cjsm only excluded beings that did not possess god-like technological powers. So I guess we're OK, since Western civilization was considered god-like from the time of the conquistadors.
Just find out what type of lock is on the door and call the manufacturer's technical support hotline. If you have brief access to the room, say, during maid service when the doors are open and hardly anyone is giving much attention to guests passing down the hall, check the door lock for manufacturer, serial number, and any other markings. Take pics to make the inspection quicker. Look up the exact model on the company's website and study the user's manual. Then when you have the manufacturer's tech support online just describe the lock you have and claim that you lost the code or the master key or whatever is used to program the lock. They are usually very helpful and rarely ever ask for your name, company, or any proof that you are the owner of the locks.
I've used this approach to open an abondoned combination safe.
Alternatively, you can use social engineering to gain entry to just about any hotel room. Just walk down the hall with nothing but a towel (change clothes in the janitor's closet, stairwell, or by the ice machine and hide your clothes well) during maid service and act like you just realized that you left your key in the room and need to get back in. Given your apparent predicament most maids will let you in any room without any question.
I wouldn't be so concerned if the car computer was only outputing data. That might be fun and useful with few, if any, security risks for most drivers. I do, however, have a problem with my accelerator or brake system being controlled by some external device rather than my hard-wired foot pedal. For what it's worth, many military aircraft are triple-redundant, meaning that your flight stick is primarily fly-by-wire, but in the event of a failure your flight stick is also directly connected to hydraulic lines to control the flight surfaces, so if all else fails you can put some muscle into your flight stick and control the flight surfaces by wire like a WWI byplane. I would prefer if some sort of redundancy or manual override was something that I could take for granted as a natural assumption. But given how business is done these days I think such an assumption would be naive. Look at power windows - they may be your only way out after a crash or in a flood, but where is the emergency hand crank? It is conspicuously absent.
America is a great country for a second citizenship and second passport. Go there when you are young to make a lot of money quick. Then get out, fast, with your money before you get a chance to get sick or old, as the US system is based mostly on a vulture economy of compelling you to spend down your wealth to every single provider of health or care services. Insurance is a farce to give you piece of mind, but it is a POS that will not come through to meet enough of your expenses to survive anything but the most mild and short term illness.
I've been to Germany several times and love it. Health insurance system makes more sense than in the US. I work for an American subsidiary of a German company, but from what I have looked into immigration is very difficult unless you are a refugee. Any tips to get past the immigration barriers?
Switzerland's famous (infamous? notorious?) neutrality, and diplomatic roles to connect enemies of the world into peaceful dialogue makes Switzerland one of the last places to be targeted for terrorism or invasion, especially since they have a strong military and enough bunkers in the Alps for the whole population to take up defensive positions. Dispite Polanski, Switzerland is still least likely than just about any other Western democracy to expedite its residents to potentially abusive regimes (such as USA). Ironically Switzerland is a major supplier of some of the finest weapons to the armies of the world. So with a long tradition of being a safe place to store one's cash and gold, as well as their reputation for fine mechanical work (clocks, locks, and guns), their economy will remain strong during just about any crisis no matter how global in nature. But with such desirable characteristics there are many who would prefer to immigrate to Swtizerland, so immigration standards are very high to limit a flood of would-be Swiss citizens.
But there are still barriers to people over 40 and people who do not have the skills on their "in demand" list. You can always visit for up to 6 months each year, get a student visa for your next degree, or start a business with an entrepreneurship visa, but otherwise immigration is tighter than, say, Canada that only expects you to be a law abiding citizen with at least a net worth of $10k that you deposit in a Canadian financial institution.
You've never been to Australia, mate. Better quality of life. EU style healthcare so you don't lose your life savings when some doctor surprises you with his out-of-network facility or lab fees. If you get cancer and are too weak to work you don't lose your health coverage, so there's at least some chance of continuing medical treatment undisrupted to possibly beat your disease or at least leave your kids an inheritance. Better work-life balance, longer vacations, less expensive to fly from Oz to hundreds of tropical destinations. A road trip could take you to any type of landscape you prefer (though mostly desert in the interior, but no worse than the American West).
Australia doesn't have as many "enemies" as America, so traveling with an Aussie passport is generally safer, and it isn't as likely to get nuked off the planet in WW3. Only problem is so many people want to move to Australia that immigration is tight. But if you're under 40 and have technical or trade skills you'll probably get in. It helps to speak English like a native speaker, as well as if you come from a Commonwealth country. The Aussies, due to geography, have an advantage trading with China, India, and other nations in the Pacific Rim. Very little national debt, so economy is great, but trying hard to get more immigrants with high-tech skills. Lots of land in the interior, though water is in short supply, so sustainable agriculture for a growing population could be an issue in the future. If China ever seeks military expansion like Japan in WW2 then Australia could be a target for invasion, but what are the odds, right? China on the warpath wouldn't be good for anybody in the way, and the USA is more of a threat to China than Australia. All said, thousands of miles of ocean separating Australia from the rest of the world means that military threats can only come from heavily industrialized nations with substantial military forces. There is illegal immigration, but limited to boat people, so no porous border issues to worry about. Little to no terrorist threat to Aussie soil, though occaissionally Aussies can be targeted in hot zones if the terrorists can't find any Americans. Australia tends to be more "out of sight - out of mind" and generally not considered a threat to any other nations. Aussies also benefit from being a Commonwealth country, making future travel or immigration easier. Better social safety net for people down on their luck (though some abusers too lazy to work, so taxes are higher than the US). Relationship with indigenous people can be touchy at times due to abuses in the past, and some present-day conflicts over sacred sites, but Australian aborigines tend to be easy to get along with. Much less racism compared to KKK and Black Panthers in America. Murder rate is lower as well (4.2 in US vs. 1.0 in Australia, per UNODC). All in all its hard to imagine a much better place.
I have an even better art project. Find some POS art project that is a total waste of time and money, steal it, and smash it to pieces as performance art before it gets off the ground. Then I'll post the footage on youtube and let viewers try to decide what message I was trying to convey in my performance.
Seriously, this kind of crap is why I have much disdain for avant-garde, modern, and 'contemporary' art. In general, most of these types of artists tend to be on the far left of the political spectrum (which is ok, but...), they denounce poverty, pollution, and destruction of our environment. But how much destruction is from paint chemicals leaking into ground water? How many starving or improvrished people could be rescued from the grants paid to these "inspiring" artists? How many HFH homes could have been built with the labor and talent of our academic and intellectual leaders of the art world? I don't want to deny them their fun, and I don't know the political views of this artist, but I think we have all seen what I have described.
As non-artists, non-academics, and non-elites we have been conditioned to believe that we just don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the significance and importance of their great work. All told, most of the "new" art movements from the past 150 years have been a byproduct of delusional, paranoid schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. When crazy people connect with other crazy people, finding someone with the same delusions reinforces their belief that they do not have a mental illness but some profound insight into the nature of the Universe. So we have today an oligarchy of mentally ill cultural elites to whom the rest of the masses aim to aspire to in their aesthetic endeavors, not much unlike the inbred aristocracy that was convinced that they were owed special status in life due to their pedigree. Fortunately a few revolutions (France, America) eventually forced the aristocrats to take a back seat to productive citizens who now set their own destiny, banishing royal life to the back pages of gossip tabloids, somewhere behind part-cow/part-alien boy and the ghost of Michael Jackson. It would be nice one day to see mainstream non-art academics, financiers and art endowments wake up to a revolution of their own to refer these jokers to a different "institution".
And the laws are so vague that nobody knows if you're really guilty until a judge says so. It's such problem that lawyers today usually advise against taking advantage of some new law until the law has been "tested" in court. It is not unheard of that a person can be complying with law a and compying with law b, but when doing so simultaneously without complying with law c they are guilty of some horrendous crime and must spend years in prison for what most people would perceive as routine day-to-day business.
Import business can be very scary because you can be tried and imprisoned in the US for violating the law of some other country, even when that other country sends diplomats and sworn affidavits that their laws were not violated.
You don't even have to break any known laws. A judge can simply find you in contempt and leave you to rot in prison for six years, at his sole discretion.
Since most sites use the same questions, like city of birth or favorite pet, this is a real threat to people who use factual answers. Just a little research on google, facebook, and maybe just a few phone calls to your contacts on linkedin and I could probably hack just about anyone's account. I could even set up a website with a login and require visitors to enter a username, password, and security questions. There are many people who use the same username, password, and security questions for all of their online services, so if I started to harvest these I could hack into a lot of accounts.
Most people now have to remember multiple passwords for multiple sites, and since "grouchybird" is too 'weak' because it doesn't have a capital letter, number, or special character, now people have to write down all of their passwords and constantly look them up. And since the standard changes from site to site (site A requires a special character, but site B doesn't allow, and site C requires a new password every month and you can't reuse old passwords) there are often just too many to ever memorize them all. This is a real security risk now for most people since all I have to do is sift through their stuff and I then have enough info to hijack all of their important accounts.
More readable? yes. Agreeable? Apparently not. Save Calibri and Arial for the technical manual but make sure your marketing literature is covered in Baskerville. Maybe since the text is not quite as readable perhaps it slows the reader down to a point where the text seems to be visually "spoken" at a slower pace. People who talk intelligently but at a slightly slower pace tend to draw in their audience and they don't come across as suspicious fast-talkers. Maybe that's the effect that Baskerville is having on the reader. That and Baskerville is most commonly associated with the CANADA wordmark, and what could possibly be more polite, friendly, and agreeable than Canada?
But exploiting the citizens of other countries is an American tradition! Just be glad your oil is offshore at the North Sea and not on your soil or we would be tempted to re-occupy your nation for the benefit of our beloved corporations. And yes, I said "re-occupy" as the first occupation was back in WWII when we saved your ass and didn't even charge you for the service.
Until the BBC offers television licenses to foreigners or finds some other way to sell the access, then I have no choice but to pirate BBC - and since they wouldn't be getting revenue from me anyway they cannot claim that I have caused them any damages, so my "crime" is nothing other than victim-less piracy. If I live in Canada but can tune in American TV and radio stations, am I stealing their content since I most likely won't be visiting the sponsors of their programs?
That said, what about UK citizens who paid their license but can't view content while they are traveling?
I can understand why those who sell information prefer to hold copyrights and expect to be paid for each book, disk, or download they sell, but when you create content and make a profit from your intended audience, why be upset when your unintended audience also benefits from the content you created? There seems to be something inherint in the human pysche to be offended everytime someone else benefits from a byproduct of their labor. For example, if my cow craps on the road to the market, I don't care and leave it behind, but when I see people scooping it up to fertilize their gardens then I start scooping it up myself, even if I can only sell one cow pie and I have to pay half of that revenue to bury or burn the manure to keep it out of the hands of those greedy bast*rds that want to use my manure without paying for it. It's the worst of our human nature and one of the main reasons there is still so much poverty when there are plenty of resources to provide for everyone's needs.
Dammit! You just ruinned a good joke. You're probably the same guy that ruinned the solar-powered flashlight joke with the rechargable battery comment.
I am an electrical engineer. I learned C++ in a single course in college (my only CS course), but I later "taught" myself Java (or just enough Java to get the job done, and haven't needed it since). It is true that the fundamental skills in programming are understanding what instructions you are tying to give to the machine, avoiding typos, and debugging your code when it doesn't work. The basic premises don't change much, such as IF-THEN statements or calling out subroutines. A key skill is to define what you want the code to do before actually "coding", such as using a flow chart and/or psuedocode. In theory, you should be able to give your flow chart or psuedocode to any programmer of just about any language and they should be able to write the code for you - or vice versa if someone gives you psuedocode you should be able to code in the language you use. I've also used BASIC when I was a kid to make my own games and other environments should be easy to pick up, such as VBA or MatLab scripts. Machine language, like assembly code for a microcontroller, can be more of a challenge, but the basic skills still apply, except that now you have to manually control the stack and you have to pay close attention to the physical limitations of your processor. Main point: go ahead and take an intro- type of class, pay attention, and understand the difference between software design and programming syntax. A great poet should not care too much whether he is writing on paper or typing on Notepad, it's the poetry that counts. If the poet is "computer literate" then he might be able to write his poetry faster, and maybe have more opportunity to improve upon it with the text editing tools at his disposal. But I wouldn't consider him a great poet if he couldn't compose something great with a pen and notebook.
The same is true with p0rn. Those who seek it out are absolutely convinced that 90% of all web content is p0rn. In reality it is much less...probably just 80%.
Agreed. We used to do this 10 years ago (and probably before then) when we (friends, families, coworkers) would forward funny emails to each other, and often times it was a funny pic with text. No big deal then or now. Except that facebook is on the web, not actual email, but people are using facebook like a "reply to all" application so somehow that makes it special.
Slashdot Mirror
My cat's in your garden...pooping on your vegetables.
cjsm only excluded beings that did not possess god-like technological powers. So I guess we're OK, since Western civilization was considered god-like from the time of the conquistadors.
Just find out what type of lock is on the door and call the manufacturer's technical support hotline. If you have brief access to the room, say, during maid service when the doors are open and hardly anyone is giving much attention to guests passing down the hall, check the door lock for manufacturer, serial number, and any other markings. Take pics to make the inspection quicker. Look up the exact model on the company's website and study the user's manual. Then when you have the manufacturer's tech support online just describe the lock you have and claim that you lost the code or the master key or whatever is used to program the lock. They are usually very helpful and rarely ever ask for your name, company, or any proof that you are the owner of the locks.
I've used this approach to open an abondoned combination safe.
Alternatively, you can use social engineering to gain entry to just about any hotel room. Just walk down the hall with nothing but a towel (change clothes in the janitor's closet, stairwell, or by the ice machine and hide your clothes well) during maid service and act like you just realized that you left your key in the room and need to get back in. Given your apparent predicament most maids will let you in any room without any question.
I wouldn't be so concerned if the car computer was only outputing data. That might be fun and useful with few, if any, security risks for most drivers. I do, however, have a problem with my accelerator or brake system being controlled by some external device rather than my hard-wired foot pedal. For what it's worth, many military aircraft are triple-redundant, meaning that your flight stick is primarily fly-by-wire, but in the event of a failure your flight stick is also directly connected to hydraulic lines to control the flight surfaces, so if all else fails you can put some muscle into your flight stick and control the flight surfaces by wire like a WWI byplane. I would prefer if some sort of redundancy or manual override was something that I could take for granted as a natural assumption. But given how business is done these days I think such an assumption would be naive. Look at power windows - they may be your only way out after a crash or in a flood, but where is the emergency hand crank? It is conspicuously absent.
Ya, I know. Once you have found paradise you don't want to share it with the masses.
America is a great country for a second citizenship and second passport. Go there when you are young to make a lot of money quick. Then get out, fast, with your money before you get a chance to get sick or old, as the US system is based mostly on a vulture economy of compelling you to spend down your wealth to every single provider of health or care services. Insurance is a farce to give you piece of mind, but it is a POS that will not come through to meet enough of your expenses to survive anything but the most mild and short term illness.
I've been to Germany several times and love it. Health insurance system makes more sense than in the US. I work for an American subsidiary of a German company, but from what I have looked into immigration is very difficult unless you are a refugee. Any tips to get past the immigration barriers?
Switzerland's famous (infamous? notorious?) neutrality, and diplomatic roles to connect enemies of the world into peaceful dialogue makes Switzerland one of the last places to be targeted for terrorism or invasion, especially since they have a strong military and enough bunkers in the Alps for the whole population to take up defensive positions. Dispite Polanski, Switzerland is still least likely than just about any other Western democracy to expedite its residents to potentially abusive regimes (such as USA). Ironically Switzerland is a major supplier of some of the finest weapons to the armies of the world. So with a long tradition of being a safe place to store one's cash and gold, as well as their reputation for fine mechanical work (clocks, locks, and guns), their economy will remain strong during just about any crisis no matter how global in nature. But with such desirable characteristics there are many who would prefer to immigrate to Swtizerland, so immigration standards are very high to limit a flood of would-be Swiss citizens.
But there are still barriers to people over 40 and people who do not have the skills on their "in demand" list. You can always visit for up to 6 months each year, get a student visa for your next degree, or start a business with an entrepreneurship visa, but otherwise immigration is tighter than, say, Canada that only expects you to be a law abiding citizen with at least a net worth of $10k that you deposit in a Canadian financial institution.
You've never been to Australia, mate. Better quality of life. EU style healthcare so you don't lose your life savings when some doctor surprises you with his out-of-network facility or lab fees. If you get cancer and are too weak to work you don't lose your health coverage, so there's at least some chance of continuing medical treatment undisrupted to possibly beat your disease or at least leave your kids an inheritance. Better work-life balance, longer vacations, less expensive to fly from Oz to hundreds of tropical destinations. A road trip could take you to any type of landscape you prefer (though mostly desert in the interior, but no worse than the American West).
Australia doesn't have as many "enemies" as America, so traveling with an Aussie passport is generally safer, and it isn't as likely to get nuked off the planet in WW3. Only problem is so many people want to move to Australia that immigration is tight. But if you're under 40 and have technical or trade skills you'll probably get in. It helps to speak English like a native speaker, as well as if you come from a Commonwealth country. The Aussies, due to geography, have an advantage trading with China, India, and other nations in the Pacific Rim. Very little national debt, so economy is great, but trying hard to get more immigrants with high-tech skills. Lots of land in the interior, though water is in short supply, so sustainable agriculture for a growing population could be an issue in the future. If China ever seeks military expansion like Japan in WW2 then Australia could be a target for invasion, but what are the odds, right? China on the warpath wouldn't be good for anybody in the way, and the USA is more of a threat to China than Australia. All said, thousands of miles of ocean separating Australia from the rest of the world means that military threats can only come from heavily industrialized nations with substantial military forces. There is illegal immigration, but limited to boat people, so no porous border issues to worry about. Little to no terrorist threat to Aussie soil, though occaissionally Aussies can be targeted in hot zones if the terrorists can't find any Americans. Australia tends to be more "out of sight - out of mind" and generally not considered a threat to any other nations. Aussies also benefit from being a Commonwealth country, making future travel or immigration easier. Better social safety net for people down on their luck (though some abusers too lazy to work, so taxes are higher than the US). Relationship with indigenous people can be touchy at times due to abuses in the past, and some present-day conflicts over sacred sites, but Australian aborigines tend to be easy to get along with. Much less racism compared to KKK and Black Panthers in America. Murder rate is lower as well (4.2 in US vs. 1.0 in Australia, per UNODC). All in all its hard to imagine a much better place.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
Unless you have a "bubble boy" for a child, then not so bad.
I have an even better art project. Find some POS art project that is a total waste of time and money, steal it, and smash it to pieces as performance art before it gets off the ground. Then I'll post the footage on youtube and let viewers try to decide what message I was trying to convey in my performance.
Seriously, this kind of crap is why I have much disdain for avant-garde, modern, and 'contemporary' art. In general, most of these types of artists tend to be on the far left of the political spectrum (which is ok, but...), they denounce poverty, pollution, and destruction of our environment. But how much destruction is from paint chemicals leaking into ground water? How many starving or improvrished people could be rescued from the grants paid to these "inspiring" artists? How many HFH homes could have been built with the labor and talent of our academic and intellectual leaders of the art world? I don't want to deny them their fun, and I don't know the political views of this artist, but I think we have all seen what I have described.
As non-artists, non-academics, and non-elites we have been conditioned to believe that we just don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the significance and importance of their great work. All told, most of the "new" art movements from the past 150 years have been a byproduct of delusional, paranoid schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. When crazy people connect with other crazy people, finding someone with the same delusions reinforces their belief that they do not have a mental illness but some profound insight into the nature of the Universe. So we have today an oligarchy of mentally ill cultural elites to whom the rest of the masses aim to aspire to in their aesthetic endeavors, not much unlike the inbred aristocracy that was convinced that they were owed special status in life due to their pedigree. Fortunately a few revolutions (France, America) eventually forced the aristocrats to take a back seat to productive citizens who now set their own destiny, banishing royal life to the back pages of gossip tabloids, somewhere behind part-cow/part-alien boy and the ghost of Michael Jackson. It would be nice one day to see mainstream non-art academics, financiers and art endowments wake up to a revolution of their own to refer these jokers to a different "institution".
Too bad this thread is off-topic. I wish I could mod you +5 funny.
He probably works as a health insurance claims processor.
And the laws are so vague that nobody knows if you're really guilty until a judge says so. It's such problem that lawyers today usually advise against taking advantage of some new law until the law has been "tested" in court. It is not unheard of that a person can be complying with law a and compying with law b, but when doing so simultaneously without complying with law c they are guilty of some horrendous crime and must spend years in prison for what most people would perceive as routine day-to-day business.
Import business can be very scary because you can be tried and imprisoned in the US for violating the law of some other country, even when that other country sends diplomats and sworn affidavits that their laws were not violated.
You don't even have to break any known laws. A judge can simply find you in contempt and leave you to rot in prison for six years, at his sole discretion.
Since most sites use the same questions, like city of birth or favorite pet, this is a real threat to people who use factual answers. Just a little research on google, facebook, and maybe just a few phone calls to your contacts on linkedin and I could probably hack just about anyone's account. I could even set up a website with a login and require visitors to enter a username, password, and security questions. There are many people who use the same username, password, and security questions for all of their online services, so if I started to harvest these I could hack into a lot of accounts.
Most people now have to remember multiple passwords for multiple sites, and since "grouchybird" is too 'weak' because it doesn't have a capital letter, number, or special character, now people have to write down all of their passwords and constantly look them up. And since the standard changes from site to site (site A requires a special character, but site B doesn't allow, and site C requires a new password every month and you can't reuse old passwords) there are often just too many to ever memorize them all. This is a real security risk now for most people since all I have to do is sift through their stuff and I then have enough info to hijack all of their important accounts.
That's why everybody should just use "banana" as their default answer to all such security questions.
Of course my advice is not driven by any personal desire to hack into random accounts hoping that "banana" will get me past the security questions.
More readable? yes. Agreeable? Apparently not. Save Calibri and Arial for the technical manual but make sure your marketing literature is covered in Baskerville. Maybe since the text is not quite as readable perhaps it slows the reader down to a point where the text seems to be visually "spoken" at a slower pace. People who talk intelligently but at a slightly slower pace tend to draw in their audience and they don't come across as suspicious fast-talkers. Maybe that's the effect that Baskerville is having on the reader. That and Baskerville is most commonly associated with the CANADA wordmark, and what could possibly be more polite, friendly, and agreeable than Canada?
But exploiting the citizens of other countries is an American tradition! Just be glad your oil is offshore at the North Sea and not on your soil or we would be tempted to re-occupy your nation for the benefit of our beloved corporations. And yes, I said "re-occupy" as the first occupation was back in WWII when we saved your ass and didn't even charge you for the service.
Until the BBC offers television licenses to foreigners or finds some other way to sell the access, then I have no choice but to pirate BBC - and since they wouldn't be getting revenue from me anyway they cannot claim that I have caused them any damages, so my "crime" is nothing other than victim-less piracy. If I live in Canada but can tune in American TV and radio stations, am I stealing their content since I most likely won't be visiting the sponsors of their programs?
That said, what about UK citizens who paid their license but can't view content while they are traveling?
I can understand why those who sell information prefer to hold copyrights and expect to be paid for each book, disk, or download they sell, but when you create content and make a profit from your intended audience, why be upset when your unintended audience also benefits from the content you created? There seems to be something inherint in the human pysche to be offended everytime someone else benefits from a byproduct of their labor. For example, if my cow craps on the road to the market, I don't care and leave it behind, but when I see people scooping it up to fertilize their gardens then I start scooping it up myself, even if I can only sell one cow pie and I have to pay half of that revenue to bury or burn the manure to keep it out of the hands of those greedy bast*rds that want to use my manure without paying for it. It's the worst of our human nature and one of the main reasons there is still so much poverty when there are plenty of resources to provide for everyone's needs.
Dammit! You just ruinned a good joke. You're probably the same guy that ruinned the solar-powered flashlight joke with the rechargable battery comment.
I am an electrical engineer. I learned C++ in a single course in college (my only CS course), but I later "taught" myself Java (or just enough Java to get the job done, and haven't needed it since). It is true that the fundamental skills in programming are understanding what instructions you are tying to give to the machine, avoiding typos, and debugging your code when it doesn't work. The basic premises don't change much, such as IF-THEN statements or calling out subroutines. A key skill is to define what you want the code to do before actually "coding", such as using a flow chart and/or psuedocode. In theory, you should be able to give your flow chart or psuedocode to any programmer of just about any language and they should be able to write the code for you - or vice versa if someone gives you psuedocode you should be able to code in the language you use. I've also used BASIC when I was a kid to make my own games and other environments should be easy to pick up, such as VBA or MatLab scripts. Machine language, like assembly code for a microcontroller, can be more of a challenge, but the basic skills still apply, except that now you have to manually control the stack and you have to pay close attention to the physical limitations of your processor. Main point: go ahead and take an intro- type of class, pay attention, and understand the difference between software design and programming syntax. A great poet should not care too much whether he is writing on paper or typing on Notepad, it's the poetry that counts. If the poet is "computer literate" then he might be able to write his poetry faster, and maybe have more opportunity to improve upon it with the text editing tools at his disposal. But I wouldn't consider him a great poet if he couldn't compose something great with a pen and notebook.
Too bad. He should have twitted it or posted it on facebook and it might have gone viral.
The same is true with p0rn. Those who seek it out are absolutely convinced that 90% of all web content is p0rn. In reality it is much less...probably just 80%.
Agreed. We used to do this 10 years ago (and probably before then) when we (friends, families, coworkers) would forward funny emails to each other, and often times it was a funny pic with text. No big deal then or now. Except that facebook is on the web, not actual email, but people are using facebook like a "reply to all" application so somehow that makes it special.