I agree that MS is not the way to go for free stuff. Like a drug dealer, they offer the first few hits for free to get you hooked.
About major languages that aren't free, I'm not sure how it stands today, but the last time I looked at Flash you couldn't get started with it cheaply (which is why I never tried it). Having said that, to keep the kids interested, you should go for a high-level language with rich built-in multimedia capabilities (for making games). Something like Flash would be ideal for young teens, but if it's not cheap, you could go with Python + PyGame, Ruby + RubySFML (or some other similar multimedia extension), or perhaps Lua with multimedia extensions.
I'm a bit biased because I wrote RubySFML, which I wrote so I could teach my son how to program by helping him write simple games.
I don't think I used the term trust fund, and my point was that it should be counted as a completely separate system on the books. It has its own income and expenses that can and should be completely isolated from the rest of the budget. Comparing how much the government "spends" on it compared to other things is meaningless. It's worse actually, because it's misleading.
You do realize that the wars we're currently fighting are not counted as part of the defense budget, right? Neither is nuclear weapons research and maintenance, and a whole bunch of other things that anyone with any sense would count as defense spending. That makes those numbers practically meaningless.
Do you also realize that historically speaking, deficit spending has soared under Republican presidents far more than under Democratic presidents? Republicans love to whine and moan about "tax and spend" Democrats, but the Republicans always out-spend the Democrats by a very large margin, they do it in a way that is effectively selling our children up the river, and they usually seem to do it for morally questionable things that involve the CIA and/or the military. Don't listen to what the two parties say. Look at what they've done.
From Wikipedia: "For 2009, the base budget rose to US$515.4 billion, with a total of US$651.2 billion when emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending are included.[1] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (~$9.3 billion, which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs (~$33.2 billion) or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, ~$170 billion in 2007) - the United States government is currently spending at the rate of approximately $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes."
Wars are not included in the defense budget? Nuclear weapons aren't included in the defense budget? I would even count the aid we give to Israel (which is quite a lot) as defense spending, but I'm fairly certain it's not counted that way on the chart. Then you have to remove social security from the chart because you can't count that as a normal expense (it is an investment fund paid for with its own separate tax). Then you have to remove interest from the chart because the goal I mentioned was to pay off the national debt (which you can't do if you don't even pay interest).
So what are we left with? Defense, Medicare, and "non-defense" and "other mandatory" (which includes non-defense items like aid to Israel, the wars we're currently fighting, and nuclear weapons research and maintenance). Do you think the elderly (the most active voters) are going to vote away their health care and simply go off and die quietly to help the rest of us? If not, defense is the only sizable chunk left.
Things weigh a lot less in water. I weigh about 150, and my kids could carry me at age 5 when I'm in the pool (which they found highly amusing). They'd have to reduce the drag coefficient, though. Maybe they should collaborate with Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
I agree, and I think the multiple plot lines would work better as a TV series than a movie. The story and character development is already laid out, and each episode could focus on a different character. Regarding movies, IMO they should split each book up into multiple movies. It would be a lot easier to do it justice, and the more justice they do it, the more people will want to pay to see them all (and to own them on DVD), so it could be a huge money-maker.
Imagine how much more money the LOTR movies would've made if they'd split them into six normal length movies. Most people I know who watched them got bored with them simply because they were too long. With six normal-length movies, they wouldn't have had to cut so much from the movie versions, the experience in the theater would've been more enjoyable, and a lot of people would've paid for all six.
I'm going to have to go with AC there. They're not just talking about software. They're talking about physical pieces of military hardware being stolen. And in the case of software, it's military software to run that hardware. If you think it would help to make stealing legal, I wouldn't mind visiting your house to see what you've got that's worth taking.;-)
I agree. Success kills nearly everything on the Internet. As soon as they become successful, they become prime targets for spammers, scammers, hackers, etc.
Jokingly: Ask Microsoft. They keep complaining that there are a shortage of programmers graduating from schools in the US.
Seriously: If you're stuck in a place where no one notices your potential, you have to make them notice it. We have a QA department, and it would help the development department out a lot if they could write code to generate and run test cases. You need to look at what you and your co-workers are doing, think of ways you can help improve it by writing code, and then take the initiative to do it. If you impress people enough, they should notice that you're in the wrong department. If not, it's still actual coding experience you can add to your resume.
When I started my career as a developer, they stuck me with system testing for nearly a year, and then they gave me the horrible job of writing documentation for a monster of a project that had absolutely none. They thought it would take at least 6 months, and they heaved a huge sigh of relief because they could drop it on the new guy and not have to document their own stuff. This was back in the Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51 days, and I surprised them by writing an ODBC project (ODBC was new to them at the time) to scan all the DBase tables and indexes they had, and then generate RTF pages for all of them with hyper-text links already built into them. Then I created a description table and asked various developers to fill in descriptions (since I was new and there were no docs, I had no clue what was in those tables), and we had documentation good enough to send to customers in a few weeks. They were very impressed, and after that started giving me better tasks.
The entire quote at the top of this article seems ludicrous. Yes we all think spammers are scum, but this article is a waste of space. These days just about anyone who thinks they can get away with it will lie under oath when it suits them.
Did something I say go over your head? I know exactly how he won. He won by appealing to the lowest common denominator, just like P.T. Barnum. Although unlike P.T. Barnum, Bush was not a genius at manipulating people to take advantage of them. He was just some dumb cowboy that came across as more likable to people dumb enough to vote for President based on who they'd rather sit down and have a beer with.
Before you shoot back with a reply, I'm not talking about his Republican base, who would've voted for him in 2000 almost no matter what. I'm talking about the people who were sitting on the fence. I'm talking about people who switch sides in a poll over the most asinine things, like Gore hugging his wife on TV because people thought he was too stiff (surprisingly enough, people did switch over that). I'm talking about dumb-asses, and there are more than enough of those to sway a national election.
So did he win the debate on merit of the intelligence of his answers? No. Did he win in terms of voters swayed? Yes. So IMO he lost the debate, but won where it counts (in the polls).
IMO, Bush did not do well against Gore (aside from the fact that he impressed people who care more about how someone looks than what comes out of their mouth). Bush may not have been wooden in the 2000 debate, but he came across as extremely insincere. I'd take wooden over insincere any day. He sounded like a used-car salesman. Maybe that's what most people like, but that vibe has always bothered me. Combined with the fact that every single answer against Gore was "Well folks, I'm stupid. But I can surround myself with smart unscrupulous people who will tell me what to do.", I knew from his first debate with Gore that Bush's presidency would be bad. I had no idea it would be this bad.
Now we hear McCain saying the same thing (about the economy, at least). Fortunately Obama looks good and comes across well to the same people who decided that Bush won his debates against Gore without answering a single question. No one can win an election if only the intelligent people vote for him.
Well, I didn't think he won. I don't think anyone with any intelligence thought he won, either. Although it proves that P.T. Barnum knew what he was talking about.
1) This could save my kids from someone else's kids. 2) This could save me from someone else's kids. 3) In America kids are allowed to get their licenses too young, the driving tests are not strict enough, and the penalties for reckless driving are not strong enough. This is a recipe for disaster even with kids who try to be good most of the time. 4) You're right, but we'd have to raise the driving age in America to 25 to accomplish it because too many people here are dumb-asses. IMO, 16 is way too young for someone to be driving.
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And Windows 95 was faster than NT 4.0 (if you don't count the reboots from all the crashes).
I agree that MS is not the way to go for free stuff. Like a drug dealer, they offer the first few hits for free to get you hooked.
About major languages that aren't free, I'm not sure how it stands today, but the last time I looked at Flash you couldn't get started with it cheaply (which is why I never tried it). Having said that, to keep the kids interested, you should go for a high-level language with rich built-in multimedia capabilities (for making games). Something like Flash would be ideal for young teens, but if it's not cheap, you could go with Python + PyGame, Ruby + RubySFML (or some other similar multimedia extension), or perhaps Lua with multimedia extensions.
I'm a bit biased because I wrote RubySFML, which I wrote so I could teach my son how to program by helping him write simple games.
I would've said androgynous overlords myself. ;-)
eBay can list 100 million pennies for sale, each with a reserve price of $1. By the end of the contest, the script kiddies get a bill for $1 million.
I know. I said "should".
I don't think I used the term trust fund, and my point was that it should be counted as a completely separate system on the books. It has its own income and expenses that can and should be completely isolated from the rest of the budget. Comparing how much the government "spends" on it compared to other things is meaningless. It's worse actually, because it's misleading.
You do realize that the wars we're currently fighting are not counted as part of the defense budget, right? Neither is nuclear weapons research and maintenance, and a whole bunch of other things that anyone with any sense would count as defense spending. That makes those numbers practically meaningless.
Do you also realize that historically speaking, deficit spending has soared under Republican presidents far more than under Democratic presidents? Republicans love to whine and moan about "tax and spend" Democrats, but the Republicans always out-spend the Democrats by a very large margin, they do it in a way that is effectively selling our children up the river, and they usually seem to do it for morally questionable things that involve the CIA and/or the military. Don't listen to what the two parties say. Look at what they've done.
From Wikipedia:
"For 2009, the base budget rose to US$515.4 billion, with a total of US$651.2 billion when emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending are included.[1] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (~$9.3 billion, which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs (~$33.2 billion) or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, ~$170 billion in 2007) - the United States government is currently spending at the rate of approximately $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes."
Wars are not included in the defense budget? Nuclear weapons aren't included in the defense budget? I would even count the aid we give to Israel (which is quite a lot) as defense spending, but I'm fairly certain it's not counted that way on the chart. Then you have to remove social security from the chart because you can't count that as a normal expense (it is an investment fund paid for with its own separate tax). Then you have to remove interest from the chart because the goal I mentioned was to pay off the national debt (which you can't do if you don't even pay interest).
So what are we left with? Defense, Medicare, and "non-defense" and "other mandatory" (which includes non-defense items like aid to Israel, the wars we're currently fighting, and nuclear weapons research and maintenance). Do you think the elderly (the most active voters) are going to vote away their health care and simply go off and die quietly to help the rest of us? If not, defense is the only sizable chunk left.
I second this. IMO, the only way to significantly put a dent in the budget would be to cut back on defense spending.
Sounds like someone took it a bit too seriously.
Things weigh a lot less in water. I weigh about 150, and my kids could carry me at age 5 when I'm in the pool (which they found highly amusing). They'd have to reduce the drag coefficient, though. Maybe they should collaborate with Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
I agree, and I think the multiple plot lines would work better as a TV series than a movie. The story and character development is already laid out, and each episode could focus on a different character. Regarding movies, IMO they should split each book up into multiple movies. It would be a lot easier to do it justice, and the more justice they do it, the more people will want to pay to see them all (and to own them on DVD), so it could be a huge money-maker.
Imagine how much more money the LOTR movies would've made if they'd split them into six normal length movies. Most people I know who watched them got bored with them simply because they were too long. With six normal-length movies, they wouldn't have had to cut so much from the movie versions, the experience in the theater would've been more enjoyable, and a lot of people would've paid for all six.
I'm going to have to go with AC there. They're not just talking about software. They're talking about physical pieces of military hardware being stolen. And in the case of software, it's military software to run that hardware. If you think it would help to make stealing legal, I wouldn't mind visiting your house to see what you've got that's worth taking. ;-)
I'm guessing no. Of that ridiculous amount of estimated data, I'm thinking there's not really that much that needs to be saved for very long.
News at 11:00: Kids more likely to disregard laws because they know they won't be tried as adults.
I agree. Success kills nearly everything on the Internet. As soon as they become successful, they become prime targets for spammers, scammers, hackers, etc.
Jokingly: Ask Microsoft. They keep complaining that there are a shortage of programmers graduating from schools in the US.
Seriously: If you're stuck in a place where no one notices your potential, you have to make them notice it. We have a QA department, and it would help the development department out a lot if they could write code to generate and run test cases. You need to look at what you and your co-workers are doing, think of ways you can help improve it by writing code, and then take the initiative to do it. If you impress people enough, they should notice that you're in the wrong department. If not, it's still actual coding experience you can add to your resume.
When I started my career as a developer, they stuck me with system testing for nearly a year, and then they gave me the horrible job of writing documentation for a monster of a project that had absolutely none. They thought it would take at least 6 months, and they heaved a huge sigh of relief because they could drop it on the new guy and not have to document their own stuff. This was back in the Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51 days, and I surprised them by writing an ODBC project (ODBC was new to them at the time) to scan all the DBase tables and indexes they had, and then generate RTF pages for all of them with hyper-text links already built into them. Then I created a description table and asked various developers to fill in descriptions (since I was new and there were no docs, I had no clue what was in those tables), and we had documentation good enough to send to customers in a few weeks. They were very impressed, and after that started giving me better tasks.
How about this definition? If the software is as complex as the EULA you had to accept to install it, then it's in.
The entire quote at the top of this article seems ludicrous. Yes we all think spammers are scum, but this article is a waste of space. These days just about anyone who thinks they can get away with it will lie under oath when it suits them.
Did something I say go over your head? I know exactly how he won. He won by appealing to the lowest common denominator, just like P.T. Barnum. Although unlike P.T. Barnum, Bush was not a genius at manipulating people to take advantage of them. He was just some dumb cowboy that came across as more likable to people dumb enough to vote for President based on who they'd rather sit down and have a beer with.
Before you shoot back with a reply, I'm not talking about his Republican base, who would've voted for him in 2000 almost no matter what. I'm talking about the people who were sitting on the fence. I'm talking about people who switch sides in a poll over the most asinine things, like Gore hugging his wife on TV because people thought he was too stiff (surprisingly enough, people did switch over that). I'm talking about dumb-asses, and there are more than enough of those to sway a national election.
So did he win the debate on merit of the intelligence of his answers? No. Did he win in terms of voters swayed? Yes. So IMO he lost the debate, but won where it counts (in the polls).
IMO, Bush did not do well against Gore (aside from the fact that he impressed people who care more about how someone looks than what comes out of their mouth). Bush may not have been wooden in the 2000 debate, but he came across as extremely insincere. I'd take wooden over insincere any day. He sounded like a used-car salesman. Maybe that's what most people like, but that vibe has always bothered me. Combined with the fact that every single answer against Gore was "Well folks, I'm stupid. But I can surround myself with smart unscrupulous people who will tell me what to do.", I knew from his first debate with Gore that Bush's presidency would be bad. I had no idea it would be this bad.
Now we hear McCain saying the same thing (about the economy, at least). Fortunately Obama looks good and comes across well to the same people who decided that Bush won his debates against Gore without answering a single question. No one can win an election if only the intelligent people vote for him.
Well, I didn't think he won. I don't think anyone with any intelligence thought he won, either. Although it proves that P.T. Barnum knew what he was talking about.
I think Karl Rove learned a lot from history, and he actively wants to repeat it.
Well, that's better than what Bush did in 2000. He didn't answer a single question, and somehow he won it.
1) This could save my kids from someone else's kids.
2) This could save me from someone else's kids.
3) In America kids are allowed to get their licenses too young, the driving tests are not strict enough, and the penalties for reckless driving are not strong enough. This is a recipe for disaster even with kids who try to be good most of the time.
4) You're right, but we'd have to raise the driving age in America to 25 to accomplish it because too many people here are dumb-asses. IMO, 16 is way too young for someone to be driving.