? Have you considered a formal complaint on the grounds of discrimination?
No, it really isn't. There aren't really any problems being a white male America. White male Americans are just getting whiney that they don't have anything to complain about.
I remember looking for a job in 2003 and every job I looked at was asking for programmers with 5 to 10 years or more of.NET programming experience.... it's no wonder some people embellish their resumes.
To be fair, and not to be overly condescending or accusatory... you really should have seen what was coming and gotten that experience in before the technology was actually developed. Just because the technology doesn't exist is no excuse for not being experienced in it. If you're not able to work miracles then you're unlikely to have a successful career in software. Case in point: Zuckerberg has a website that isn't even good and he's basically God now.
No miracles: no salaries.
It's the software industry mantra.
Thank you, and I did learn from my mistakes. I've already started learning COBOLscript, which is certain to replace JavaScript sometime in the next decade as the default client side language of the web.
What is in extremely high demand is programmers with 20 years of experience in a technology that has been around for 5, no older than 19 and working for 20k a year.
And that demand will be high, forever.
Pay more and you get more. Pay this and what you get is code monkeys that couldn't find a better employer.
Sadly you're not joking..NET came out in 2002. I remember looking for a job in 2003 and every job I looked at was asking for programmers with 5 to 10 years or more of.NET programming experience.... it's no wonder some people embellish their resumes.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries. Barring mind-reading powers (which would be creepy AF anyway) there's no way to know if the guy returning the purchased tux is a cheapass avoiding a rental fee, or if the pants really did ride up in the crotch. And as prices are always set to maximize revenue, the "Best Buy rental program" doesn't cost you the consumer a dime. BB could magically eliminate it entirely (and shoplifting, and employees "forgetting" to ring up each others purchases) and you wouldn't see prices go down by a nickel.
So you're saying if stores reduce returns from "11%" to "5%" you DON'T think their costs will go down? Disagree with you there. It might not make a huge difference, but stores that compete on prices lower their prices as much as they can to still maintain a profit - retail runs on very low profit per item- they rely on volume to make profit- volume increases by getting prices as low as possible.
If fraudulent returns weren't costing them money they wouldn't care about fraudulent returns. Fraudulent returns cost them money which means they have to raise prices to pay for it... which means you pay the bill.
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I'm not concerned with video games changing peoples' behavior, turning normal people into psychopaths.
What I would like to see studied, is the potential for video games to make psychopathic and sociopathic people more efficient in their anti-social abilities.
For example, I don't think playing ultra-realistic first person shooters will necessarily make anyone want to go out and shoot someone, but it seems to me, if you're a psychopath and you're into those games, they can train you to be a much more efficient psychopath when it comes time to assaulting a school or public place.
There are "normal" brains and "psychopath" brains. A violent video game isn't going to turn a normal well-balanced individual into a psychopath. Quite the opposite, it's going to give them an outlet to get the aggression they might have out of their system in a safe, sanitary way. Now, if someone has a bit of an abnormal brain, not your average Joe on the street, but a potential future school-shooter, and they play a violent video game; rather than be a safe way of relieving aggression, might it cause them to become more aggressive. I don't know, but it is a plausible scenario.
I in no way, believe that violent video games make non-violent, average people become more violent. There have been way too many studies over the years that prove this isn't true. In fact, I recall reading one study a year or two back that showed the complete opposite; people who played violent video games committed fewer violent acts.
That said, people who are capable of shooting up a school probably aren't of your typical mental profile. It takes a certain kind of brain and thought process to be able to justify to yourself doing such a terrible thing. People do lots of bad things, but as a species we are mostly pre-programmed to be conscientious and cooperative (even though we all occasionally do jackassy things... the idea of being capable of mass murdering others is a foreign thought to us).
Could these atypical people who ARE capable of mass murder be "provoked" by violent games? It is possible. It is possible that a normal healthy outlet for normal people, such as games, could trigger already unstable people or make their condition worse.
I don't think it will improve their ability to carry out acts though. It won't make them better at shooting or killing. An already atypical mind might be desensitized to it though if they are unable to differentiate reality from the fantasy of a game.
Trying to play GTA on a sub par machine with glitchy internet connection resulting in missed scores, choppy graphics and terrible audio.
Now THAT'S enough to turn someone in a Mass Shooter.
Yes, but they'll turn into a mass shooter that's easy to stop because they will freeze up for a few seconds once a minute.
You can afford a $500k home on $120k/yr income..
That's more than double the average HOUSEHOLD income in the US. Yes, that's rich, even if you don't feel rich at that value and merely feel middle-class. At 120k you're making more than double what the average household in the US makes.
It's certainly a high enough bracket that you should be paying taxes. You think because you make only "120k" you shouldn't have to pay taxes? If you make that much money you shouldn't be exempt from luxury taxes. You may have fewer luxuries than people earning millions- but you still have some luxuries and SHOULD be paying more than people earning $20k or $30k and living on bare necessities alone.
Is the most interesting part!
Having a neckbeard results in police having probable cause to search your property for bitcoin mining rigs. The thing is, it's all a scam, they're just trying to steal their Cheetos.
Consumption creates jobs
And consumption isn't going to stop because it is taxed. All we're doing is shifting the tax burden from income tax (which primarily impacts lower and middle classes) to non-essentials sales-tax (which would impact middle and upper classes).
Rich people are not going to stop buying their several hundred (or several thousand) dollar suits just because it is taxed anymore than they stop trying to earn because of income taxes. The difference is, they can't hide as easily from a consumption based tax as they can from a income tax. A sales based tax (especially if placed on non-essentials only) means that we don't have this ridiculous system we have now where the poor and middle class pay a higher percent of their wages than the rich do; because the lower classes will never be able to buy luxuries to the same extent that the rich do.
In all reality though, there will probably always be a hybrid tax system, and that's probably for the best.
I recall back in the 80s when I was a child, we visited Switzerland and my father had to buy a road pass at the border. I was small so I don't remember the details but I think it was some sort of toll pass for all of the roads in the country.
In fact, I just looked up the Motorway charge sticker. It still seems like tbe best idea ever.
Sounds great for most places. It would hurt me personally. I have to live about 30 miles (road distance not as crow flies) from my place of work because house prices in any desirable location near where I work are way too high. This would drive up prices even more around where I work. I'll always have an hour+ commute if I want to continue working there- I'll never save up enough to live nearby.
Wow, you are one confused or uneducated motherfucker. A tax on goods and services is very regressive. People who make very little money spend everything they make on goods and services; people in the 1% spend a fraction of their income on goods and services and invest the rest to make more money. You would not be solving the inequality problem; you'd be making it worse than it already is, which is quite a feat.
That's why you don't tax non-hospitality foods or goods. If the rich aren't consuming, and truly reinvesting- I'm all for that money not being taxed as it is going back into the economy.
The moment they buy a $500,000+ house or a $50,000 car or a suit over $100, or a $20 restaurant meal, etc- kick in the taxes. Poor people buy cheap food and cheap clothing and certainly don't spend $500,000 on a house or $50,000 on a car.
Necessities shouldn't be taxed, but luxuries should.
Like the single tax, the most fair and effective tax that exists: a progressive income tax.
I know we're wandering off topic a little here but- I prefer a tax on purchased goods and services. The rich have always found ways of circumventing income taxes. Most of the mega-rich end up paying a lower % of their earning on taxes than the average person (despite theoretically being in a high tax bracket).
Goods and services (exclude non hospitality food items) is a better idea because you pay more based on the more you consume. I would also suggest a progressive tax-bracket for items too to tax luxuries higher than necessities. Clothing over a certain $ amount is taxed higher than regular clothing. Cars over a certain $ amount taxed higher... etc.
I don't have much respect for people who sell their dignity for a few seconds of convenience. If you use PayPal, or Amazon or Google or Facebook or Apple, you're a sucker, plain and simple.
Or visa... or mastercard... or discovery... or American express... or shop at any store online... or visit any website... or have an ISP... or have a mobile phone provider... or have a bank account... or...
The problem is, it's not just one or two stores. It's not just one or two institutions. They're ALL collecting data on you. They're ALL sharing information about you. You don't use Google or Facebook... do you think that means they don't have copious data about you? They do.
You could limit who you do business with- but that means you have to do business with whose left- and they get more concentrated information about you (and share it with Google, and Facebook and...). The concern here should be that even if you're not a customer of "XYZ" - they're still buying your data from elsewhere, maybe your bank, maybe your ISP, maybe both... The world is one interconnected web of privacy violation.
Most of us around the world pay taxes on every liter or gallon of petroleum our cars consume. In some countries it's a pretty high tax. If electric vehicles start making up a larger and larger % of vehicles on the road will there come an end where to be fair you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity- take a certain % of your electricity usage and put it towards maintaining roads and public transportation?
We all benefit from roads and bridges, even those that don't drive.
Obviously we're still at the stage where most governments are still trying to encourage more electric vehicles, but eventually if electric takes off like planned, it's going to become unfair to place all the burden of taxes to maintain roads on drivers of ICE vehicles. Especially since it will most likely be the poor and impoverished who will be the last to adapt to the new electric-vehicle age.
I wonder if this means the 'premium' brands such as Evian, or Buxton Spring or whomever are actually okay?
Even expensive brands contained plastic. (although expensive brands probably use higher quality plastics...)
Whether these microplastics that we consume cause any problems health-wise is unproven. So, it might not be harming us at all- might be perfectly safe... or it might be giving us all autism and peanut allergies or some other weird 21st Century disease that everyone gets these days. I guess we'll find out when we're much too old to worry about it anymore...
Two bottled waters I purchase are from a local well or mountain spring where there are no sources of animal waste or industrial pollution. My community has a recycling program that collects cans, bottles, and paper so these things don't go into oceans, rivers or a landfill..
Microplastics do. That's the point of this study. When you open the cap, lots of microplastics deposit into the water (most too small to be seen with the eye, a significant portion small enough to be absorbed into your blood stream)- some are already in the water from the bottle and from other sources. Unless you pisas and kakas directly into a plastic recycling plant... all that plastic you are consuming passes through you and out of you in your waste... And eventually makes it's way into rivers and oceans. All those tiny microplastics will pass through many organisms...
The question is, do all these microplastics going around your body cause any harm? We don't know.
when we introduce a cheap alternative to natural products, there's always a hidden cost the greedy selfish and irresponsible manufactures don't ever want to acknowledge
Doesn't have to be artificial. Could be natural too...
Many years ago, when woody plants were first developing there was nothing in nature that could break down wood. There was a build up of wood all over the planet before organisms first learnt to devour them. I can't help but wonder if microfragments of wood and fragments of wood didn't "pollute" and "accumulate" in the world like plastic does today. Obviously, wood was created by biological processes, not man-driven processes, but it was essentially the same thing- an increasing volume of the planet's surface area being "polluted" by a product that can't and won't break down for potentially thousands of years and just accumulating.
Eventually organisms will evolve to devour plastic and break down those yummy hydrocarbon bonds. Until then, we've got a mess on our hands, like the world did when wood was an undigestable product.
OK, but why? It seems counter-intuitive that dense galaxies and sparse galaxies, big galaxies and small galaxies, would all rotate at roughly the same speed. The astronomy.com article is light on details and the Royal Astronomical Society's abstract is somewhat incomprehensible to a layman like myself.
Can someone explain?
Obviously, greater minds than mine were the ones to calculate this, but I can't help but wonder... could they have made a mistake? It's like when they found a particle that went faster than light- and it turned out they measured it wrong. When scientists announce something truly strange (no matter how smart they are), the knee jerk reaction is "are they right"?
If they are right, it's unlikely that this is all a coincidence.
Unfortunately for Bitcoin, it's a little bit too late. Bitcoin isn't going to go away, but it has soured in the fickle imagination of the world's population. Bitcoin isn't the golden boy anymore, now it's a dirty word.
Unfortunately with Putin you have a man who likes to hide behind his nuclear weapons sticking his tongue out breaking all the rules and niceties of international agreements and doing whatever the hell he wants knowing no-one will do anything too bad because he has nukes.
Obviously, I'm not going to say western countries are perfect, they're far from it; but Putin is dangerous because he doesn't play by the rules and he actively yearns for the good old days when Russia was subjugating many different nations and there was a cold war. Putin, to use a technical term is an immature jackass.
This is the first step toward simulating my commute. If I can do that in VR and open a virtual terminal where I can browse Slashdot, I'll have the full experience of working from home!
I wouldn't mind a 2 hour commute if I could do it from home.
It would be awesome if you could import real cities into a Sim City type game and improve and expand them.
Ahh who am I kidding? EA sucks and would ruin any chance of it being a decent game...
Sim City isn't the best city simulation type game anyway and hasn't been for a long time. "Cities Skylines" is the most popular and best in that genre. I don't think you can import cities from Google Maps- but you can import topographies into Skylines- and have a realistic topography to build your city on. So your city could be built on the realistic topography of London, New York, Oslo, or wherever.
Seriously none of that stuff can be proven with existing technology, so how can we know all of this is not random babbling.
That's why it is called theoretical physics. A lot of his claims can't be proven or tested but there are a lot of mathematics in place to support his claims- he's not just randomly suggesting things.
He should be censored... All that talk about naked singularities. In my Christian country singularities are always suitably clothed.
Tech is over for white males, only H1B Indians and Afirmative Action women get in. Been this way since after the dot com bust.
That's bull. I live in a city that is 2/3rds minorities. My coworkers: Mostly white men, a couple of Asians who are also citizens of this country. Not one person on an H1B visa.
Looking for jobs in Europe there are plenty, and they seem more than interesting in non-female non-minority candidates.
Is the US really that bad? Have you considered a formal complaint on the grounds of discrimination?
No, it really isn't. There aren't really any problems being a white male America. White male Americans are just getting whiney that they don't have anything to complain about.
I remember looking for a job in 2003 and every job I looked at was asking for programmers with 5 to 10 years or more of .NET programming experience. ... it's no wonder some people embellish their resumes.
To be fair, and not to be overly condescending or accusatory... you really should have seen what was coming and gotten that experience in before the technology was actually developed. Just because the technology doesn't exist is no excuse for not being experienced in it. If you're not able to work miracles then you're unlikely to have a successful career in software. Case in point: Zuckerberg has a website that isn't even good and he's basically God now.
No miracles: no salaries.
It's the software industry mantra.
Thank you, and I did learn from my mistakes. I've already started learning COBOLscript, which is certain to replace JavaScript sometime in the next decade as the default client side language of the web.
What is in extremely high demand is programmers with 20 years of experience in a technology that has been around for 5, no older than 19 and working for 20k a year.
And that demand will be high, forever.
Pay more and you get more. Pay this and what you get is code monkeys that couldn't find a better employer.
Sadly you're not joking. .NET came out in 2002. I remember looking for a job in 2003 and every job I looked at was asking for programmers with 5 to 10 years or more of .NET programming experience. ... it's no wonder some people embellish their resumes.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries. Barring mind-reading powers (which would be creepy AF anyway) there's no way to know if the guy returning the purchased tux is a cheapass avoiding a rental fee, or if the pants really did ride up in the crotch. And as prices are always set to maximize revenue, the "Best Buy rental program" doesn't cost you the consumer a dime. BB could magically eliminate it entirely (and shoplifting, and employees "forgetting" to ring up each others purchases) and you wouldn't see prices go down by a nickel.
So you're saying if stores reduce returns from "11%" to "5%" you DON'T think their costs will go down? Disagree with you there. It might not make a huge difference, but stores that compete on prices lower their prices as much as they can to still maintain a profit - retail runs on very low profit per item- they rely on volume to make profit- volume increases by getting prices as low as possible.
If fraudulent returns weren't costing them money they wouldn't care about fraudulent returns. Fraudulent returns cost them money which means they have to raise prices to pay for it... which means you pay the bill.