I, for instance, have yet to be convinced that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes what its proponents claim it will.
Really? So what will it take to convince you that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes the opposite of what its proponents claim it will?
Because from there, it's an easy walk over to being convinced that those proponents know this and have been lying about their intentions the whole time.
Re:Other uses IBM found for its technology
on
IBM Turns 100
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Computers in the 1930s weren't the general purpose machines we have today. You didn't just buy a computer, bring it home, and plug it in. There was no off-the-shelf software. Computers came with a team of IBM engineers in white lab coats.
If Boeing's engineers had been in the cockpit on 9/11 and had been paid to fly in to buildings, then Boeing would be as complicit in 9/11 as IBM is in the Holocaust.
And no one is saying it would not have happened without IBM. But that does not diminish IBM's role.
You seem to be trying to support Bitcoin, but yet you fail.
The price of natural diamonds is supported by cartel and monopoly. Diamonds are not rare. Even the tools and skills necessary to turn raw diamonds in to polished stones for industrial or ornamental use do not justify retail prices.
If you're comparing the Bitcoin market to the diamond market, then you agree with the folks saying the value of bitcoin is based on the "bigger fool" theory.
No. They mean "malicious software designed to create botnets or unrightfully obtained computer passwords." The wording is certainly vague, but that wouldn't include text editor or compilers.
Looks like they want crackers, not hackers. The wording is vague, if 'vague' is a synonym for 'incorrect'.
Gold has value because you can make shiny and pretty things with it that other people want. You can't do that with dollars or bitcoins, but dollars have the advantage of being valuable to the government. Bitcoins do not.
There is an important quality of gold missing these posts. As several have pointed out, gold is shiny and be made in to objects for use and trade.
But gold is also stable. If I put my effort in to acquiring gold (either through mining or trade), I can retain the results of my effort essentially forever (or until someone attacks my bank account with aqua regia.) And as a vehicle of trade, stability is more important than the shiny. I can polish up iron, but no one wants to see their life savings lost to rust.
So gold is 1) anti-inflationary (any amount added to the system is offset by the resources required to dig it up, purify, etc.), 2) universal in appeal (has there been any culture in human history that did not value the shiney?), and it is 3) stable.
Bitcoin has 1. Supporters are trying to build 2. 3 will never apply. And IMHO, 1 is on shaky ground. Bitcoin folks should be thinking about how they will handle the first big counterfeiting scandal, and particularly how you convince people it will be a 1 time occurrence, and not the result of a systematic flaw.
(Anything that is worth something gets counterfeited by a copy in something worth less.)
It seems Bitcoin has none of the long-term factors that make gold attractive and not the one factor supporting the US dollar (can be used to pay taxes).
How is this different than gold mining in WoW or any other in-game currency? Isn't this just game currency without the game?
No, not in the minds of most people. It was always going to be pants; neither the anticipation or the expectation could possibly be matched.
What is the etymology of this usage of 'pants'? I've seen this usage a handful of times on/., and I can gather from context it is some variation of 'not good.' Outside of/., the only similar usage I've encountered was someone using pants as an interjection, similar to "merde!"
Is this a UK thing? Over in the US of A, pants are trousers.
excerpt: If it's worth building, it's worth testing. If it's not worth testing, why are you wasting your time working on it?
So... what's your strategy for preventing logical errors?
Yes, pompous. There are no valid blanket statements on the meaning of bugs found during testing. That would depend on the bug found. Could be a systematic issue with the development process. Could just be that people aren't always perfect.
A bug found in testing could be due to an issue in development, an issue with the requirements, an issue with the test.
In fact, when I work with teams, I teach them that if your testing "phase" finds bugs, it's a problem with your process that needs to be addressed immediately, so the concept of ensuing[sic] that QA doesn't find anything is a great concept to bring out.
So if my testing finds a bug, all other work needs to stop so the problem with my process can be addressed immediately. (Even if the problem with my process is just that people are involved.)
So what if I water down my QA process so that no bugs are found, no matter how bad the code is? Does that mean there are no problems with my process?
Saying, "We'll try" means that you, or your team, isn't already giving it their best, and that through some extraordinary effort you'll pull it off.
I say this a lot. Usually it coincides with a feeling that we have been given a task, usually using some new or otherwise unproven technology or techniques, with hazy specifications on a fixed and frankly uncomfortable timeline. Generally the first answer is no, but it becomes apparent that we don't really have a choice in the matter, our job is to do this thing. We say it just to placate ourselves and make it sound like there is no expectation of success.
"We'll try", to me, has always translated to, "We're doing this against our better judgement."
I'm sort of interested in reading this book and finding out if there's more to this situation that the review detailed.
Sounds like you're just the guy this book is for, saying you'll try when you should be saying no.
When I say, 'I'll try,' I mean, I'll try. It means, I don't know if the request is possible given the available resources, or I have check for conflicts with existing requirements, or I'm not sure if the request is technically possible.
"Saying, "We'll try" means that you, or your team, isn't already giving it their best". WTF is that crap? "Uncle Bob" sounds like a pompous d-bag.
Perhaps "I'll try" means I'm open to learning and growing. There may be something I cannot do today which I will be able to do tomorrow, so rather than saying no, I do some research. I don't consider that "extraordinary effort."
As for the name/logo. It's syncing over wifi. There are two very obvious names: "Wifi Sync" and "Sync Wifi" for this. And the logo is the most obvious choice for a logo: The composition of the wifi logo and the sync logo. If you'd have asked me to come up with a name/logo for this I would have come up with exactly the same thing. I do not think that Apple ripped him off - he's just trying to make noise.
And that's why almost all publishers explicitly do not accept random submissions from the public. They don't want some yahoo sending in an obvious idea the company is already working on, and then risk the lawsuit when the submission is rejected and the product goes to market.
Except in this case, Apple requests submissions. So they should be prepared to handle such situations. Even if the feature was developed in house completely independent of this guys app, they stole his name and logo.
These are trademarks, not patents. Obviousness isn't a factor. He was first to market. It doesn't matter if you or I or Apple would have come up with the same name and logo. We didn't. He did.
That's enough. I, personally, submitted a feedback request to Apple FOUR YEARS AGO requesting Wireless Synchronization for my very first iPhone. Not to mention that practically every Apple and iPhone and industry tech blogger known to man have ALSO requested the same exact feature for years now. Google it.
And yet, they didn't actually implement this feature until after this guy had submitted his app.
Or do you think it's been in development for four years?
So, shouldn't we be asking serious questions about why Homeland Security and ICE are running a one-sided, misleading corporate propaganda video, created and owned by a private company, without mentioning the rather pertinent information of who made it?
Yes, we should, but I'll be happy to wait until after they've answered the more pressing question about what the hell Homeland Security are doing enforcing copyright claims in the first place.
Good point.
Of course, if DHS and ICE had produced these videos in house, Anonymous Coward would complain that this was more government waste, as there are folks whose job it is to produce video who could do the job much more efficiently.
Could you imagine how the press would react if, say, the FDA ran PSAs that were created and owned by McDonald's without making that clear to the public? How about if the Treasury Department ran a PSA created and owned by Goldman Sachs?
US Agricultural policy is written by lobbyists for the likes of Monsanto and ADM. And are there any high-ranking officials in Treasury who don't have strong ties to Goldman or Bear Stearns?
The question isn't how the press would react, it's how the citizens react. And the answer is, they don't.
There have been many documentaries, exposes, and so forth about the incestuous relationships between industry and US regulators and law makers. The response has been a collective yawn.
Everyone (other than W.) in the White House or Congress who had any major role in getting the prescription drug plan passed went on to work for the drug industry. You don't need to imagine the reaction; just look around.
I don't care.. I'm just telling you that the issue is entirely political. Sort it out your own selves. Just stop with the crying about shortages.. We can drop a pallet of goods anywhere on the planet within 24 hours... The only bottleneck is human bureaucracy.. It's like running your server with punch cards and 8k of memory
Exactly my thoughts on reading the summary. (Yes, I must be new here...) Whether it's political or economic, the challenge is policy not physical resources.
Similar predictions about worldwide food shortages have been made before, and today we're growing more food on less land. And there's no reason to think we've maximized the use of land or technology.
If they buy stuff like air tickets reply that you did not order then cancel the order. That will annoy somebody so that they only do it once. airlines are happy to oblige.
If it was round-trip, it'd be more fun to only cancel the return leg.
I still get some idiot on comcast who has a the wrong domain names in there m$ email client setup and tries to access our email servers now and again. Dont expect change.
Then again, if you can't work the English language any better than they can work their email client, you probably shouldn't be complaining.
You're admitting 'hacking' in to someone else's account and changing the account details? Are you insane?
Likewise,
and tell them that I first have to say I am that kid's parent or guardian
Enjoy having to notify your neighbors about being on the sex offenders list. Why would you pretend to be the parent of some strange kid on the internet? Yes, if I take you at your word, you're going out of your way to help. On the other hand, if I'm a local official who wants to look tough on cyber-crime, you're a predator.
I have a not-so-common FirstNameLastName@gmail.com address, and I also get occasional email meant for someone else. One time I was getting family newsletters, and I did reply to let the sender know I was not who he thought I was.
But the obvious answer is, spam filter. Contacting the sender is nice. Impersonating someone else online is a crime. Impersonating a minor's parent or guardian is insane.
Obviously the US Civil War, which was about giving states the freedom to deny freedom to some people living inside their borders. There were a bunch of other issues as well, but that was the hot-button item.
The US Civil War actually has quite a few parallels with the debate on this thread, but I'd argue that if anything it is a good reason for why people SHOULDN'T have the freedom to give up freedom. In the case of slavery as it was practiced in the US this wasn't even a voluntary choice, but the history of indentured servitude isn't much better.
OMFG. This conversation is brain numbing. If you want you talk about the freedom to give up your freedoms, try something like the minimum wage. But Slavery? Is there any documentation, any historical evidence that any slaves in the US were "voluntary"?
As far the indentured servitude which followed, yeah it was a choice if you think 'starve to death or owe your soul to the company store' is a choice.
This is the same BS we're been getting from the fascists for the last 140 or so years. (Yes, I know they weren't called fascists in the beginning, but that's what we call it now. I'm thinking of fascism as the partnership of business and government to the advantage of business and the detriment of the people.)
The Jim Crow system in the US wasn't about the freedom to discriminate. It wasn't about private business being free to chose who they do business with. It wasn't about private citizens being free to take poorly paying jobs. It was about government subjugation.
It was government enforced segregation. You can't make the argument that businesses should be free to refuse service to black people if the freedom doesn't go the other way. And most of the post-slavery US history, in the South a white business owner wasn't free to say, I will serve white and black people at the same counter, and I will have one set of restrooms for my white and black customers.
So bringing this around to the topic, this paper must be a fake. RMS is really suggesting we pay authors through taxes? That we get the government involved in every book sale?
The danger with DRM is it will eventually become law. (Yes, I'd like to think the correct statement is, "may become law," but I don't think this is a question.)
Things are moving towards a system where it will be illegal to make or sell an eBook reader which does not incorporate DRM. Corporations will make it illegal it distribute content other than approved channels.
You may not mean to, you may not realize it, but for every Apple product you buy, where you can only get approved apps through the Apple store, you're helping this happen. For every eBook reader you buy, where the the company has the ability to delete "your" books, you're helping this happen.
Oh jeez not the "go to college to become a better rounded person" argument. College costs as much as a mid-range to high-end sports car. Lower and middle-class people don't have the luxury of going to college for the pleasure of learning. There must be a return on such a significant investment. It's that simple, it has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism.
Why can't the pleasure of learning be the significant return?
Find something fulfilling, instead. Maybe the culinary arts or crafting trout flies to sell on the Internet or something. Look at your nearby community for small opportunities. Open a dirty-water hot dog stand. It's cash income and at least you'll be appreciated a little bit. When thinking about your career, it's best to expect the worst as far as the future. Things are going to get a lot, lot worse economically. If you are relying on a company to keep you alive, you will lose.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you there. I know the old saying, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. But my experience is more like, if you do what you love for your 9 to 5, what do you do when you need a break?
I got in to programing when my first choice of career was stalling. It was the peak of the dot com bubble and getting in was easy. I had a knack with computers and was suddenly getting paid for what I had been doing for free. Yes, I am good at what I do. Yes, I did go back for some formal eduction so I avoided some of the mistakes self-taught programmers tend to make. Yes, I know enough to know my limitations.
But while I make a good living, the last thing I want to do when I get home is troubleshoot issues with a WiFi bridge or put together a web site for some hobby project of my wife's. I gained a career, but lost a hobby.
Now I enjoy cooking. And folks say I'm pretty good at it. At least I don't get too many calls from the hospital. (But it might be hard to get an outside line from the morgue.)
Anyway, the absolute last thing I will ever consider it making any money from cooking. There are so few things I enjoy at that level. I can't afford to loose even one.
Think of it this way--most folks love sex. But when you see a pr0n star saying how much she loves sex, do you think, how great for her! Making a living doing what she loves. Or do you think, if it wasn't meth, I'd have to spank it to the Sears catalog?
Slashdot Mirror
Now websites (in both Facebook and have been set up to use crowdsourcing to identify the hooligans.
)
BOTH facebook?? These people mean business!
Watch him start a "consulting" business that counts among its clients some very high profile tech companies.
That wouldn't be unusual for someone leaving a high profile government position, but...
Lew said Kundra will move to Harvard in mid-August to serve as a joint fellow at the Kennedy School and at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
I, for instance, have yet to be convinced that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes what its proponents claim it will.
Really? So what will it take to convince you that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes the opposite of what its proponents claim it will?
Because from there, it's an easy walk over to being convinced that those proponents know this and have been lying about their intentions the whole time.
Computers in the 1930s weren't the general purpose machines we have today. You didn't just buy a computer, bring it home, and plug it in. There was no off-the-shelf software. Computers came with a team of IBM engineers in white lab coats.
If Boeing's engineers had been in the cockpit on 9/11 and had been paid to fly in to buildings, then Boeing would be as complicit in 9/11 as IBM is in the Holocaust.
And no one is saying it would not have happened without IBM. But that does not diminish IBM's role.
Better example.
Diamonds.
You seem to be trying to support Bitcoin, but yet you fail.
The price of natural diamonds is supported by cartel and monopoly. Diamonds are not rare. Even the tools and skills necessary to turn raw diamonds in to polished stones for industrial or ornamental use do not justify retail prices.
If you're comparing the Bitcoin market to the diamond market, then you agree with the folks saying the value of bitcoin is based on the "bigger fool" theory.
No. They mean "malicious software designed to create botnets or unrightfully obtained computer passwords." The wording is certainly vague, but that wouldn't include text editor or compilers.
Looks like they want crackers, not hackers. The wording is vague, if 'vague' is a synonym for 'incorrect'.
Are they talking about hacking or cracking?
For hacking, this could be a silver age. The days of HomeBrew and phone phreaks were the golden age.
For cracking, as others have noted, it's the lulz age.
Gold has value because you can make shiny and pretty things with it that other people want. You can't do that with dollars or bitcoins, but dollars have the advantage of being valuable to the government. Bitcoins do not.
There is an important quality of gold missing these posts. As several have pointed out, gold is shiny and be made in to objects for use and trade.
But gold is also stable. If I put my effort in to acquiring gold (either through mining or trade), I can retain the results of my effort essentially forever (or until someone attacks my bank account with aqua regia.) And as a vehicle of trade, stability is more important than the shiny. I can polish up iron, but no one wants to see their life savings lost to rust.
So gold is 1) anti-inflationary (any amount added to the system is offset by the resources required to dig it up, purify, etc.), 2) universal in appeal (has there been any culture in human history that did not value the shiney?), and it is 3) stable.
Bitcoin has 1. Supporters are trying to build 2. 3 will never apply. And IMHO, 1 is on shaky ground. Bitcoin folks should be thinking about how they will handle the first big counterfeiting scandal, and particularly how you convince people it will be a 1 time occurrence, and not the result of a systematic flaw.
(Anything that is worth something gets counterfeited by a copy in something worth less.)
It seems Bitcoin has none of the long-term factors that make gold attractive and not the one factor supporting the US dollar (can be used to pay taxes).
How is this different than gold mining in WoW or any other in-game currency? Isn't this just game currency without the game?
No, not in the minds of most people. It was always going to be pants; neither the anticipation or the expectation could possibly be matched.
What is the etymology of this usage of 'pants'? I've seen this usage a handful of times on /., and I can gather from context it is some variation of 'not good.' Outside of /., the only similar usage I've encountered was someone using pants as an interjection, similar to "merde!"
Is this a UK thing? Over in the US of A, pants are trousers.
Question for the reviewer: is the book based on actual scientific research or is it anecdotal evidence?
Neither.
... the pompous notion that process can somehow prevent logical errors
Pompous?
Preventing logical errors is the key idea here: Introduction to Test Driven Design (TDD).
excerpt: If it's worth building, it's worth testing. If it's not worth testing, why are you wasting your time working on it?
So... what's your strategy for preventing logical errors?
Yes, pompous. There are no valid blanket statements on the meaning of bugs found during testing. That would depend on the bug found. Could be a systematic issue with the development process. Could just be that people aren't always perfect.
A bug found in testing could be due to an issue in development, an issue with the requirements, an issue with the test.
In fact, when I work with teams, I teach them that if your testing "phase" finds bugs, it's a problem with your process that needs to be addressed immediately, so the concept of ensuing[sic] that QA doesn't find anything is a great concept to bring out.
So if my testing finds a bug, all other work needs to stop so the problem with my process can be addressed immediately. (Even if the problem with my process is just that people are involved.)
So what if I water down my QA process so that no bugs are found, no matter how bad the code is? Does that mean there are no problems with my process?
Saying, "We'll try" means that you, or your team, isn't already giving it their best, and that through some extraordinary effort you'll pull it off.
I say this a lot. Usually it coincides with a feeling that we have been given a task, usually using some new or otherwise unproven technology or techniques, with hazy specifications on a fixed and frankly uncomfortable timeline. Generally the first answer is no, but it becomes apparent that we don't really have a choice in the matter, our job is to do this thing. We say it just to placate ourselves and make it sound like there is no expectation of success.
"We'll try", to me, has always translated to, "We're doing this against our better judgement."
I'm sort of interested in reading this book and finding out if there's more to this situation that the review detailed.
Sounds like you're just the guy this book is for, saying you'll try when you should be saying no.
When I say, 'I'll try,' I mean, I'll try. It means, I don't know if the request is possible given the available resources, or I have check for conflicts with existing requirements, or I'm not sure if the request is technically possible.
"Saying, "We'll try" means that you, or your team, isn't already giving it their best". WTF is that crap? "Uncle Bob" sounds like a pompous d-bag.
Perhaps "I'll try" means I'm open to learning and growing. There may be something I cannot do today which I will be able to do tomorrow, so rather than saying no, I do some research. I don't consider that "extraordinary effort."
As for the name/logo. It's syncing over wifi. There are two very obvious names: "Wifi Sync" and "Sync Wifi" for this. And the logo is the most obvious choice for a logo: The composition of the wifi logo and the sync logo. If you'd have asked me to come up with a name/logo for this I would have come up with exactly the same thing. I do not think that Apple ripped him off - he's just trying to make noise.
And that's why almost all publishers explicitly do not accept random submissions from the public. They don't want some yahoo sending in an obvious idea the company is already working on, and then risk the lawsuit when the submission is rejected and the product goes to market.
Except in this case, Apple requests submissions. So they should be prepared to handle such situations. Even if the feature was developed in house completely independent of this guys app, they stole his name and logo.
These are trademarks, not patents. Obviousness isn't a factor. He was first to market. It doesn't matter if you or I or Apple would have come up with the same name and logo. We didn't. He did.
That's enough. I, personally, submitted a feedback request to Apple FOUR YEARS AGO requesting Wireless Synchronization for my very first iPhone. Not to mention that practically every Apple and iPhone and industry tech blogger known to man have ALSO requested the same exact feature for years now. Google it.
And yet, they didn't actually implement this feature until after this guy had submitted his app.
Or do you think it's been in development for four years?
Do the folks at Microsoft speak it?
Verbing weirds language.
So, shouldn't we be asking serious questions about why Homeland Security and ICE are running a one-sided, misleading corporate propaganda video, created and owned by a private company, without mentioning the rather pertinent information of who made it?
Yes, we should, but I'll be happy to wait until after they've answered the more pressing question about what the hell Homeland Security are doing enforcing copyright claims in the first place.
Good point.
Of course, if DHS and ICE had produced these videos in house, Anonymous Coward would complain that this was more government waste, as there are folks whose job it is to produce video who could do the job much more efficiently.
Could you imagine how the press would react if, say, the FDA ran PSAs that were created and owned by McDonald's without making that clear to the public? How about if the Treasury Department ran a PSA created and owned by Goldman Sachs?
US Agricultural policy is written by lobbyists for the likes of Monsanto and ADM. And are there any high-ranking officials in Treasury who don't have strong ties to Goldman or Bear Stearns?
The question isn't how the press would react, it's how the citizens react. And the answer is, they don't.
There have been many documentaries, exposes, and so forth about the incestuous relationships between industry and US regulators and law makers. The response has been a collective yawn.
Everyone (other than W.) in the White House or Congress who had any major role in getting the prescription drug plan passed went on to work for the drug industry. You don't need to imagine the reaction; just look around.
I don't care.. I'm just telling you that the issue is entirely political. Sort it out your own selves. Just stop with the crying about shortages.. We can drop a pallet of goods anywhere on the planet within 24 hours... The only bottleneck is human bureaucracy.. It's like running your server with punch cards and 8k of memory
Exactly my thoughts on reading the summary. (Yes, I must be new here...) Whether it's political or economic, the challenge is policy not physical resources.
Similar predictions about worldwide food shortages have been made before, and today we're growing more food on less land. And there's no reason to think we've maximized the use of land or technology.
If they buy stuff like air tickets reply that you did not order then cancel the order. That will annoy somebody so that they only do it once. airlines are happy to oblige.
If it was round-trip, it'd be more fun to only cancel the return leg.
I still get some idiot on comcast who has a the wrong domain names in there m$ email client setup and tries to access our email servers now and again. Dont expect change.
Then again, if you can't work the English language any better than they can work their email client, you probably shouldn't be complaining.
Enjoy your stay at PMITA prison.
You're admitting 'hacking' in to someone else's account and changing the account details? Are you insane?
Likewise,
and tell them that I first have to say I am that kid's parent or guardian
Enjoy having to notify your neighbors about being on the sex offenders list. Why would you pretend to be the parent of some strange kid on the internet? Yes, if I take you at your word, you're going out of your way to help. On the other hand, if I'm a local official who wants to look tough on cyber-crime, you're a predator.
I have a not-so-common FirstNameLastName@gmail.com address, and I also get occasional email meant for someone else. One time I was getting family newsletters, and I did reply to let the sender know I was not who he thought I was.
But the obvious answer is, spam filter. Contacting the sender is nice. Impersonating someone else online is a crime. Impersonating a minor's parent or guardian is insane.
Obviously the US Civil War, which was about giving states the freedom to deny freedom to some people living inside their borders. There were a bunch of other issues as well, but that was the hot-button item.
The US Civil War actually has quite a few parallels with the debate on this thread, but I'd argue that if anything it is a good reason for why people SHOULDN'T have the freedom to give up freedom. In the case of slavery as it was practiced in the US this wasn't even a voluntary choice, but the history of indentured servitude isn't much better.
OMFG. This conversation is brain numbing. If you want you talk about the freedom to give up your freedoms, try something like the minimum wage. But Slavery? Is there any documentation, any historical evidence that any slaves in the US were "voluntary"?
As far the indentured servitude which followed, yeah it was a choice if you think 'starve to death or owe your soul to the company store' is a choice.
This is the same BS we're been getting from the fascists for the last 140 or so years. (Yes, I know they weren't called fascists in the beginning, but that's what we call it now. I'm thinking of fascism as the partnership of business and government to the advantage of business and the detriment of the people.)
The Jim Crow system in the US wasn't about the freedom to discriminate. It wasn't about private business being free to chose who they do business with. It wasn't about private citizens being free to take poorly paying jobs. It was about government subjugation.
It was government enforced segregation. You can't make the argument that businesses should be free to refuse service to black people if the freedom doesn't go the other way. And most of the post-slavery US history, in the South a white business owner wasn't free to say, I will serve white and black people at the same counter, and I will have one set of restrooms for my white and black customers.
So bringing this around to the topic, this paper must be a fake. RMS is really suggesting we pay authors through taxes? That we get the government involved in every book sale?
The danger with DRM is it will eventually become law. (Yes, I'd like to think the correct statement is, "may become law," but I don't think this is a question.)
Things are moving towards a system where it will be illegal to make or sell an eBook reader which does not incorporate DRM. Corporations will make it illegal it distribute content other than approved channels.
You may not mean to, you may not realize it, but for every Apple product you buy, where you can only get approved apps through the Apple store, you're helping this happen. For every eBook reader you buy, where the the company has the ability to delete "your" books, you're helping this happen.
Oh jeez not the "go to college to become a better rounded person" argument. College costs as much as a mid-range to high-end sports car. Lower and middle-class people don't have the luxury of going to college for the pleasure of learning. There must be a return on such a significant investment. It's that simple, it has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism.
Why can't the pleasure of learning be the significant return?
One million flashlights would not give you HD.
You'd need closer to 3 million.
Find something fulfilling, instead. Maybe the culinary arts or crafting trout flies to sell on the Internet or something. Look at your nearby community for small opportunities. Open a dirty-water hot dog stand. It's cash income and at least you'll be appreciated a little bit. When thinking about your career, it's best to expect the worst as far as the future. Things are going to get a lot, lot worse economically. If you are relying on a company to keep you alive, you will lose.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you there. I know the old saying, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. But my experience is more like, if you do what you love for your 9 to 5, what do you do when you need a break?
I got in to programing when my first choice of career was stalling. It was the peak of the dot com bubble and getting in was easy. I had a knack with computers and was suddenly getting paid for what I had been doing for free. Yes, I am good at what I do. Yes, I did go back for some formal eduction so I avoided some of the mistakes self-taught programmers tend to make. Yes, I know enough to know my limitations.
But while I make a good living, the last thing I want to do when I get home is troubleshoot issues with a WiFi bridge or put together a web site for some hobby project of my wife's. I gained a career, but lost a hobby.
Now I enjoy cooking. And folks say I'm pretty good at it. At least I don't get too many calls from the hospital. (But it might be hard to get an outside line from the morgue.)
Anyway, the absolute last thing I will ever consider it making any money from cooking. There are so few things I enjoy at that level. I can't afford to loose even one.
Think of it this way--most folks love sex. But when you see a pr0n star saying how much she loves sex, do you think, how great for her! Making a living doing what she loves. Or do you think, if it wasn't meth, I'd have to spank it to the Sears catalog?
Because of course, anyone traveling without a cell phone isn't a real person.