The stock market gambler should be paying twice the tax the roofer pays.
I have never understood why stock market earnings are taxed at any rate less than gambling earnings. Gambling earnings have some of the highest taxes in the United States (not sure about other countries), yet stock market earnings, also gambling, have little to no taxation. The whole issue becomes moot if we just treat the stock market as what it is, a legal form of gambling, and tax it appropriately.
I have read slashdot everyday for nearly 10 years and I have no clue what "Raspberry Pi" is. Seriously how hard would it be to have the article say "Raspberry Pi, the $25 dollar PC" or something like that?
More important, why is this article even posted? I mean we could post dozens of articles a day if we follow the formula "site found selling fake [technology]."
I have worked with many "Software Engineers" from Europe, and not a one was anything other than a programer. That's not a slight on Europeans, as a lot of people from other countries do the same thing, and many of the European programers I have met where damn good programers. I'm just saying that calling yourself a Software Engineer does not mean you are practicing Software Engineering.
Actual Software Engineers are few and far between. Knowing how to design and write clear and complete technical specifications is a talent or interest that very few have. Very few know how to use minimal effort to get a complete result, such as limitations on third party libraries, or avoid reinventing the wheel. And very few people have broad enough experience to be able to make sound decisions. And this is a good thing, since we need a lot more people writing, and testing, code, than we need designing it.
Oh and lets not confuse Programing or Software Engineering with Computer Science. If I need a new and unique algorithm I'll ask a computer scientist. Until then, please keep your hands out of my designs and off my software.
I doubt that. As far as I understand it, a programmer is a low paid, no responsibilities job, mainly existing in the USA (no idea how that works).
Read my prior statement that, just like welders and plumbers, programers (or developers if you rather) should organize and bargain collectively. Most large software projects would not be able to be completed for a reasonable cost without programers. Engineers are expensive, at least good ones, and you would be foolish to pay engineers to do what developers do. And I don't know about you but I don't want a mechanical engineer trying to fix my car or installing my heating a cooling unit. You need to know when to get the right person for the job.
In my life I never have met a "programmer". Usually in a software development organization everyone has a university degree, aka software engineer, computer science degree, etc.
It's possible that you don't use the same terms where you live. In the US a programer is someone that primarily writes actual software code. Sure they might dabble in design but on a large scale it's not their forte. This are the people that take the loft designs of the Engineers and make it actually work. As an Engineer, I totally understand this, and it's not at all unique to software.
However reducing an architect to someone who does not know "how to get actual work done" sounds very strange to me. After all, how should he be able to "make diagrams and drawing pretty pictures" if he does not know how to "actually make things work"?
I'm not trying to diminish what Architects do, but it really is just drawing pretty pictures. This is true of all fields with architecture, not just software. Architects don't build houses, they don't even design them. Architects have grade ideas about over all look and feel, or in the case of software, general structure. Architects draw pictures and make models. This then gets fed to Engineers who spend their time trying to figure out how to turn that architecture into a useable product. Engineers draw the schematics. Then the technicians, be it carpenters, or programers, take these schematics and use them as the basis of the final product. Usually you can follow the schematic pretty close, but there will always be one or two changes that have to be made, like some required part being out of stock or some customer need was not addressed, or some component is to expensive to implement in IE.
Each part is important to the integrity of the over all product. If architects built buildings they would fall down. If engineers designed the aesthetics of them they would be functional but no one would actually want to live or work in one. If technicians designed them they would end up as a big unstable pile of mismatched parts.
In Canada it's illegal to call yourself a software engineer unless you have the right training and certification. It's like calling yourself a civil engineer in the us without a license.
Actually in the United States you can call yourself what ever you want. What you can't do is sell your services as a independent Engineer without having the appropriate certification. If you work in the Engineering department of a company in an Engineering capacity, then you have every right to call yourself an engineer. If you have graduated from a university with a degree in Engineering, you have every right to refer to yourself as an engineer. If there is no certification organization in your field you can sell your services as an engineer. The certification organizations would like you to think otherwise, but they know full well that in the US an engineer is defined by what you do not what your certifications are. This is also on a state by state basis, unless seeking a federal government contract.
If my state offered a certification in software Engineering then I'd be happy to go about the process. But there are very few states that offers Software Engineering Certification (Texas being the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and even that one is not nationally recognized).
There is clearly a difference between Programing, Engineering and Architecture. Most of us that have been in the industry for a while have figured this out. You need to find your place in that structure. I personally identify myself as a Software Engineer (perfectly legal in the US as long as I work for someone else). But I identify that way because I send more of my time working on bigger picture items and include in such considerations topics like engineering ethics, than the time I spend typing out code. I can't identify with Architecture at this point because I don't spend my days sitting around making diagrams and drawing pretty pictures, I actually spend my time figuring out how to get actual work done.
All three of these classifications are important when selling, designing and building large systems. The smaller, and less critical, the system the less likely you need each of these categories, which is very similar to material engineering (You can build a bring over your back yard stream all by your lonesome, but you would probably have a hard time building a span of over the Mississipi, for public use, without have a full team).
Programmers are the welders and plumbers of the software industry. They are important and necessary. They would probably do well to organize and bargain collectively. Engineers fill a different role, though they might write code now and again, it should not be their top priority.
Considering that in most of the western world you can be considered "poor" and still own a car, a flatscreen, an iPhone, and are more likely to suffer from obesity rather than starvation, arguably nobody is.
I have a close friend that grew up wealthy and thought very much like you. She argued that no one made minimum wage, since in her well to do neighborhood even the fast food clerks made above minimum wage. To her poor was having japanese cars instead of european, or having to decided between the pool or the tennis court in the back yard.
Then one day, her firm sent her to deposition a client in New York city, and she found herself at the corner of Bedford and Stuyvesant. She came back and told a tale that could only be understood by someone that had been there. She was horrified. Now, this was after Bed-Stuy had started it's gentrification process, so I can only imagine what might have happened if she had seen true poverty, like Allen, South Dakota.
So, you man not think there are any poor in the West, but you would be sadly mistaken.
umm no, any form of split screen has in general been ignored by the industry.
Multiplayer is not synonymous with split screen. I know that I never once mentioned split screen. The discussion was just about multiplayer.
Name off a few of these 4 player games u speak of?
Little Big Planet, Rock Band (and other music games), Pixel Junk Racers, Ghostbusters, The up coming Ratchet and Clank, Every Fight Game ever made, most PS Move games, a number of Racing games, and some sports games. That's just the few I could think of off the top of my head, but there are plenty more.
There are also the LEGO games which started out with co-op but not split screen, and now include co-op split screen, though those are only two player games.
Console gaming is still about getting people playing around one screen. If you chose not to play those games, then you can, but the option is there if you want it. Historically, console gaming has never been about split screen, yet still highly multiplayer. This goes all the way back to Pong.
In my house there is one current gen console and it's not a Wii. The average number of players is considerably higher than two. Three is probably the most common, but as high as seven is not unheard of. Many of the games we own support at least four players simultaneously. Consoles are still built with the idea of getting multiple people around one box and one screen, and actually increasing in social content.
On the other hand, why would employers be demanding a college education if they didn't see that it actually makes a significant difference in employee performance?
Employers tend to use the degree requirement as a short cut in the first round of hiring decisions. The reason they do that is because to many people take the short cut of just emailing a resume and hoping to get hired. I know many people with no degree to speak of that have no problems finding work, because they put a little bit of effort into it. Employers don't think that Degrees make anyone more suited for a job, they just think that a slacker with a degree is better than a slacker without one. They would almost always take someone with some initiative over both those options, degree or not.
They could hire people for less money if they didn't require a degree, so if less-educated employees could do the job, employers would be all over it.
If this were true it would mean that people, on average, who do the same exact job, would make more if they have a degree. I don't think that you will find that as true. Sure people with degrees often progress farther in a career than those without, but in careers that you can enter with our without a degree, those without tend to be at least equally paid, if not higher, even if they are fewer in number.
I'm convinced that they did this because they found that the sort of education offered by universities did a better job of preparing people to be effective technologists, businessmen and administrators.
It never struck you as possible that IBM might have realized that College education had become so common that it was better to of load those cost onto the individual and/or the government?
Either they are independently wealthy, and they have no right to ask us to stand on our own two feet, or they take money from the government, and therefore they are hypocrites.
Ever heard of working for a living? I do not get paid by the government nor receive any direct government assistance (I really can't calculate subsidies to products I use). The majority of citizens of the US are in the same situation. That is the majority that is not being represented.
I'm not saying I support hedwards argument, I'm just saying that there are plenty of people that are not independently wealthy nor take from the governement
One of the big things that sets Computer Science apart from engineering, and why there should be true Software Engineering majors, is that CS does not consider ethics, while Engineering course always include ethics.
If computer science has anything to do with how the hardware works then someone needs to tell that to nearly every university in the US and likely the world. I have worked enough CS grads to know that they never learned a thing about hardware. I can say for a fact that I have never met a CS grad that knew how to construct a Look-Ahead Adder. Hardware is a mater of Computer Engineering not Computer Science. Sure they can reinvent a Linked List or one of many sorting algorithms, but when it comes to "how the chips insider work" they haven't a clue.
On the other hand, you are correct that CS has nothing to do with programing, at least from what I have seen. Of the CS grads I have had the pleasure of working with few new how to program and none knew how to do it right. Most of them where too busy trying to reinvent the wheel.
The problem with automated testing is that you need to test the automation. For long lived applications that go through minor changes the automated approach is very good for regression testing. For short lived applications, such as games, it's almost futile as it would take as much effort to develop the tests as it would be to program the application it self, and most likely the tests would be prone to at least as many bugs as the final program.
Automated testing also only works well on fully predictable systems. Once a system has any form of randomness or intelligence then automated scripting because nearly impossible and absolutely unreasonable. While a it's easy to have a human cary out the script "open door, shoot and kill all enemies in run, loot room" It's much harder to get an automated system to do that, since the enemies, in modern games, don't follow scripts but act according to the situation.
As much as automated testing seems like the cure to all ills in software, it's just a fact that systems designed for humans require humans to test them.
There is a distinction many programers don't understand and falsely call themselves software engineers. I'm not saying you need to have a certification to be an engineer, but that the art of Engineering is far different from the art of Programing. Engineers might program from time to time, but programing is not engineering. It's like calling an Electrician an Electrical Engineer. Both technicians (electricians, programers, etc) and Engineers are important to a high quality product of any large scale, but they are not the same.
As much as I enjoy and support your view of the 9th amendment you seem to be glossing over the 10th. The right to drive on a roadway is not restricted by the federal government, it is restricted by state governments. Since the constitution does not expressly protect this right, then each state has the authority to restrict the privilege. Now, the federal government, in the form of the TSA, getting involved is a violation of the constitution as it's not a federal government attempting to create a restriction expressly granted to the states.
The US constitution is old, out dated and needs to be rewritten from the ground up. But if any one piece of the constitution is paramount to the existence of a federation, as the US was intended, it has to be the 10th amendment.
Sorry, what free market? You can't have a free market with a central bank that sets interest rates automatically. The US and the West are all mixed markets.
Doesn't matter if the US has a free market or not, once it fails, and it will, it will be the poster boy of anti-capitalism and anti-free market. I mean The Soviet Union wasn't communist either, but that never stopped people from claiming that they were. You are wasting your time if you keep trying to convince people that the US does not have a free market. Just accept that no mater what the cause of failure is in the US it will be blamed on Capitalism.
They signed for loans they couldn't afford, neglected or were too stupid to understand the fine print...Sure, Wall Street and Government enabled them, but they didn't sign those loan papers, the American people did.
First of all, a large portion of the populace in the United States purchased homes that they could afford, out that does not mean it's still reasonable to expect them to continue paying for something that is worth 1/2 what they owe. And it many case, if not most, the people most likely to default are not those that can't reasonably afford their homes, but those that are wide enough about economics to know that it's foolish to continue paying for their homes.
There were at least two parties in each and everyone of these home loans. Signed by both the individual receiving the loan and on behalf of the institution granting the loan. Though I will admit that the people deserve to pay the price for the loans they purchased, and that does not mean being forced to pay them off, but being willing to deal with the affect on credit history if the chose wisely not to pay of the loan. But If the people are going to be held responsible for their side, then so should the loaning institution. But instead we have the government redistributing the peoples money to the institutions in the form of government bail outs. These banks should have faltered and failed, not been propped up on the backs of the people.
A Horizon programme (BBC, UK) recently talked about psychopaths in "Are you good or are you evil" and these people are often in boards of companies, or high level bosses or whatever. A way they said they could identify these psychopaths is by the fact that half the people working for such a person hates him, the other half think he (she?) is great.
This is because of a couple things Horizon left out. First Corporations are by definition Psychopathic, so those that lead corporations tend to appear psychopathic. Second Horizon, like many media outlets, confused Psychopathic with Narcissistic.
Sadly both Psychopathic and Narcissistic behavior is highly encouraged in western culture, which it turn means they don't actually qualify as Personality Disorders, which is why Neither are listed in the ICD, and with the removal of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, they won't be in the next version of the DSM either.
Psychopathy is an illness, it's not presently curable and the only methods of treatment tend to just result in more abhorrent behavior.
Can you provide a currently accepted manual of diagnosis that lists psychopathy as a disease or disorder? I've looked through the DSM and ICD and can't seem to find it. The reason it's not in either of the accepted diagnostics manuals is because it would be a a Personality Disorder and the personality disorder criteria includes "the individual's characteristic and enduring patterns of inner experience and behaviour as a whole deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range". Psychopathic behavior does not "deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range" in western cultures. Psychopathic behavior is specifically encouraged in western cultures. You will start to see other Personality Disorders drop out of the diagnostics manuals as time progresses. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is already proposed for deletion, as our culture again is not only accepting, but outright promoting Narcissistic behavior.
In general the problem with Personality Disorders is that by definition they are dependent of transient cultural opinion. These are not disorders, but behaviors that can be changed if change is wanted, but they can not be corrected by treatment because they are not a disease.
There is any easier explanation for the rise in education costs, Supply and Demand. The supply of accredited schools has not rise at the same rate as the demand for degrees. Employers demand a degree to get past basic screening, and accreditation organizations artificially restrict the supply. When demand goes up higher than supply then prices go up.
While I feel it was Steve Jobs who really created to home computer revolution...
I think you are giving Jobs way to much credit for creating the home computer revolution. Not to say he was not important, but even you seem able to give him credit he's not due.
CNN also just said his "greatest invention" was the ipad. First, he didn't "invent" it, secondly... his GREATEST contribution? Come on.
His greatest contribution were in his later years. He is responsible for bringing mobile computing to the masses. First through the iBook, then the iPhone and finally the iPad. These far outweigh his contribution to home computing.
I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers.
Not to down play Jobs importance in the personal computing revolution, but the name you are looking for is Chuck Peddle. Without Chuck Peddle's inovation in manufacturing cheap microprocessors there would have been no Apple to begin with. Chuck was also the head of engineering behind the first personal computer to sell 1 million units and the best selling personal computer of all times.
Now what Jobs did in his later years was truly remarkable. He turned computing devices into a status symbol. You might not think that is significant, but there would be a lot less computing devices around if it was not for that.
It should increase the resale value of any games you buy if you do not use multiplayer, as your resold game should still contain the one free multiplayer account. It should also reduce the price of second hand games if you only intend on using the game for single player. If you don't buy or sell used games then it's no different than what there is today.
Slashdot Mirror
The stock market gambler should be paying twice the tax the roofer pays.
I have never understood why stock market earnings are taxed at any rate less than gambling earnings. Gambling earnings have some of the highest taxes in the United States (not sure about other countries), yet stock market earnings, also gambling, have little to no taxation. The whole issue becomes moot if we just treat the stock market as what it is, a legal form of gambling, and tax it appropriately.
I have read slashdot everyday for nearly 10 years and I have no clue what "Raspberry Pi" is. Seriously how hard would it be to have the article say "Raspberry Pi, the $25 dollar PC" or something like that?
More important, why is this article even posted? I mean we could post dozens of articles a day if we follow the formula "site found selling fake [technology]."
I have worked with many "Software Engineers" from Europe, and not a one was anything other than a programer. That's not a slight on Europeans, as a lot of people from other countries do the same thing, and many of the European programers I have met where damn good programers. I'm just saying that calling yourself a Software Engineer does not mean you are practicing Software Engineering.
Actual Software Engineers are few and far between. Knowing how to design and write clear and complete technical specifications is a talent or interest that very few have. Very few know how to use minimal effort to get a complete result, such as limitations on third party libraries, or avoid reinventing the wheel. And very few people have broad enough experience to be able to make sound decisions. And this is a good thing, since we need a lot more people writing, and testing, code, than we need designing it.
Oh and lets not confuse Programing or Software Engineering with Computer Science. If I need a new and unique algorithm I'll ask a computer scientist. Until then, please keep your hands out of my designs and off my software.
I doubt that. As far as I understand it, a programmer is a low paid, no responsibilities job, mainly existing in the USA (no idea how that works).
Read my prior statement that, just like welders and plumbers, programers (or developers if you rather) should organize and bargain collectively. Most large software projects would not be able to be completed for a reasonable cost without programers. Engineers are expensive, at least good ones, and you would be foolish to pay engineers to do what developers do. And I don't know about you but I don't want a mechanical engineer trying to fix my car or installing my heating a cooling unit. You need to know when to get the right person for the job.
In my life I never have met a "programmer". Usually in a software development organization everyone has a university degree, aka software engineer, computer science degree, etc.
It's possible that you don't use the same terms where you live. In the US a programer is someone that primarily writes actual software code. Sure they might dabble in design but on a large scale it's not their forte. This are the people that take the loft designs of the Engineers and make it actually work. As an Engineer, I totally understand this, and it's not at all unique to software.
However reducing an architect to someone who does not know "how to get actual work done" sounds very strange to me. After all, how should he be able to "make diagrams and drawing pretty pictures" if he does not know how to "actually make things work"?
I'm not trying to diminish what Architects do, but it really is just drawing pretty pictures. This is true of all fields with architecture, not just software. Architects don't build houses, they don't even design them. Architects have grade ideas about over all look and feel, or in the case of software, general structure. Architects draw pictures and make models. This then gets fed to Engineers who spend their time trying to figure out how to turn that architecture into a useable product. Engineers draw the schematics. Then the technicians, be it carpenters, or programers, take these schematics and use them as the basis of the final product. Usually you can follow the schematic pretty close, but there will always be one or two changes that have to be made, like some required part being out of stock or some customer need was not addressed, or some component is to expensive to implement in IE.
Each part is important to the integrity of the over all product. If architects built buildings they would fall down. If engineers designed the aesthetics of them they would be functional but no one would actually want to live or work in one. If technicians designed them they would end up as a big unstable pile of mismatched parts.
In Canada it's illegal to call yourself a software engineer unless you have the right training and certification. It's like calling yourself a civil engineer in the us without a license.
Actually in the United States you can call yourself what ever you want. What you can't do is sell your services as a independent Engineer without having the appropriate certification. If you work in the Engineering department of a company in an Engineering capacity, then you have every right to call yourself an engineer. If you have graduated from a university with a degree in Engineering, you have every right to refer to yourself as an engineer. If there is no certification organization in your field you can sell your services as an engineer. The certification organizations would like you to think otherwise, but they know full well that in the US an engineer is defined by what you do not what your certifications are. This is also on a state by state basis, unless seeking a federal government contract.
If my state offered a certification in software Engineering then I'd be happy to go about the process. But there are very few states that offers Software Engineering Certification (Texas being the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and even that one is not nationally recognized).
There is clearly a difference between Programing, Engineering and Architecture. Most of us that have been in the industry for a while have figured this out. You need to find your place in that structure. I personally identify myself as a Software Engineer (perfectly legal in the US as long as I work for someone else). But I identify that way because I send more of my time working on bigger picture items and include in such considerations topics like engineering ethics, than the time I spend typing out code. I can't identify with Architecture at this point because I don't spend my days sitting around making diagrams and drawing pretty pictures, I actually spend my time figuring out how to get actual work done.
All three of these classifications are important when selling, designing and building large systems. The smaller, and less critical, the system the less likely you need each of these categories, which is very similar to material engineering (You can build a bring over your back yard stream all by your lonesome, but you would probably have a hard time building a span of over the Mississipi, for public use, without have a full team).
Programmers are the welders and plumbers of the software industry. They are important and necessary. They would probably do well to organize and bargain collectively. Engineers fill a different role, though they might write code now and again, it should not be their top priority.
Considering that in most of the western world you can be considered "poor" and still own a car, a flatscreen, an iPhone, and are more likely to suffer from obesity rather than starvation, arguably nobody is.
I have a close friend that grew up wealthy and thought very much like you. She argued that no one made minimum wage, since in her well to do neighborhood even the fast food clerks made above minimum wage. To her poor was having japanese cars instead of european, or having to decided between the pool or the tennis court in the back yard.
Then one day, her firm sent her to deposition a client in New York city, and she found herself at the corner of Bedford and Stuyvesant. She came back and told a tale that could only be understood by someone that had been there. She was horrified. Now, this was after Bed-Stuy had started it's gentrification process, so I can only imagine what might have happened if she had seen true poverty, like Allen, South Dakota.
So, you man not think there are any poor in the West, but you would be sadly mistaken.
umm no, any form of split screen has in general been ignored by the industry.
Multiplayer is not synonymous with split screen. I know that I never once mentioned split screen. The discussion was just about multiplayer.
Name off a few of these 4 player games u speak of?
Little Big Planet, Rock Band (and other music games), Pixel Junk Racers, Ghostbusters, The up coming Ratchet and Clank, Every Fight Game ever made, most PS Move games, a number of Racing games, and some sports games. That's just the few I could think of off the top of my head, but there are plenty more.
There are also the LEGO games which started out with co-op but not split screen, and now include co-op split screen, though those are only two player games.
Console gaming is still about getting people playing around one screen. If you chose not to play those games, then you can, but the option is there if you want it. Historically, console gaming has never been about split screen, yet still highly multiplayer. This goes all the way back to Pong.
In my house there is one current gen console and it's not a Wii. The average number of players is considerably higher than two. Three is probably the most common, but as high as seven is not unheard of. Many of the games we own support at least four players simultaneously. Consoles are still built with the idea of getting multiple people around one box and one screen, and actually increasing in social content.
In other words, there were learning "subject specific" or occupationally relevant skills", we have a name for a program like this...
Yes, we call them "majors."
On the other hand, why would employers be demanding a college education if they didn't see that it actually makes a significant difference in employee performance?
Employers tend to use the degree requirement as a short cut in the first round of hiring decisions. The reason they do that is because to many people take the short cut of just emailing a resume and hoping to get hired. I know many people with no degree to speak of that have no problems finding work, because they put a little bit of effort into it. Employers don't think that Degrees make anyone more suited for a job, they just think that a slacker with a degree is better than a slacker without one. They would almost always take someone with some initiative over both those options, degree or not.
They could hire people for less money if they didn't require a degree, so if less-educated employees could do the job, employers would be all over it.
If this were true it would mean that people, on average, who do the same exact job, would make more if they have a degree. I don't think that you will find that as true. Sure people with degrees often progress farther in a career than those without, but in careers that you can enter with our without a degree, those without tend to be at least equally paid, if not higher, even if they are fewer in number.
I'm convinced that they did this because they found that the sort of education offered by universities did a better job of preparing people to be effective technologists, businessmen and administrators.
It never struck you as possible that IBM might have realized that College education had become so common that it was better to of load those cost onto the individual and/or the government?
Either they are independently wealthy, and they have no right to ask us to stand on our own two feet, or they take money from the government, and therefore they are hypocrites.
Ever heard of working for a living? I do not get paid by the government nor receive any direct government assistance (I really can't calculate subsidies to products I use). The majority of citizens of the US are in the same situation. That is the majority that is not being represented.
I'm not saying I support hedwards argument, I'm just saying that there are plenty of people that are not independently wealthy nor take from the governement
One of the big things that sets Computer Science apart from engineering, and why there should be true Software Engineering majors, is that CS does not consider ethics, while Engineering course always include ethics.
If computer science has anything to do with how the hardware works then someone needs to tell that to nearly every university in the US and likely the world. I have worked enough CS grads to know that they never learned a thing about hardware. I can say for a fact that I have never met a CS grad that knew how to construct a Look-Ahead Adder. Hardware is a mater of Computer Engineering not Computer Science. Sure they can reinvent a Linked List or one of many sorting algorithms, but when it comes to "how the chips insider work" they haven't a clue.
On the other hand, you are correct that CS has nothing to do with programing, at least from what I have seen. Of the CS grads I have had the pleasure of working with few new how to program and none knew how to do it right. Most of them where too busy trying to reinvent the wheel.
The problem with automated testing is that you need to test the automation. For long lived applications that go through minor changes the automated approach is very good for regression testing. For short lived applications, such as games, it's almost futile as it would take as much effort to develop the tests as it would be to program the application it self, and most likely the tests would be prone to at least as many bugs as the final program.
Automated testing also only works well on fully predictable systems. Once a system has any form of randomness or intelligence then automated scripting because nearly impossible and absolutely unreasonable. While a it's easy to have a human cary out the script "open door, shoot and kill all enemies in run, loot room" It's much harder to get an automated system to do that, since the enemies, in modern games, don't follow scripts but act according to the situation.
As much as automated testing seems like the cure to all ills in software, it's just a fact that systems designed for humans require humans to test them.
There is a distinction many programers don't understand and falsely call themselves software engineers. I'm not saying you need to have a certification to be an engineer, but that the art of Engineering is far different from the art of Programing. Engineers might program from time to time, but programing is not engineering. It's like calling an Electrician an Electrical Engineer. Both technicians (electricians, programers, etc) and Engineers are important to a high quality product of any large scale, but they are not the same.
As much as I enjoy and support your view of the 9th amendment you seem to be glossing over the 10th. The right to drive on a roadway is not restricted by the federal government, it is restricted by state governments. Since the constitution does not expressly protect this right, then each state has the authority to restrict the privilege. Now, the federal government, in the form of the TSA, getting involved is a violation of the constitution as it's not a federal government attempting to create a restriction expressly granted to the states.
The US constitution is old, out dated and needs to be rewritten from the ground up. But if any one piece of the constitution is paramount to the existence of a federation, as the US was intended, it has to be the 10th amendment.
Sorry, what free market? You can't have a free market with a central bank that sets interest rates automatically. The US and the West are all mixed markets.
Doesn't matter if the US has a free market or not, once it fails, and it will, it will be the poster boy of anti-capitalism and anti-free market. I mean The Soviet Union wasn't communist either, but that never stopped people from claiming that they were. You are wasting your time if you keep trying to convince people that the US does not have a free market. Just accept that no mater what the cause of failure is in the US it will be blamed on Capitalism.
They signed for loans they couldn't afford, neglected or were too stupid to understand the fine print...Sure, Wall Street and Government enabled them, but they didn't sign those loan papers, the American people did.
First of all, a large portion of the populace in the United States purchased homes that they could afford, out that does not mean it's still reasonable to expect them to continue paying for something that is worth 1/2 what they owe. And it many case, if not most, the people most likely to default are not those that can't reasonably afford their homes, but those that are wide enough about economics to know that it's foolish to continue paying for their homes.
There were at least two parties in each and everyone of these home loans. Signed by both the individual receiving the loan and on behalf of the institution granting the loan. Though I will admit that the people deserve to pay the price for the loans they purchased, and that does not mean being forced to pay them off, but being willing to deal with the affect on credit history if the chose wisely not to pay of the loan. But If the people are going to be held responsible for their side, then so should the loaning institution. But instead we have the government redistributing the peoples money to the institutions in the form of government bail outs. These banks should have faltered and failed, not been propped up on the backs of the people.
A Horizon programme (BBC, UK) recently talked about psychopaths in "Are you good or are you evil" and these people are often in boards of companies, or high level bosses or whatever. A way they said they could identify these psychopaths is by the fact that half the people working for such a person hates him, the other half think he (she?) is great.
This is because of a couple things Horizon left out. First Corporations are by definition Psychopathic, so those that lead corporations tend to appear psychopathic. Second Horizon, like many media outlets, confused Psychopathic with Narcissistic.
Sadly both Psychopathic and Narcissistic behavior is highly encouraged in western culture, which it turn means they don't actually qualify as Personality Disorders, which is why Neither are listed in the ICD, and with the removal of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, they won't be in the next version of the DSM either.
Psychopathy is an illness, it's not presently curable and the only methods of treatment tend to just result in more abhorrent behavior.
Can you provide a currently accepted manual of diagnosis that lists psychopathy as a disease or disorder? I've looked through the DSM and ICD and can't seem to find it. The reason it's not in either of the accepted diagnostics manuals is because it would be a a Personality Disorder and the personality disorder criteria includes "the individual's characteristic and enduring patterns of inner experience and behaviour as a whole deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range". Psychopathic behavior does not "deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range" in western cultures. Psychopathic behavior is specifically encouraged in western cultures. You will start to see other Personality Disorders drop out of the diagnostics manuals as time progresses. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is already proposed for deletion, as our culture again is not only accepting, but outright promoting Narcissistic behavior.
In general the problem with Personality Disorders is that by definition they are dependent of transient cultural opinion. These are not disorders, but behaviors that can be changed if change is wanted, but they can not be corrected by treatment because they are not a disease.
There is any easier explanation for the rise in education costs, Supply and Demand. The supply of accredited schools has not rise at the same rate as the demand for degrees. Employers demand a degree to get past basic screening, and accreditation organizations artificially restrict the supply. When demand goes up higher than supply then prices go up.
While I feel it was Steve Jobs who really created to home computer revolution...
I think you are giving Jobs way to much credit for creating the home computer revolution. Not to say he was not important, but even you seem able to give him credit he's not due.
CNN also just said his "greatest invention" was the ipad. First, he didn't "invent" it, secondly... his GREATEST contribution? Come on.
His greatest contribution were in his later years. He is responsible for bringing mobile computing to the masses. First through the iBook, then the iPhone and finally the iPad. These far outweigh his contribution to home computing.
I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers.
Not to down play Jobs importance in the personal computing revolution, but the name you are looking for is Chuck Peddle. Without Chuck Peddle's inovation in manufacturing cheap microprocessors there would have been no Apple to begin with. Chuck was also the head of engineering behind the first personal computer to sell 1 million units and the best selling personal computer of all times.
Now what Jobs did in his later years was truly remarkable. He turned computing devices into a status symbol. You might not think that is significant, but there would be a lot less computing devices around if it was not for that.
It should increase the resale value of any games you buy if you do not use multiplayer, as your resold game should still contain the one free multiplayer account. It should also reduce the price of second hand games if you only intend on using the game for single player. If you don't buy or sell used games then it's no different than what there is today.