Okay then imagine you're in a long distance relationship that's only survived because you've been able to communicate, thanks to cheap long distance calls. Now that's taken away from you. Too soppy? How about a business that is viable because it gets long distance calls...
If the first step up that ladder is slavery where you die young, your boss owns your living space, and you barely get enough food to eat, we're all going to hell in a hand basket. That simply isn't acceptable. Think about your own philosophy for more than 2 seconds and you'll realise that if this kind of unethical behaviour is allowed to continue we'll almost all end up going down the economic scale not up it. If there are people willing to work for barely enough to subsist why should any employer pay more?
I most certainly will call someone a wanker for vocalising that he's happy that people get "jobs" like this. The purpose of a job for these people is to be able to make enough money to live and improve their situation, not to end up stuck in a job barely able to feed and clothe themselves and completely unable to negotiate a better deal because someone else that's starving will gladly take over. Saying that this is a stepping stone for these people is insincere and naive. They're not going to get college degrees and find a better life if they're working 16 hour days 7 days a week putting together DVD players.
You're either a fool for believing your own spiel or an insincere wanker that wants to justify your own lifestyle.
Sorry I wasn't talking about microscopic life. I was assuming multicellular. In fact I was assuming insects and up. If you want to talk about fit and microscopic, how about including virii as well as bacteria? In any case a human being can devise something that will allow humans to go to the moon and return without dying and with intent rather than by accident. We build equipment that will survive in acids and extreme heat that bacteria can't live in. That's a resiliance no microscopic life has shown.
The only saving grace is that they said so upfront. However yes running a long standing "promotion" with the sole purpose of getting people hooked on something and planning to hit them up big time when they are hooked and can't live without it is very much unethical and is how drug dealers operate.
When you're busy destroying the planet it's convenient to note that we are indeed more fit because we live in a very wide variety of habitats and we have the kind of intelligence that allows us to become even more adaptable through the use of tools and technology. Neither insects nor dolphins can use tools. Humans have been able to live short periods in the depths of the ocean and the vacuum of space. We've set up colonies on every continent, and cities on most in a wide variety of climates. No dolphin's even going to make it out of water. Even insects won't survive a vacuum. We are the first animal to be so incredibly adapable. More's the pity that we feel the need to kill and destroy everything around us and test that adapability.
Well, you're conveniently failing to notice that we're the first species EVER that has managed to learn tools so effectively to alter the environment. Brushing us off as just another part of nature and no different to anything else killing off a species is just a case of sticking your head in the sand.
You're conveniently failing to notice that we're the first species EVER that has managed to learn tools so effectively to alter the environment. Brushing us off as just another part of nature and no different to anything else killing off a species is just a case of sticking your head in the sand.
What rubbish. If your job doesn't give you enough to eat anyway and requires you to put all your waking hours into that job it's absolutely no godsend. But you go ahead and justify such inhumanity to yourself all you like. I bet you wouldn't give up your cushy life to live like that. Wanker.
This is straight from the textbook: give them a free taste of something for long enough to realise they like it, then introduce a "reasonable" fee. Most of them will feel like they can't live without it and accept the fee rather than go without.
Who's textbook would that be? The Mafia drug dealer's text book?
Companies do this all the time but the price isn't always so reasonable. Look at GMax being pulled....it was free. The replacement? 3dsMax at about USD4500 thank you very much. At least Skype hasn't as yet promised it would be free for good only to kill the service a couple of years later and replace it with something outrageously priced.
It's unethical to do this sort of thing, and it should be illegal.
Complexity vs simplicity is a pointless argument. It depends entirely on the job you're trying to do.
For example I use my laptop as among other things a DVD player, a music player, a flight simulator, a chess partner and coach, a portable library, and a games machine. If it were simple and single purpose I'd never buy it or lug it around.
On the other hand I have a phone. I send text messages, make phonecalls and do some scheduling. I'd like a more flexible schedular, and I do occassionally use the camera. (I'd use the games but the buttons are too small). I tend to use my phone as a single purpose device and sometimes the menu is clunky and gets in the way. I like more features but if I had a phone that did what it was suppose to well, I could live without the games and other crapola. Why on earth in 2006 do I have a calendar on my phone that doesn't allow me to schedule things on the weekend, or pick specific dates for things to happen? Why can't I tell it I'm on holiday.
The bottom line is that a device should be simple to use if you're happy to accept the defaults and easy to customise and find options if you need to do something more complicated. As for complexity behind the scenes and away from the UI that's an engineering problem that's solved by breaking down the complexity into units, each of which should build into more complex units and which you should be able to treat as a black box. Eg. A video processing chip might be complex to create and require a chip fab but when it's used in a phone, the engineers should be able to think of it as a single unit, just like the end user thinks of their phone as a single unit instead of having to think too much about how the phone works.
7. Coding is the easy part. You can teach a cat to bang out code. It takes an artist to design good software.
Really? I didn't know you could train cats to program. Must buy me some cats!
Some of your points I agree with, others not so much, or only under certain circumstances. This one badly worded point lost you all your credibility in my eyes.
Hang on, doesn't that mean that due to my local hardware store being so handy and being able to order things cheaply, plumbers, carpenters, builders etc. are all out of a job?
Cheap cameras of decent quality don't magically turn your average schmoe who doesn't want to know anything beyond how to turn it to manual and go click into a pro photo journalist.
Okay that is a very different experience, assuming you're telling the truth. Whenever I've tried to use OO if there's a table it doesn't format right, the fonts are all screwed up and the list goes on. Basically I'd have to spend more time fixing formats than editing (by a factor of about 10) to use it. Perhaps your job only uses simple features in Word and Excel, doesn't use VBA for macros etc. I don't see how anything but the simplest formulae translate well back and forth when the formats and even the function names are so different. I've even installed OO 1 and 2 at work and tried to open documents there. I'd be fired if I actually tried to use what came out of it.
Other people don't own a car, so they don't want to subsidise roads. Others are rarely sick so they don't want to subsidise hospitals. Yet others don't think the police are worth the money because they live in good neighbourhoods. Airports?? But I don't fly.
Where does it stop exactly? You want to see a world where governments have no money to run anything?
Think of it this way. That money hopefully keeps more kids off the street - kids that if you had your way would end up homeless and would happily rob you and kill you in a heartbeat because you're richer. If you don't want kids yourself, think of it as an investment in the continuation of humanity. Hell even think of it as not earning that bit of money to begin with (which is closer to the truth than you think when it comes to income tax). If you're so selfish you just want to hoarde your money when you have enough by your own admission as it is, I hope you're not wanting sympathy.
In any case I bet your whiny ass was subsidised when you were a kid through tax payer's money. Perhaps you can think of your tax dollars as repaying that debt if it'll help you sleep at night. Never forget that you're a piece of unprotected sex yourself. If it weren't for someone deciding to have unprotected sex you wouldn't exist to have this argument with me.
Amazing how self centered some people are. You'd rather families struggle a little more so you don't have to pay an extra few dollars in tax. You've just said you make a good bit of money. Doesn't sound like you need the tax break. Anyway there are much bigger wastes of money than tax breaks for families out there.
However, the specific scenario cited there, that of not being able to open a file, is more likely to happen using the officially annointed MS Office variants rather than more flexible tools like Koffice or OpenOffice.org
This statement shows your ignorance, wilful and feigned or otherwise.
Any kind of business document - MS Word or Excel - that isn't trivial will open just fine in another copy of the same version of Office. If you have a more recent version than the one the file was created in you'll also have little or no problem. Most documents I've tried to bring home and open using KOffice/OpenOffice/StarOffice have either failed to open or had their formatting so badly damaged opening them in the free package that it's not usable. Never mind trying to edit and then re-save so you can take it back to work. Why do you think so many companies won't switch to these free office products?
I'm personally amazed that they work at all given the lack of documented standards that the developers work from. This is the reason that they are indeed WORSE than other versions of Office - at least the MS developers don't have to spend a significant chunk of their time reverse engineering file formats. They generally introduce new features which cause files not to open in older versions of Office to keep sales moving, but they don't make it impossible to open old files. Truly either you're being very deceitful in your representations of this argument or you don't know what you're talking about.
I honestly would like to see free software take off but this head in the sand approach so many Linux zealots adopt is sickening.
I work in the real world, and I use Linux all day.
Lucky you. I don't get to choose my OS at work. MOST people don't.
bought my wife a Toshiba, which came with WinXP (despite my protestations). I thought I'd just let her use XP (non-administrator) until it got too messed up, then reformat using Linux. To my surprise, she complained the first day. She hated all of the preinstalled software asking her to buy this and that. She didn't even know what McAfee was, let alone want to deal with the SUBSCRIBE NOW!! popups. I told her I could fix it, and put Ubuntu Edgy (pre-release, even!) on there. She's perfectly happy with it now. I asked her if she likes it better or worse than the other (XP), and she replied that it was exactly the same, but without the annoying popups.
If Linux was the more popular OS, it'd have all those popups and more. Just remove the pre-installed garbage or buy from someone that doesn't pre-install it. That's not a problem with Windows at all.
Let me guess. your wife enjoys email and web browsing and little else. Wait till your kid has an assignment that requires software that only runs on Windows or your wife brings home a file that won't open correctly in an free office substitute. God forbid your kid wants to play a Windows game. I bet you'll be scrambling to have Windows installed then.
Education is a great stage to get kids acquainted with Linux. By the time these kids are teens and adults, Linux will have progressed immensely, and they probably WILL be using Linux on corporate desktops. You're not thinking fourth-dimensionally, Marty!
1) You're basically very elaborately (and not very concisely) saying RTFM. Which can be a problem when the manual often hasn't been written or isn't very accurate. This is what puts people off Linux.
2) Yep, training is useless. Lets all learn on the job. Want to be a pilot? Learn on the job. A doctor? No problem Gray's Anatomy on the shelf just there. A nuclear scientist. Here's a physics text book. You wouldn't be happy with any of these. Why on earth do you think for example being in charge of IT systems that may oversee millions of dollars in transactions is any different? Yes, self-learning and bettering yourself is a good thing, but that doesn't make formal training a waste of time. When you "leap into Linux" your company will want to be sure you haven't leaped it into the abyss.
What's more interesting is why does it take so much learning to admin Linux properly and correctly (as opposed to fiddling with your own desktop). Windows isn't much better mind you.
By the way I've admined my own Linux boxes - use to always run dual or multi boot. A few bad upgrades including one that denied me access to my own machine until I changed passwords to some highly secure default the upgrade insisted on eventually saw me get rid of Linux except to occassionally play. It's downright daunting to someone that does know what they're doing let alone someone that doesn't.
Well yes and no...I hear this all the time and all I can say is you're looking from an academician's point of view.
The procedures for solving ax^2 + bx + c = 0 and x^2 + 5x + 1 = 0 are basically the same. Languages on the other hand can do things very differently. Stuff that's easy in a procedural language isn't easy in a functional language for example. Even where the language constructs and features are the same (and you can bet they aren't always the same) there's huge variety between standard and specialised language libraries and how they work. In my experience people learn C, C++, Java and perhaps a Pascal derivative - all very similar in terms of constructs then extrapolate this learning experience to think all languages are the same because they had less trouble with subsequent languages. Here's the list of languages I've used commercially: Java, Smalltalk, C, C++, Cobol, Powerbuilder, Visual Basic and various forms of VBA, and numerous scripting languages. In addition academically I've used Perl, Miranda, Eiffel, prolog and dabbled with a lot more. There are skills that are very transferrable but there are others that are peculiar to the way a particular language or environment does things. You can't take a Java J2EE business coder and expect them to be instantly productive writing games with C and DirectX. They won't know the libraries, correct use, the pitfalls documented and otherwise. It just doesn't work that way even with good example material. It all depends on the complexity of the libraries but I'd say it takes antyhing from 2 weeks to 2 months to grasp the basics of a new language and environment and anything from 3 months to 2 years to become proficient. Don't believe me? Try and get a short term contract job that a company is desperate to fill without some experience in the language/environment required. Not all recruiters and employers are idiots.
What are you smoking man. They want to control how long the product lives and force us to constantly rebuy it. They don't care if their copy protection screws us over for any form of "fair use" so long as they get their cut. They've used tactics like trying to sue random people and even children into oblivion and you still think they're okay because they have people that sound reasonable and pretend to want to work with us on the radio. Credit? The only credit of yours they want comes out of your bank account.
I'm not you and I'm damned sick of having to keep a long-ass list of usernames and passwords for sites I really don't care much about.
So use a standard low security login name and password. Have backups for each in case name is taken or rules don't allow password. Problem solved (so long as there are no mandatory regular password changes and you choose your own password). If the site doesn't matter in a financial sense I never have trouble remembering my password.
Except that your argument ignores the invention of birth control, and would lead to a system where people could tax themselves into extinction. Oh and you're also conveniently forgetting that while it is a burden on society to bring a child into the world, that burden is also shared by the child who is suppose to have decent prospects of growing up and contributing to society and taxation. What you're talking about limits the population which actually decreases revenue in the long run. Even the politicians won't do that because while they will hold a specific office for a 2-4 year period, they hope to be leeching taxes from people in different positions for as long as they live. Well until population becomes so unsustainable that the standard of living drops, then you're looking at a situation like China where they limit the number of children you're allowed and are draconian about enforcing it.
Yeah apart from all those GAPING HOLES you've thought this through real well pal. Couldn't possibly have anything to do personal issues and resentment of children.
I'm driving to my fiancee's parent's house about 600km away this coming weekend. Last time i did that there was roadwork and 40km/hr signs posted in an area that was usually 100km/hr. I was doing 40 when two large semi-trailers came screaming along at about 120. I just had enough time to duck onto the curb and get out of their way. Lucky I saw them in time in the rear vision mirror or I literally have no doubt we'd have died that day. I wish I'd have gotten their number plates. They were gone too quickly and I wasn't going to do 140 to catch up.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay then imagine you're in a long distance relationship that's only survived because you've been able to communicate, thanks to cheap long distance calls. Now that's taken away from you. Too soppy? How about a business that is viable because it gets long distance calls...
If the first step up that ladder is slavery where you die young, your boss owns your living space, and you barely get enough food to eat, we're all going to hell in a hand basket. That simply isn't acceptable. Think about your own philosophy for more than 2 seconds and you'll realise that if this kind of unethical behaviour is allowed to continue we'll almost all end up going down the economic scale not up it. If there are people willing to work for barely enough to subsist why should any employer pay more?
I most certainly will call someone a wanker for vocalising that he's happy that people get "jobs" like this. The purpose of a job for these people is to be able to make enough money to live and improve their situation, not to end up stuck in a job barely able to feed and clothe themselves and completely unable to negotiate a better deal because someone else that's starving will gladly take over. Saying that this is a stepping stone for these people is insincere and naive. They're not going to get college degrees and find a better life if they're working 16 hour days 7 days a week putting together DVD players.
You're either a fool for believing your own spiel or an insincere wanker that wants to justify your own lifestyle.
Sorry I wasn't talking about microscopic life. I was assuming multicellular. In fact I was assuming insects and up. If you want to talk about fit and microscopic, how about including virii as well as bacteria? In any case a human being can devise something that will allow humans to go to the moon and return without dying and with intent rather than by accident. We build equipment that will survive in acids and extreme heat that bacteria can't live in. That's a resiliance no microscopic life has shown.
The only saving grace is that they said so upfront. However yes running a long standing "promotion" with the sole purpose of getting people hooked on something and planning to hit them up big time when they are hooked and can't live without it is very much unethical and is how drug dealers operate.
When you're busy destroying the planet it's convenient to note that we are indeed more fit because we live in a very wide variety of habitats and we have the kind of intelligence that allows us to become even more adaptable through the use of tools and technology. Neither insects nor dolphins can use tools. Humans have been able to live short periods in the depths of the ocean and the vacuum of space. We've set up colonies on every continent, and cities on most in a wide variety of climates. No dolphin's even going to make it out of water. Even insects won't survive a vacuum. We are the first animal to be so incredibly adapable. More's the pity that we feel the need to kill and destroy everything around us and test that adapability.
Well, you're conveniently failing to notice that we're the first species EVER that has managed to learn tools so effectively to alter the environment. Brushing us off as just another part of nature and no different to anything else killing off a species is just a case of sticking your head in the sand.
You're conveniently failing to notice that we're the first species EVER that has managed to learn tools so effectively to alter the environment. Brushing us off as just another part of nature and no different to anything else killing off a species is just a case of sticking your head in the sand.
What rubbish. If your job doesn't give you enough to eat anyway and requires you to put all your waking hours into that job it's absolutely no godsend. But you go ahead and justify such inhumanity to yourself all you like. I bet you wouldn't give up your cushy life to live like that. Wanker.
This is straight from the textbook: give them a free taste of something for long enough to realise they like it, then introduce a "reasonable" fee. Most of them will feel like they can't live without it and accept the fee rather than go without.
Who's textbook would that be? The Mafia drug dealer's text book?
Companies do this all the time but the price isn't always so reasonable. Look at GMax being pulled....it was free. The replacement? 3dsMax at about USD4500 thank you very much. At least Skype hasn't as yet promised it would be free for good only to kill the service a couple of years later and replace it with something outrageously priced.
It's unethical to do this sort of thing, and it should be illegal.
Complexity vs simplicity is a pointless argument. It depends entirely on the job you're trying to do.
For example I use my laptop as among other things a DVD player, a music player, a flight simulator, a chess partner and coach, a portable library, and a games machine. If it were simple and single purpose I'd never buy it or lug it around.
On the other hand I have a phone. I send text messages, make phonecalls and do some scheduling. I'd like a more flexible schedular, and I do occassionally use the camera. (I'd use the games but the buttons are too small). I tend to use my phone as a single purpose device and sometimes the menu is clunky and gets in the way. I like more features but if I had a phone that did what it was suppose to well, I could live without the games and other crapola. Why on earth in 2006 do I have a calendar on my phone that doesn't allow me to schedule things on the weekend, or pick specific dates for things to happen? Why can't I tell it I'm on holiday.
The bottom line is that a device should be simple to use if you're happy to accept the defaults and easy to customise and find options if you need to do something more complicated. As for complexity behind the scenes and away from the UI that's an engineering problem that's solved by breaking down the complexity into units, each of which should build into more complex units and which you should be able to treat as a black box. Eg. A video processing chip might be complex to create and require a chip fab but when it's used in a phone, the engineers should be able to think of it as a single unit, just like the end user thinks of their phone as a single unit instead of having to think too much about how the phone works.
7. Coding is the easy part. You can teach a cat to bang out code. It takes an artist to design good software.
Really? I didn't know you could train cats to program. Must buy me some cats!
Some of your points I agree with, others not so much, or only under certain circumstances. This one badly worded point lost you all your credibility in my eyes.
Hang on, doesn't that mean that due to my local hardware store being so handy and being able to order things cheaply, plumbers, carpenters, builders etc. are all out of a job?
Cheap cameras of decent quality don't magically turn your average schmoe who doesn't want to know anything beyond how to turn it to manual and go click into a pro photo journalist.
We've worked in very different places you and I. I've written or used some VBA for on something critical at every organisation I've worked for.
Okay that is a very different experience, assuming you're telling the truth. Whenever I've tried to use OO if there's a table it doesn't format right, the fonts are all screwed up and the list goes on. Basically I'd have to spend more time fixing formats than editing (by a factor of about 10) to use it. Perhaps your job only uses simple features in Word and Excel, doesn't use VBA for macros etc. I don't see how anything but the simplest formulae translate well back and forth when the formats and even the function names are so different. I've even installed OO 1 and 2 at work and tried to open documents there. I'd be fired if I actually tried to use what came out of it.
Other people don't own a car, so they don't want to subsidise roads.
Others are rarely sick so they don't want to subsidise hospitals.
Yet others don't think the police are worth the money because they live in good neighbourhoods.
Airports?? But I don't fly.
Where does it stop exactly? You want to see a world where governments have no money to run anything?
Think of it this way. That money hopefully keeps more kids off the street - kids that if you had your way would end up homeless and would happily rob you and kill you in a heartbeat because you're richer. If you don't want kids yourself, think of it as an investment in the continuation of humanity. Hell even think of it as not earning that bit of money to begin with (which is closer to the truth than you think when it comes to income tax). If you're so selfish you just want to hoarde your money when you have enough by your own admission as it is, I hope you're not wanting sympathy.
In any case I bet your whiny ass was subsidised when you were a kid through tax payer's money. Perhaps you can think of your tax dollars as repaying that debt if it'll help you sleep at night. Never forget that you're a piece of unprotected sex yourself. If it weren't for someone deciding to have unprotected sex you wouldn't exist to have this argument with me.
Amazing how self centered some people are. You'd rather families struggle a little more so you don't have to pay an extra few dollars in tax. You've just said you make a good bit of money. Doesn't sound like you need the tax break. Anyway there are much bigger wastes of money than tax breaks for families out there.
However, the specific scenario cited there, that of not being able to open a file, is more likely to happen using the officially annointed MS Office variants rather than more flexible tools like Koffice or OpenOffice.org
This statement shows your ignorance, wilful and feigned or otherwise.
Any kind of business document - MS Word or Excel - that isn't trivial will open just fine in another copy of the same version of Office. If you have a more recent version than the one the file was created in you'll also have little or no problem. Most documents I've tried to bring home and open using KOffice/OpenOffice/StarOffice have either failed to open or had their formatting so badly damaged opening them in the free package that it's not usable. Never mind trying to edit and then re-save so you can take it back to work. Why do you think so many companies won't switch to these free office products?
I'm personally amazed that they work at all given the lack of documented standards that the developers work from. This is the reason that they are indeed WORSE than other versions of Office - at least the MS developers don't have to spend a significant chunk of their time reverse engineering file formats. They generally introduce new features which cause files not to open in older versions of Office to keep sales moving, but they don't make it impossible to open old files. Truly either you're being very deceitful in your representations of this argument or you don't know what you're talking about.
I honestly would like to see free software take off but this head in the sand approach so many Linux zealots adopt is sickening.
I work in the real world, and I use Linux all day.
Lucky you. I don't get to choose my OS at work. MOST people don't.
bought my wife a Toshiba, which came with WinXP (despite my protestations). I thought I'd just let her use XP (non-administrator) until it got too messed up, then reformat using Linux. To my surprise, she complained the first day. She hated all of the preinstalled software asking her to buy this and that. She didn't even know what McAfee was, let alone want to deal with the SUBSCRIBE NOW!! popups. I told her I could fix it, and put Ubuntu Edgy (pre-release, even!) on there. She's perfectly happy with it now. I asked her if she likes it better or worse than the other (XP), and she replied that it was exactly the same, but without the annoying popups.
If Linux was the more popular OS, it'd have all those popups and more. Just remove the pre-installed garbage or buy from someone that doesn't pre-install it. That's not a problem with Windows at all.
Let me guess. your wife enjoys email and web browsing and little else. Wait till your kid has an assignment that requires software that only runs on Windows or your wife brings home a file that won't open correctly in an free office substitute. God forbid your kid wants to play a Windows game. I bet you'll be scrambling to have Windows installed then.
Education is a great stage to get kids acquainted with Linux. By the time these kids are teens and adults, Linux will have progressed immensely, and they probably WILL be using Linux on corporate desktops. You're not thinking fourth-dimensionally, Marty!
Where can I buy a crystal ball like yours?
Two main counter-arguments:
1) You're basically very elaborately (and not very concisely) saying RTFM. Which can be a problem when the manual often hasn't been written or isn't very accurate. This is what puts people off Linux.
2) Yep, training is useless. Lets all learn on the job. Want to be a pilot? Learn on the job. A doctor? No problem Gray's Anatomy on the shelf just there. A nuclear scientist. Here's a physics text book. You wouldn't be happy with any of these. Why on earth do you think for example being in charge of IT systems that may oversee millions of dollars in transactions is any different? Yes, self-learning and bettering yourself is a good thing, but that doesn't make formal training a waste of time. When you "leap into Linux" your company will want to be sure you haven't leaped it into the abyss.
What's more interesting is why does it take so much learning to admin Linux properly and correctly (as opposed to fiddling with your own desktop). Windows isn't much better mind you.
By the way I've admined my own Linux boxes - use to always run dual or multi boot. A few bad upgrades including one that denied me access to my own machine until I changed passwords to some highly secure default the upgrade insisted on eventually saw me get rid of Linux except to occassionally play. It's downright daunting to someone that does know what they're doing let alone someone that doesn't.
Well yes and no...I hear this all the time and all I can say is you're looking from an academician's point of view.
The procedures for solving ax^2 + bx + c = 0 and x^2 + 5x + 1 = 0 are basically the same. Languages on the other hand can do things very differently. Stuff that's easy in a procedural language isn't easy in a functional language for example. Even where the language constructs and features are the same (and you can bet they aren't always the same) there's huge variety between standard and specialised language libraries and how they work. In my experience people learn C, C++, Java and perhaps a Pascal derivative - all very similar in terms of constructs then extrapolate this learning experience to think all languages are the same because they had less trouble with subsequent languages. Here's the list of languages I've used commercially: Java, Smalltalk, C, C++, Cobol, Powerbuilder, Visual Basic and various forms of VBA, and numerous scripting languages. In addition academically I've used Perl, Miranda, Eiffel, prolog and dabbled with a lot more. There are skills that are very transferrable but there are others that are peculiar to the way a particular language or environment does things. You can't take a Java J2EE business coder and expect them to be instantly productive writing games with C and DirectX. They won't know the libraries, correct use, the pitfalls documented and otherwise. It just doesn't work that way even with good example material. It all depends on the complexity of the libraries but I'd say it takes antyhing from 2 weeks to 2 months to grasp the basics of a new language and environment and anything from 3 months to 2 years to become proficient. Don't believe me? Try and get a short term contract job that a company is desperate to fill without some experience in the language/environment required. Not all recruiters and employers are idiots.
What are you smoking man. They want to control how long the product lives and force us to constantly rebuy it. They don't care if their copy protection screws us over for any form of "fair use" so long as they get their cut. They've used tactics like trying to sue random people and even children into oblivion and you still think they're okay because they have people that sound reasonable and pretend to want to work with us on the radio. Credit? The only credit of yours they want comes out of your bank account.
I'm not you and I'm damned sick of having to keep a long-ass list of usernames and passwords for sites I really don't care much about.
So use a standard low security login name and password. Have backups for each in case name is taken or rules don't allow password. Problem solved (so long as there are no mandatory regular password changes and you choose your own password). If the site doesn't matter in a financial sense I never have trouble remembering my password.
Except that your argument ignores the invention of birth control, and would lead to a system where people could tax themselves into extinction. Oh and you're also conveniently forgetting that while it is a burden on society to bring a child into the world, that burden is also shared by the child who is suppose to have decent prospects of growing up and contributing to society and taxation. What you're talking about limits the population which actually decreases revenue in the long run. Even the politicians won't do that because while they will hold a specific office for a 2-4 year period, they hope to be leeching taxes from people in different positions for as long as they live. Well until population becomes so unsustainable that the standard of living drops, then you're looking at a situation like China where they limit the number of children you're allowed and are draconian about enforcing it.
Yeah apart from all those GAPING HOLES you've thought this through real well pal. Couldn't possibly have anything to do personal issues and resentment of children.
I'm driving to my fiancee's parent's house about 600km away this coming weekend. Last time i did that there was roadwork and 40km/hr signs posted in an area that was usually 100km/hr. I was doing 40 when two large semi-trailers came screaming along at about 120. I just had enough time to duck onto the curb and get out of their way. Lucky I saw them in time in the rear vision mirror or I literally have no doubt we'd have died that day. I wish I'd have gotten their number plates. They were gone too quickly and I wasn't going to do 140 to catch up.
How about a "back off" sign that slowly extends 10 meters behind the car? Even better one that extends quickly *grin*
I am just kidding though - I know that'd cause accidents and increase road rage.