I don't think its necessary a bad thing to run out of Grade-D jobs. I love your second point.

The success of this machine likely leads to a greater demand in [Fast Food Automation?]. This creates more Grade-A jobs for engineers (high paying). It also increased demand for Fast Food Operator-consultants that can help put there job into a process for automation (Grade-D?). It created jobs (probably Grade-C) for technicians, installers, and repairmen for all the new equipment that's selling like McDonald's hotcakes.

The new equipment increased resource efficiency for McDonald's franchise owners. With more revenue they didn't have before, they may take there family on an extra vacation each year, buy a new car for their child instead of making them find an ol' beater, or open a new McDonalds branch. All of these happenings increases the demand for something, which results in a higher demand for a variety of jobs (not just Grade-D) jobs.

More training for those pencil pushers in your example increases the demand for pencil pushers capable of providing the training.

Is everything in perfect equilibrium? Probably not. But its also only likely to damn those who just sit around and sulk.

...somewhere, the Sony executives just let out a chuckle.

I have unfortunately had different experiences than you. Most people I hear complain about this subject make claims like, "I bought the software", or "I own the game, I can do with it whatever I please". I would agree with you if instead they made claims like, "Licenses to use should be illegal".

And I agree, EULAs are bad. But when people know about EULAs... and know about the crappy DRM companies like EA use to try and enforce their EULA... but yet still buy that EA product... that's just asinine. Its not like any of this is news. Companies like EA have been doing this for a long time. I enjoy seeing those same people complain because I know I'm witnessing the consequences for their actions (unhappiness and complaining for foolishly supporting a company with bad policies).

I know the facts. The fact is consumers are most often purchasing a license to use software, not the actual software. Whether or not that EULA practice holds up in certain jurisdictions doesn't change that.

Congrats on your win against EA. It's a shame the government has to interfere. As a result, we see companies like EA just side step whatever California is trying to accomplish by selling products and services that require an always-online connections. Did the consumer really win? Not in my opinion. We received more intrusive DRM, arguably poorer quality products from EA, and wasted government resources.

Maybe some day the consumer will make a difference by purchasing games and software from companies that don't sell EULA-restricted products.

If I had moderator points, you would get them all sir. Almost everyone I have engaged in this argument with fails to understand or acknowledge this fact. They may not like it, which is expected. When your choices are "spend years writing my own software that does what [software title] does, find a lesser quality product for free, or use this software and agree to their EULA.", you shouldn't act surprised or upset when you choose the last option. It was obviously your best choice or you would of went with the other two...

Having said that, those limited choices have also driven the demand for spectacular free products like gimp.

Spoken like a person who doesn't know what they are talking about!

My most recent project was converting a software product, a several hundred-thousand lines of code product, from VB6 to VB.net. Of that, only about a thousand lines of code had to be recoded. Maybe your experience is only with software so poorly written that a refactor/recode strategy is the best solution to begin with?

Winforms to Web? This one sticks out like a sore thumb. Have you ever engineered software with a Microsoft technology? I think you mean Winforms to WPF... If changing to a ribbon requires significant training where you work, I'm sorry to hear that you work with idiots.

That sounds excellent.

ESXi. Its free, powerful, and offers a lot of pre-built appliances. I don't see any safety concerns if the network is segregated. If you have specific VM's that you want the students to learn within, keep screenshots of those so that you may roll anything back that gets damaged. This is great because it allows them do pretty much anything they want without creating a maintenance headache for you.

If you want to teach them about specific technologies using VMs that go hand and hand with programming (like source control, bugzilla, configuring web servers, etc), turnkeylinux.org offers many free linux appliances that will make your job easy.

The study was based on congestion factor. Not the actual amount of traffic. http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/articles/bn9/2012/7/18/tampa_traffic_among_.html

The top 5 are: LA, Vancouver, Miami, Seattle, and then Tampa. All cities that are also on your list. Of your list, I have driven numerous times in Boston, DC, Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta. Only Boston is worse than Tampa imo.

It honestly sounds like you have never driven in Tampa. Most out-of-towners I have met unanimously agree Tampa is one of the worse. The lack of public transportation (as you even pointed out) adds that much more stress to the road system.

...they could fix the traffic problem here, Tampa wouldn't suck so bad.

Source: 26 years experience driving in hell (also, voted 5th worse in North America).

Why not? This is slashdot. That's why.

Microsoft could give every slashdotter a million dollars and everyone would complain because it wasn't in cash.

One of the comments on the article was more informative to me than the article alone...

"...When I needed to get people to pay attention to something quickly, I created a twitter account, paid for 30,000 followers, and then followed about 1000 people I had identified as having mattered. In return over the next two days roughly 400 of those "people who mattered" had followed me -- in part I am sure because my Twitter account said it had over 10,000 followers.

Over the next two weeks Twitter killed off all of the fake followers BUT I retained the real followers who might not have paid any attention EXCEPT for the initial batch of fake followers.

It is NOT about spam. It is about purchasing "legitimacy" quickly."

You're welcome.

Armchair parent? I don't see where I gave parenting instructions. I only stated common sense: don't have children if you cannot afford them.

I sincerely hope you do not continue telling your children and/or their children that "lucky" rubbish. You imply that you are in a good financial situation (unless you consider yourself lucky to be in a bad one); but, then list your struggles and experience working a very difficult job. It sounds like you are in your situation because you busted your ass. Good job. Seriously. Good or bad, every person deserves the consequences of his decisions in life.

Can I listen to it on my mp3 player?