In relation to your thought exercise, you need to give the programmer new abilities to make money. First, the program is now provided as a service. For people to use it, they have to connect to a service, and every time users connect to the service (which would have many programs available on it), the programmer is paid every time that program is opened. Once the work is completed on that program for the task, the program should automatically close so that the programmer is paid for every task completed using said program. If the program has to be opened 10 times in one day by a user, then the programmer is paid 10 times.

If the programmer decides to re-theme the program, it should appear on the service as the "Live 2013" version, and count as a different program.

The software company should also now have the ability to sell a non-streaming version of the program though another electronic storefront at a higher price, which the programmer would also receive payment for (the amount of which would depend on the contract of employment). The software company should also sell DVD-ROMs of the software in retail outlets, which are the software as on the electronic storefront, but with a jewel case and a quick-start guide to the user's favorite functions (if the user is lucky, anyway).

Also, bugs are now sort of a "creative ignorance", so the fixes should come years later and sold again for full price (like so). To be fair though, the original release should be mostly bug free. The software company would probably provide a dedicated tester with some development skills to the programmer in order to assist with this.

The programmer should now also have the ability to travel to various venues (with little to no interference by the software company) and demo his software. The venues would pay for the programmer's time and/or give the programmer a percentage of the ticket sales or entry fee.

The programmer could also sell exclusive versions of the software on the programmer's website. These versions could come with DVDs that document the programmer's creative process and shows the programmer actually in front of the keyboard showcasing the skill that goes into creating pieces of software. The software company may or may not be involved in this. These exclusive and limited production versions would, of course, be sold at a much higher price.

Of course, if the programmer isn't part of a software company, and are not being pushed to do many of these things that most likely would result in more uses on the service or sales of the electronic version and DVD-ROM version, then they are free to code and continue to push that code to the streaming service, do nothing else, and see what happens.

Going back to the real world and talking about music, considering all the effort that musicians put into writing music, recording it, selling it, playing in various venues, merchandising (if they can), and many other things that I probably have no idea they do, the streaming revenue sounds like free coffee at the office to me. Maybe stock dividends or investment returns would be more appropriate comparison. It just doesn't sound like something that one should think of as a primary piece of overall income.

Fully agree. One thing I'd add is that to be a programmer or developer, one is supposed to have a drive to learn the new tech and languages. They should want to learn this without any higher-ups telling them they have to. You should keep your skills relevant in the advancing market. Says so right in our code of ethics. I think that is where you would eliminate a good portion of the population from being suitable to be a programmer.

In relation to the topic, most programming tends to top out at algebra. Some of it uses trigonometry and statistics. Calculus and imaginary numbers come into play during certain, specific engineering requirements. So it really depends on what you are coding, but I would say that you really don't need calculus. What you do need is a solid foundation in mathematics and to be in practice. There are other math-related topics that come up in information technology. A couple of examples off the top of my head would be data structures and encryption. If your math skills are rusty, those topics might not be very easy to comprehend. Another consideration is that any college or university you go to will probably make sure you know your mathematics by having you take their classes (unless you test out of them) regardless of what you took in high school. Speaking from experience as someone that went to a university from a public high school in the USA, chances are that you will probably not be ready for the demands of higher education coming out of high school. You really do not want to be rusty at that point, or it will be that much harder for you (especially since advisers will probably suggest you take five to six classes a semester if you don't want to be there into your thirties).

Slightly off topic, when did a call out against math start? I was required to take 3 years of math in high school. Every math class I had, we covered new topics. I was required to take 4 years of English/Literature. Every year was the same exact thing as middle school, with a slightly higher vocabulary expectation. Read a few books, write a few papers. Done. I can pretty definitively tell you which class was a bigger waste of my time in high school. If they want to get rid of some standard requirements from the curriculum, drop the English classes. If you can't write at a decent literary level after ten years of schooling, you shouldn't be advancing in grade-levels.

From what I have been lead to believe, and I could be wrong, if you get DirectX working for your game on Windows, it isn't that ridiculously difficult or expensive to get it functioning on the Xbox. Xbox360 is probably the leader in the console market at the moment (last I heard it had 47% marketshare in the world for consoles), and Windows has been the name for PC gaming for years... that is a lot of bases covered for choosing an, arguably, inferior SDK.

I actually was wondering if the "Nexus Line" announcement from a week or two ago had anything to do with Motorola's acquisition (if you didn't catch it, basically every manufacture will have the option to make their own Nexus phone that follows Google's design specs and have it sold through the Google Play Store). By not allowing just one manufacture a year to take a crack at the Nexus, Google could reduce the amount of finger pointing at them if Motorola phones start getting quick OS upgrade releases. I know Google promised to run Motorola like a completely separate company, but I wouldn't be surprised if the corporate plan for Motorola goes more in line with a unified Android approach.

Err... ok, upon further reading, I misread the BBC article. A USA Today article states that the devices will most likely still run android and that B&N will make a nook e-reader Metro application to run on Windows 8, that will probably be default installed and have a high placement on the application list. There is nothing about running the Windows 8 ARM version on future Nook devices. My mistake!

I got the Nook e-reader over the Kindle due to the wider range of format support and B&N making the device rather open to me putting books I have from other stores on the device if I so choose. The ability to root and put some nicer designed apps onto the thing due to the Android OS was a very nice bonus, but not my main reason for buying.

The OS change won't bother me from an "I like android" point of view so long as it works well. I am not liking the idea of monochrome live-tiles on the e-ink display, however. I don't see that working well at all. I'm hoping that the heavy shift in power towards B&N will allow some sanity to prevail and they will just use Win8 on the color tablet models, and not on the e-ink models.

The format support is my next concern. Microsoft doesn't have the best DRM track record, and I would hate to see the nook become a complete walled garden platform similar to the Kindle. Again, I'm hoping those that come from B&N have enough power to keep the Nook being the reader of choice for those of us that don't want a Kindle.

Your second statement proves the parent correct. Just because the question is wrong doesn't mean that it won't be asked in hope of the question going through, unchallenged, and becoming part of the record. Because of this, yes and no are not valid answers to the question. Here is how a yes/no answer would sound.

Yes: I did beat my wife, but I stopped doing so.

No: I still beat my wife on a somewhat regular basis.

I don't think that you want to answer the question either way if your defense is that you NEVER beat your wife.

I suppose it is the job of your lawyer to object to the question, but I think it would be easier for the judge to allow answers that are not always yes or no.

Note: IANAL

I agree. This won't go the way people think it will. For proof, just look at season passes on Amazon Instant Video. They charge something like $2.35 an episode (in HD). Season seem to be around 22~24 episodes, so that is somewhere between $50 and $60 for a season depending on the show. Granted that I believe you "own" (in the sense the show will always be available to you in your video library) the show on Amazon instead of seeing it and having to buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out later, but it is still quite the mark up. If you only watch one or two shows and trust Amazon, then it may be worth it, but you are otherwise better off getting a cable package and the disks later down the road (TV seasons go on sale all the time).

For speculation sake, lets guestimate what that will be. I'm sure that the content providers won't charge as high a price as on Amazon, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't use it as a basic starting point. I could see them doing $0.50 per week for each local stations (so $2 per month), and $1 to $1.50 per week ($4 to $6 a month) per "cable" station.

If it is that price then for me I would need the local 4 networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, & FOX) at $8, and ten cable stations I regularly watch... somewhere around $45 to $60 per month. Isn't that what I pay now for 30 or 40 channels?

Agreed. My roommate can trade in 3 or 4 Xbox360 games (that are only 3 or 4 months old usually) and comes home boasting that he got two game used, a couple of months old, for 5 bucks. A month later I'll have both of them off of steam for $15 and without the loss of any games I previously purchased. I am fully aware that I am giving up having a physical copy, and that there is DRM involved in my gaming experience (though it doesn't usually bother me in such a way that it detracts from my enjoyment of the game), but I can accept that for getting a $40 game for $5.

I pretty much guarantee that Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo won't be following Steam's sales model though. They already have retail titles on Xbox Market and PSN... and they usually go for the same price as the retail shelves. I doubt they will change this model. If you want to take something away from me, give me a price break. Even the ebook publishers that want $15 for a book (which I find outrageous for 2megs of data) are still giving me somewhat of a break considering their hardcover price is $25~$30 usually. I don't see this going well.

Your example of restaurants works. You just don't understand that it works because, as you say, you don't understand business. To be specific, you don't understand the purpose of a business when you see one. I'm guessing Hardees sells fried chicken... assuming they do, the proper analogy here is that you say Hardees owns their own string of chicken farms throughout the USA. Hardees decides that their thing is making food with a specific flavor, not keeping birds alive until they reach the proper weight to be dead birds that are tasty. So they create a new company, and put the chicken farms into that new company's name. Now Hardees has to only focus on applying breading and spice to raw chicken before deep-frying it to a lovely crisp, and can let the new company focus on how much corn to mix into chicken feed to produce the largest, healthiest chickens in the shortest amount of time while still fulfilling their contractual duties to provide so many pounds of chicken meat to Hardees every month.

Now say that the new chicken farming business isn't doing a good job of raising their chickens... they are too small and kinda chewy. Hardees doesn't want you to buy a chewy bird from them. They may loose you as a customer. So, Hardees says to the new chicken farming company, "you are your own business and are not performing up to our standards, so we shall take our business elsewhere". Hardees starts buying chicken from another chicken farm company. Now you go to Hardees and your neighbor goes to KFC. Guess what? KFC and Hardees both buy their chicken from the same company. You get home and enjoy Gary the Chicken, and your neighbor is enjoying Larry the Chicken, who is Gary's younger brother by 3 minutes.

You do not go to Hardees to get a specific chicken. You go to get a chicken that is safe, edible, and has a particular flavor that Hardees supplies with their blend of spices and/or choice of frying oil. This is what is happening with AMD right now. You buy a hunk of silicone that conforms to an AMD design, and meets certain standards and quality that AMD is guaranteeing you that the chip will have. Who made that silicone, for the most part, is irrelevant to the customer. That is AMD's problem. If they choose a manufacture that is slow, unreliable, or ships AMD lots of defective products, then AMD will take their business to a manufacture that is more competent or better suits their needs. So basically, AMD has decided that they want to focus on chip design, not both chip design and chip manufacturing.

I'm not certain, but I think that some people are now putting QR codes onto their business cards that have their contact information embedded. I know one person that has a QR code that takes your phone to his website, but was thinking about trying to get the business card reprinted with his information in VCard format within the QR code instead. I'm guessing that was the reason for the address book permissions (to add to it, not to read it), and that if you had that application, you could add a contact instantly.

I agree on a need for reasoning why certain privileges are needed. Most of them are easy to figure out (if it is a free app, chances are it has ads... thus needing internet access), but a few of them are weird, like your QR code scanner issue there. Personally, whenever I run across a weird permission request, I look back to the description or change-log of the application. If the developer has documented why the permission is necessary in either of these locations, I feel fairly confident that they are trustworthy.

I'm assuming you live in on campus housing with the internet connection being provided by the university and pretty much mandatory. I think the old 'vote with your wallet' applies here... don't pay the huge fees for living on campus and find an apartment near by (check the bus routes if you don't have a car, and see if the buses give student discounts). Then you can have whatever internet connection you want. Do it soon, as this time of year, in my experience, is when spots start filling up. Doesn't mean you will have to move immediately, as many landlords near college campuses know students have to complete one housing assignment first, then move. They are usually just happy to have a guarantee of a rent check coming in. If you don't want to stay over the summer, then you may have to work out a deal where you pay half-rent during the summer to reserve the spot or something. Check your options. Find some roommates. See what they are willing to do.

In the meantime, do as others have suggested and see if SSH tunneling and such is blocked. If it is, see about getting it unblocked. You could use the excuse of having to log into a server you own for non-school related projects. Employers like to see personal projects during interviews, and not stuff you were forced to do for class, so blocking that is hurting your chances for future employment. Doesn't matter if you are or are not as that point stands quite well.

Agreed. Thinking like the OP is what makes it so hard to find the good candidates in the pack sometimes. The ones that actually want to do something and make reasonable decisions have to fake their way into the club of whatever party they most closely align with between the democrats and republicans. There are just too many people that think if you aren't the stereotypical poster-person for one side or the other, then you are against everything the voting individual stands for. Once a person is voted in, you might get to see the real candidate.

In relation to the actual topic though, I have to agree with some of Santorum's words, though not his overall point, that climate change science is largely political. Seems like there is a contradicting study for every study published and that political groups somehow always seem to magically be the first ones to praise the findings of an "independent" study. I've chosen to ignore the whole topic at this point.

While I respect the EFF and don't doubt their intentions, it sounds like this Carpathia Hosting company got itself a PR-out that it needed. The way I understood things, it sounded like MU's assets were frozen and it was assumed that since they couldn't pay Carpathia, the hosting company was going to clear out the data at the stroke of midnight (slight exaggeration, but you get the idea). I'm sure that MegaUpload users were hoping that the hosting company would wait until a trial to delete or not delete out of the goodness of their hearts, but that isn't fair to them. On the other hand, from the comment on the EFF page, it sounds like Carpathia can not get users their data, either for technical or contractual reasons, at the moment.

By giving a small grace period and supporting the EFF here, Carpathia has really put themselves out of "Bad Guy" range. I don't think they would have deserved the label to begin with, but you know some disgruntled users would have bad mouthed the hosting company once their data was lost.