It should be noted that MacOS X doesn't run as root (actually doesn't even have a root user), but manages to put a friendly face on it. It manages it by essentially extending sudo to the GUI (and you have to enter your password to do some operations, like changing settings or installing software). This seems like the obvious way to handle the user issue on the Linux desktop.
No, you cannot link to GPL code without falling under the GPL. The LGPL specifically exists to allow this linking. However, if you link LGPL code with GPL code, it all falls under the GPL (so LGPL code cannot be used as a bridge between GPL code and proprietary code).
But maybe you are thinking of LGPL code that Lindows links to?
By NO measure I've encountered for morality requries someone revealed a crime in confidence--which a company's employees are--to break that confidence and reveal the crime.
What are you talking about? This applies to priests, lawyers, and psychiatrists. It does not apply to employees. Being an employee does not absolve you of the responsibility to report crimes.
By that standard no one in Enron broke the law -- they were all in eaah other's confidence. Your conclusion is absurd.
No, that's wrong. What this company was doing was illegal and fraudulent. Companies like this cannot be reformed, you can't improve a system where people knowingly and willingly commit fraud. Hell, you can't believe them when they say they've improved, maybe they've just realized they have to hide their actions from you too.
Not to mention that in a case like this people have been wronged by the company, and deserve redress, which will never occur due to internal reform.
Maybe if you believe the company is doing things that are unethical but legal, then you can try to reform from within. But when it's illegal (or deeply unethical) you have a moral duty to blow the whistle, even if it's going to suck for you. You aren't allowed to put ethics aside because they aren't convenient.
My point was that this is not a free market, that we do not have informed consumers. It's harder to misinform with open source, but not impossible -- nor is it impossible to have informed customers and closed. But there is a definite attempt in the use of EULAs, as well as use of the DMCA and trademark laws, to keep consumers uninformed -- to keep people from communicating with each other about the flaws in a product. That's not a free market.
However, it is still questionable whether closed source -- as it is typically sold -- really leads to informed consumers, even without restrictions Software is not particularly transparent, and its flaws may not be readily apparent. Buyer Beware is not the free market.
They could build an operating system that fully, completely, and truly matches the concept of "secure by default" and they have the resources, manpower, and ability to do so.
But, instead, they oppose it. Building a secure system is against corporate culture, so they won't do it.
I think you dramatically underestimate the work in creating a secure, robust system.
First, Microsoft's money only buys them so much. You can't just put more money into something and get more out of it. Of course, they can pay to hire the best people and the supporting staff to keep those people focused. But it still takes time.
But even suppose MS invests not just money, but also time in this. Can they really achieve what you think they can?
Security isn't as hot as people seem to think it is. Security is usually a compromise -- increased security usually means a system is harder to work with. Maybe there's ways around the difficulties of working in a secure system, but there's no conventional, proven solution. And security is a system, not a single piece of software.
The same goes for robust operation. You can decrease the complexity of the system through partitioning, but that also makes certain functionality more difficult. Coming up with the right partitioning is difficult -- it's a factoring problem, and factoring a program (or system) is not something that has a Right Way. Factoring depends on backward compatibility, current features, and most impossible to get right, on future features.
And partitioning is a compromise as well. The more you integrate things, the easier they are to automate and control, the better they work.
Then there's the extensibility of the system. So long as you don't control the system entirely, bugs can creap in. The deeper the extensibility, the deeper the bugs can be -- including hard crashes and security holes. Microsoft doesn't create an insular system, and that's not just some bizarre corporate culture.
The problem isn't a lack of resources. It's just a hard problem.
The free market only works when all parties are informed. You're right, just opening up the source doesn't mean the consumer is informed, though it does imply they can become informed, or at least that they have an opportunity to confirm claims made on that software.
Of course, EULAs make further restrictions intended to keep consumers uninformed -- barring benchmarking, sometimes barring other criticism (does Frontpage still have that clause?), not allowing security flaws to be published, etc.
Even with source, false advertising is quite possible, and should be punishable if we are to have a free market. It is now, but not done with great vigor.
Anyway, I guess my point is that this isn't a free market, and that the free market cannot be achieved with laissez faire policies.
I think you underestimate the positive effect of liability. Certainly some doesn't help much -- I think medical liability has little positive effect on day-to-day medical practice, and possibly some significant negative effect (though I would say otherwise for drug liability)...
Anyway, it matters. Our cars are relatively safe, SUV owners pay higher liability insurance (at least a small punishment for making the streets more dangerous), most things we buy aren't particularly unsafe, things generally work as advertised.
That said, a lot of the same things are achieved through regulation. The safety of my home is ensured through zoning and inspection, not liability. Same with my food, and regulation is important to drug safety and otherwise.
I don't know how you'd regulate software, though... (ISO 9000-like?)
And since they have opened new service centers (relevant to me, first in Georgia and then in Ft. Lauderdale) the shipping times have been great.
Not really relevent to the thread as a whole, but in the last week or so they opened up a new center in the same city as me, and I can now mail a movie in the morning and receive a new one in the mail the next day. That's pretty sweet.
People say Netflix makes money off of the shipping times, but that's no clear to me. I guess it depends on what kind of license fees they pay for their movies -- it may be a flat fee per customer, in which case they don't have any incentive to slow down turnover (except to save processing and postage costs...)
Don't confuse the United States with the right wing and criminal clique that have taken power. But I don't mean to excuse the US in this way, and I certainly don't want that to make you feel more calm about what's going on...
This 'Homeland Security' and ferocious anti-terrorism behaviour is getting seriously out of hand.. its an enormous overreaction and its
starting to make the USA look very very silly.
Silly? Oh, they'd like you to think that. They hide behind what seems like absurdity, when in fact it's just their disingenuous justifications that are absurd -- their actual actions are calculated and devious, their intentions sinister.
Things make much more sense when you realize that their intention is not to ensure security. Their intention is to dominate the world.
Free Software is antithetical to domination, so of course they would reject it.
To clarify, I'm talking about the internal printer. Every transaction at an ATM gets written to a roll of paper inside the machine, which can be used to audit the transactions at that ATM. The actual user of the ATM might not want a receipt, but there's always a paper record. Well, unless they don't refill the machine's paper (happened once when I had a problem with an ATM).
It seems like ATM machines are exactly the right style for a voting machine. Who needs hi-tech?
Get a cheap screen. Put some buttons on the side. The voter presses the button to go with the right candidate, as displayed on the screen. This interface is easier and more reliable than any touch screen I've used. And it's so damn simple and reliable...
When you're done, just like an ATM, you get a receipt (aka voter printout). The identical receipt is printed and stored inside the machine, and the result is electronically stored or immediately uploaded elsewhere. No one would ever make an ATM without that paper roll inside (or the receipts printed for the customer)... I honestly cannot think of any valid reason not to do so, except to deliberately enable fraud. The printers aren't expensive.
If you wanted to be clever, you'd put a number or bar code or somesuch on every ballot, and within maybe 30 minutes the voter could return to the machine, invalidate their old vote, and enter a new vote. If the voter gets a printout it's not as helpful if they can't do anything if they realized they voted incorrectly. But that correction process does add the potential for fraud (though of course the correction would be logged for future auditing).
Someone else suggested an even simpler system where the machine prints out a ballot, and the ballot is put in a ballot box (after confirmation by the voter). Create something both machine and human readable (machine by OCR, so there's no possibility for the vote being inconsistent)... not as fast to count as electronic results returned by a modem, but does that really matter? Higher accuracy than punch cards, and highly transparent (so long as ballot boxes don't get lost...)
Lastly, election boards should be running exit polls. Not for any official purpose or in order to report to the public, but as another safeguard against both fraud and mistaken results. If the results of that sampling are too far from the actual results, then something went wrong. It won't correct those problems, but it's a final way to check that there are no massive inaccuracies in the voting.
Coming out of a bar you might need your ID, but you don't generally need to have an ID unless you are engaging in some restricted activity (like driving, drinking, or buying butane lighters:). Outside of those situations you don't have to tell the police who you are or show them an ID, or carry any ID or even answer any question at all (though that might be cause for suspicious, etc. etc...)
Your Rights and the Police says more, though it's not updated for these days of diminishing rights. And this page only applies to the US, of course;)
The last two times I've bought from them they printed up the rebates with the receipt, but the two times I've done it they've left a rebate form out -- the first time I just assumed they'd include them all, the second time I counted but didn't realize that one particularly rebate required two forms, and so I was still missing a form.
Circuit city has the same process, but I haven't had them miss a rebate so far.
In Python, everything is a reference, but strings are immutable objects. There's no such thing as "modifying the string passed in" -- all the built-in string functions return a new string.
FWIW Guido has said that in Python 3 (still a ways off) that all strings are going to be Unicode, and for binary/byte data they'll be a buffer object (I don't think related to the current buffer object) that will be mutable, since this is typically more useful for byte data. For now strings of bytes and strings of characters are kind of confused.
Indeed. I often do work that isn't "contract" work, because I'm just doing it hourly without fixed goals and whatnot, but I'm just doing work. I'm not an employee because I'm working for multiple people, have some flexibilty, etc., but it's work and I'm not advising.
But for the most part I do "consulting", because people hire me because I know how to do something they don't. If I know something they don't, then I obviously have to give them advice. It's often unsolicited, because I'm informing them of problems and opportunities they would not foresee. Am I suddenly a consultant? I guess, but I don't quick change into a suit, and I don't differentiate my roles.
And why would I? When I work for people I try to be helpful, both in the getting-shit-done sense and the figuring-out-what-shit-needs-doing sense. I don't need to label that. They usually don't try to label me.
They ask you who you are and where you're going--and, AFAIK, it's a misdemanor to not tell them who you are.
Not true. You are required to identify yourself if you're driving (and no doubt other specific restricted activities), but not otherwise. You certainly have no requirement to tell them where you are going, even if you are driving.
Now, if you don't tell them that could be considered probable cause for searching you. Hell, might even get you arrested -- but being arrested isn't the same as doing anything wrong.
But this is a much better description of your rights than what I just said.
One day I was skimming someone's college book on ethical issues in fashion. I came upon a sidebar talking about El Salvador. The sweat shop owners were very excited about technology, because it allowed them to keep a database of union organizers, which they shared with each other. If anyone was caught trying to organize, they could be thoroughly blacklisted.
Now, blacklisting isn't a new idea, and it doesn't require technology. But it also does... blacklisting, to be effective, is a bureaucratic process. Bureaucracy is very much enabled by technology, since the abacus on up. A large amount of technology continues to be used for bureaucracy (probably a considerable majority of computer technology).
Bureaucracy isn't all bad... we often don't notice all the effective bureaucracy around us.
And what's the moral for database manufacturers who are creating something that happens to be used for immoral purposes? I don't know, but I will argue strongly that they are not entirely without culpability. The greatest evils ever done were done by people who did not feel themselves responsible, supported by people who did not feel themselves responsible. I believe the ends justify the means, but I also believe the ends can be a condemnation of the means, no matter how benign or neutral they seemed at the time. Anyway, certainly a point for discussion.
A very good book on the moral implications of technology is The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. It's not about engineering particularly, but about technology (and a reaction against anti-technologists), building infrastructure, and very much about the moral responsibilities and questions of being someone who designs and builds the things that surround us, without being able to make many key decisions about those things. It applies very well to computer programmers.
Phone numbers and addresses aren't IDs. In ten years my SSN will still be the same. In a hundred years my SSN will be the same, even when I'm dead. My phone number, address, etc., won't be the same. My name very well may have changed.
Now, every institution could give me a unique ID number. They do anyway. That's okay as long as my relationship with the institution is limited and specific, like with a retailer. But a school is a much more extended relationship, with a lot more bureaucracy -- I need to know my ID number in that situation.
SSN should be a fine ID. The idea of your SSN being secret and official is stupid, and a pipe-dream in this day. The real fault is not with using the SSN as an ID number, but with the banks and credit institutions that treat your SSN like some sort of password.
The banks and credit institutions should be sued for their incompetent security -- identity theft has its source almost entirely in their bureaucracy and systems. But I'm sure there's laws specially to protect them from being liable for their own actions. The dumb part is that they don't even benefit from it -- they are lazy, but that laziness still costs them as well as us. I really don't believe the cost of a secure system would be greater than the cost of fraud.
The conspiracy minded among us might claim that a steady level of minor fraud gives a cover to massive systemic fraud in banking institutions -- fraud that may or may not benefit the institutions, but certainly benefits some players in those institutions. (We still haven't learned who made money off futures during 9-11... shouldn't be that hard to figure out, should it? Where did all the money from Enron and Worldcom go? It's not like they were literally burning money, it went somewhere. And illegal narcotics... they don't keep that money in their mattresses in Colombia. Fraud and other illegal finance exists on huge scales)
It seems to be the key to a house that lasts a long time is that people have to want the house for its entire life. If at any point the land becomes more desirable without the house on it, the house is gone.
Of course, physical factors are important. Suburban development is crap, though I'm curious about the quality of some of the urban development I've seen -- with most of the exterior structure being built out of concrete and brick. I'm sure the interior is still crappy drywall without good trim or any of the detail that you find in an older house, but it feels like the structure is meant to stick around. (BTW, brick lasts a really long time and is pretty low-maintenance)
But when I see houses going down, it's often not because they are falling apart. Or if they are falling apart, it's often because people didn't care about them (at least for some period) and they went in disrepair. Really, it's because the location is desirable and the land is worth building a better house on (or houses).
So a really long-lasting house should fully exploit the potential of its location. I'd stand to say that it shouldn't have too large a lot, and maybe exist somewhere with well-apportioned land (like the inner city). The value of the house should not be in the size of the land, or even the size of the house (so long as the house matches its property), but in the quality of the house.
Build tall instead of wide, it's easier to expand the width later, but people don't go adding floors to their buildings.
If you not only for the house to exist, but for it to stay in your family, you'll have to think a lot about what you imagine your family being -- a country home, a city home, an old suburb are all possibilities. New suburbs are built by people that aren't willing to invest in their community, which is no recipe for long-term permanence, of the house or as a base for your family -- avoid them entirely. Each city will have a wide variety of neighborhoods, but I feel like they come in three varieties -- established (upper-class) neighborhoods, neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, and the middle-class neighborhoods. (There may be lots of lower-class land, but I'm just guessing you aren't going to build a home there). You need a lot of resources for the established neighborhood, because there's probably already a perfectly good house on the location.
I don't think any of us really know what the long term future of the gentrified neighborhoods is going to be, especially the second generation of gentrification that we're seeing.
Anyway, those are just thoughts... it's the kind of thing you could debate about for a long time.
Maybe it was different in other markets, but even during the boom there didn't seem to be much for entry-level programmers (in Chicago, which never really had much of a boom anyway).
Personally, I guess I got over it by working for individuals or small companies, usually through some sort of personal connection (and I'm not a good networker, that's just how jobs happen). None of the jobs full time. In those situations I wasn't really working under a senior programmer, it was just me, and I spent lots of time doing system admin, tech support, web design, etc., in addition to programming (mostly instead of it). But it's part of the package, only now am I able to focus my skills more.
With the lack of entry level positions -- it seemed like 10:1 last time I looked -- this seems like the way you get in. The first job you get won't be a programming job, but that you can still build up your professional programming experience for a later Real Programming job. And often you have to find the programming in the job yourself -- you can solve a lot of repetitive tasks through programming, but your employer often won't see those possibilities.
Actually, the traditional two-stroke engine is a very significant polluter. It puts a large amount of hydrocarbons (unburnt fuel) into the air, which is much worse than what comes out of a new car, even if it's in much smaller quantity. It really does compare with a car.
That said, there are two-stroke engines that are not so polluting. If this is one of those, then yes, it's a lot better than an Explorer.
Zope is written in Python, but to me (and a lot of others) programming Zope is not much like programming Python (and not in a good way). All of Python's best features are lost in Zope -- the flexibility, the easy-to-understand execution model, the transparency... Zope is a huge pile of code.
That said, when I try to figure things out in Zope I can understand the Zope code from the very beginning -- considering Zope's size and complexity, and the fact I start out reading some module deep on the inside of the system, it's a testiment to Python's readability. And for all the issues I have with Zope, the actual core code is not nearly as messy as the thing it implements... which is a little ironic.
The real issue isn't embedding the interpreter so much as interacting with the interpreter. For instance, calling hooks in the code (probably in response to events), making application data and functions available to scripts, handling errors, etc.
I don't know what that looks like in Perl -- maybe it's all quite reasonable, though Perl semantics seem to be very complex which would seem to make it more difficult.
You are still being absurd. If you can't identify indentation of four spaces, you can't visually read code. If your vision is poor and you need to read with very big fonts, you will have very big spaces.
In those cases where people cannot visually read, but must use other methods, the effort of handling consecutive spaces is not significant. You can preprocess the file if you want, or have a reader that understands levels of indentation, or something. A naive implementation of a reader is going to be painful with any programming language, regardless of the type of indentation.
As for semantic encoding, you're again being absurd. If you want to express block structure in a semantic manner, tabs don't cut it either. You have to parse the lanuage properly, and parsing spaces is not significantly more difficult than parsing tabs. The only place where tabs are easier is naive regex-based parsing. The Python syntax is not primitive, and trying to understand it on a character level is futile.
The real point is that smart tools can deal with spaces for indentation just fine. Dumb tools deal fine with spaces too, though they may introduce slightly more overhead. The same cannot be said for tabs.
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It should be noted that MacOS X doesn't run as root (actually doesn't even have a root user), but manages to put a friendly face on it. It manages it by essentially extending sudo to the GUI (and you have to enter your password to do some operations, like changing settings or installing software). This seems like the obvious way to handle the user issue on the Linux desktop.
But maybe you are thinking of LGPL code that Lindows links to?
Not to mention that in a case like this people have been wronged by the company, and deserve redress, which will never occur due to internal reform.
Maybe if you believe the company is doing things that are unethical but legal, then you can try to reform from within. But when it's illegal (or deeply unethical) you have a moral duty to blow the whistle, even if it's going to suck for you. You aren't allowed to put ethics aside because they aren't convenient.
However, it is still questionable whether closed source -- as it is typically sold -- really leads to informed consumers, even without restrictions Software is not particularly transparent, and its flaws may not be readily apparent. Buyer Beware is not the free market.
First, Microsoft's money only buys them so much. You can't just put more money into something and get more out of it. Of course, they can pay to hire the best people and the supporting staff to keep those people focused. But it still takes time.
But even suppose MS invests not just money, but also time in this. Can they really achieve what you think they can?
Security isn't as hot as people seem to think it is. Security is usually a compromise -- increased security usually means a system is harder to work with. Maybe there's ways around the difficulties of working in a secure system, but there's no conventional, proven solution. And security is a system, not a single piece of software.
The same goes for robust operation. You can decrease the complexity of the system through partitioning, but that also makes certain functionality more difficult. Coming up with the right partitioning is difficult -- it's a factoring problem, and factoring a program (or system) is not something that has a Right Way. Factoring depends on backward compatibility, current features, and most impossible to get right, on future features.
And partitioning is a compromise as well. The more you integrate things, the easier they are to automate and control, the better they work.
Then there's the extensibility of the system. So long as you don't control the system entirely, bugs can creap in. The deeper the extensibility, the deeper the bugs can be -- including hard crashes and security holes. Microsoft doesn't create an insular system, and that's not just some bizarre corporate culture.
The problem isn't a lack of resources. It's just a hard problem.
Of course, EULAs make further restrictions intended to keep consumers uninformed -- barring benchmarking, sometimes barring other criticism (does Frontpage still have that clause?), not allowing security flaws to be published, etc.
Even with source, false advertising is quite possible, and should be punishable if we are to have a free market. It is now, but not done with great vigor.
Anyway, I guess my point is that this isn't a free market, and that the free market cannot be achieved with laissez faire policies.
Anyway, it matters. Our cars are relatively safe, SUV owners pay higher liability insurance (at least a small punishment for making the streets more dangerous), most things we buy aren't particularly unsafe, things generally work as advertised.
That said, a lot of the same things are achieved through regulation. The safety of my home is ensured through zoning and inspection, not liability. Same with my food, and regulation is important to drug safety and otherwise.
I don't know how you'd regulate software, though... (ISO 9000-like?)
People say Netflix makes money off of the shipping times, but that's no clear to me. I guess it depends on what kind of license fees they pay for their movies -- it may be a flat fee per customer, in which case they don't have any incentive to slow down turnover (except to save processing and postage costs...)
Things make much more sense when you realize that their intention is not to ensure security. Their intention is to dominate the world.
Free Software is antithetical to domination, so of course they would reject it.
To clarify, I'm talking about the internal printer. Every transaction at an ATM gets written to a roll of paper inside the machine, which can be used to audit the transactions at that ATM. The actual user of the ATM might not want a receipt, but there's always a paper record. Well, unless they don't refill the machine's paper (happened once when I had a problem with an ATM).
Get a cheap screen. Put some buttons on the side. The voter presses the button to go with the right candidate, as displayed on the screen. This interface is easier and more reliable than any touch screen I've used. And it's so damn simple and reliable...
When you're done, just like an ATM, you get a receipt (aka voter printout). The identical receipt is printed and stored inside the machine, and the result is electronically stored or immediately uploaded elsewhere. No one would ever make an ATM without that paper roll inside (or the receipts printed for the customer)... I honestly cannot think of any valid reason not to do so, except to deliberately enable fraud. The printers aren't expensive.
If you wanted to be clever, you'd put a number or bar code or somesuch on every ballot, and within maybe 30 minutes the voter could return to the machine, invalidate their old vote, and enter a new vote. If the voter gets a printout it's not as helpful if they can't do anything if they realized they voted incorrectly. But that correction process does add the potential for fraud (though of course the correction would be logged for future auditing).
Someone else suggested an even simpler system where the machine prints out a ballot, and the ballot is put in a ballot box (after confirmation by the voter). Create something both machine and human readable (machine by OCR, so there's no possibility for the vote being inconsistent)... not as fast to count as electronic results returned by a modem, but does that really matter? Higher accuracy than punch cards, and highly transparent (so long as ballot boxes don't get lost...)
Lastly, election boards should be running exit polls. Not for any official purpose or in order to report to the public, but as another safeguard against both fraud and mistaken results. If the results of that sampling are too far from the actual results, then something went wrong. It won't correct those problems, but it's a final way to check that there are no massive inaccuracies in the voting.
Your Rights and the Police says more, though it's not updated for these days of diminishing rights. And this page only applies to the US, of course ;)
The last two times I've bought from them they printed up the rebates with the receipt, but the two times I've done it they've left a rebate form out -- the first time I just assumed they'd include them all, the second time I counted but didn't realize that one particularly rebate required two forms, and so I was still missing a form.
Circuit city has the same process, but I haven't had them miss a rebate so far.
But for the most part I do "consulting", because people hire me because I know how to do something they don't. If I know something they don't, then I obviously have to give them advice. It's often unsolicited, because I'm informing them of problems and opportunities they would not foresee. Am I suddenly a consultant? I guess, but I don't quick change into a suit, and I don't differentiate my roles.
And why would I? When I work for people I try to be helpful, both in the getting-shit-done sense and the figuring-out-what-shit-needs-doing sense. I don't need to label that. They usually don't try to label me.
Now, if you don't tell them that could be considered probable cause for searching you. Hell, might even get you arrested -- but being arrested isn't the same as doing anything wrong. But this is a much better description of your rights than what I just said.
Now, blacklisting isn't a new idea, and it doesn't require technology. But it also does... blacklisting, to be effective, is a bureaucratic process. Bureaucracy is very much enabled by technology, since the abacus on up. A large amount of technology continues to be used for bureaucracy (probably a considerable majority of computer technology).
Bureaucracy isn't all bad... we often don't notice all the effective bureaucracy around us.
And what's the moral for database manufacturers who are creating something that happens to be used for immoral purposes? I don't know, but I will argue strongly that they are not entirely without culpability. The greatest evils ever done were done by people who did not feel themselves responsible, supported by people who did not feel themselves responsible. I believe the ends justify the means, but I also believe the ends can be a condemnation of the means, no matter how benign or neutral they seemed at the time. Anyway, certainly a point for discussion.
A very good book on the moral implications of technology is The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. It's not about engineering particularly, but about technology (and a reaction against anti-technologists), building infrastructure, and very much about the moral responsibilities and questions of being someone who designs and builds the things that surround us, without being able to make many key decisions about those things. It applies very well to computer programmers.
Now, every institution could give me a unique ID number. They do anyway. That's okay as long as my relationship with the institution is limited and specific, like with a retailer. But a school is a much more extended relationship, with a lot more bureaucracy -- I need to know my ID number in that situation.
SSN should be a fine ID. The idea of your SSN being secret and official is stupid, and a pipe-dream in this day. The real fault is not with using the SSN as an ID number, but with the banks and credit institutions that treat your SSN like some sort of password.
The banks and credit institutions should be sued for their incompetent security -- identity theft has its source almost entirely in their bureaucracy and systems. But I'm sure there's laws specially to protect them from being liable for their own actions. The dumb part is that they don't even benefit from it -- they are lazy, but that laziness still costs them as well as us. I really don't believe the cost of a secure system would be greater than the cost of fraud.
The conspiracy minded among us might claim that a steady level of minor fraud gives a cover to massive systemic fraud in banking institutions -- fraud that may or may not benefit the institutions, but certainly benefits some players in those institutions. (We still haven't learned who made money off futures during 9-11... shouldn't be that hard to figure out, should it? Where did all the money from Enron and Worldcom go? It's not like they were literally burning money, it went somewhere. And illegal narcotics... they don't keep that money in their mattresses in Colombia. Fraud and other illegal finance exists on huge scales)
Of course, physical factors are important. Suburban development is crap, though I'm curious about the quality of some of the urban development I've seen -- with most of the exterior structure being built out of concrete and brick. I'm sure the interior is still crappy drywall without good trim or any of the detail that you find in an older house, but it feels like the structure is meant to stick around. (BTW, brick lasts a really long time and is pretty low-maintenance)
But when I see houses going down, it's often not because they are falling apart. Or if they are falling apart, it's often because people didn't care about them (at least for some period) and they went in disrepair. Really, it's because the location is desirable and the land is worth building a better house on (or houses).
So a really long-lasting house should fully exploit the potential of its location. I'd stand to say that it shouldn't have too large a lot, and maybe exist somewhere with well-apportioned land (like the inner city). The value of the house should not be in the size of the land, or even the size of the house (so long as the house matches its property), but in the quality of the house.
Build tall instead of wide, it's easier to expand the width later, but people don't go adding floors to their buildings.
If you not only for the house to exist, but for it to stay in your family, you'll have to think a lot about what you imagine your family being -- a country home, a city home, an old suburb are all possibilities. New suburbs are built by people that aren't willing to invest in their community, which is no recipe for long-term permanence, of the house or as a base for your family -- avoid them entirely. Each city will have a wide variety of neighborhoods, but I feel like they come in three varieties -- established (upper-class) neighborhoods, neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, and the middle-class neighborhoods. (There may be lots of lower-class land, but I'm just guessing you aren't going to build a home there). You need a lot of resources for the established neighborhood, because there's probably already a perfectly good house on the location. I don't think any of us really know what the long term future of the gentrified neighborhoods is going to be, especially the second generation of gentrification that we're seeing.
Anyway, those are just thoughts... it's the kind of thing you could debate about for a long time.
Personally, I guess I got over it by working for individuals or small companies, usually through some sort of personal connection (and I'm not a good networker, that's just how jobs happen). None of the jobs full time. In those situations I wasn't really working under a senior programmer, it was just me, and I spent lots of time doing system admin, tech support, web design, etc., in addition to programming (mostly instead of it). But it's part of the package, only now am I able to focus my skills more.
With the lack of entry level positions -- it seemed like 10:1 last time I looked -- this seems like the way you get in. The first job you get won't be a programming job, but that you can still build up your professional programming experience for a later Real Programming job. And often you have to find the programming in the job yourself -- you can solve a lot of repetitive tasks through programming, but your employer often won't see those possibilities.
That said, there are two-stroke engines that are not so polluting. If this is one of those, then yes, it's a lot better than an Explorer.
That said, when I try to figure things out in Zope I can understand the Zope code from the very beginning -- considering Zope's size and complexity, and the fact I start out reading some module deep on the inside of the system, it's a testiment to Python's readability. And for all the issues I have with Zope, the actual core code is not nearly as messy as the thing it implements... which is a little ironic.
I don't know what that looks like in Perl -- maybe it's all quite reasonable, though Perl semantics seem to be very complex which would seem to make it more difficult.
In those cases where people cannot visually read, but must use other methods, the effort of handling consecutive spaces is not significant. You can preprocess the file if you want, or have a reader that understands levels of indentation, or something. A naive implementation of a reader is going to be painful with any programming language, regardless of the type of indentation.
As for semantic encoding, you're again being absurd. If you want to express block structure in a semantic manner, tabs don't cut it either. You have to parse the lanuage properly, and parsing spaces is not significantly more difficult than parsing tabs. The only place where tabs are easier is naive regex-based parsing. The Python syntax is not primitive, and trying to understand it on a character level is futile.
The real point is that smart tools can deal with spaces for indentation just fine. Dumb tools deal fine with spaces too, though they may introduce slightly more overhead. The same cannot be said for tabs.