I have no idea where to even begin with this. You can't possibly believe that.

It's good advice in terms of the math, but it's not in terms of the reality of hacks.

What's most important is that you aren't using the same password in multiple places. Otherwise, no matter how you chose it, if a hack of a service exposes that data then your email and password are going to be tested against a plethora of other sites just to see where else you used it. If you're using a password manager and creating random passwords that even you don't know, then if one service is compromised you only have to worry about updating your password for that one service.

At some point, we need to start giving huge tax discounts to corporations based on how much they spend on labor. Right now we seem hell bent on making hiring people as expensive as possible.

Also, give huge corporate tax discounts based on how much you spend on labor. Right now this country seems focussed on creating policies that incentive employers to reduce their workforce by making employees more expensive. Stop that and start rewarding employers who ACTUALLY create jobs.

This has REPUBLICAN backers. It's called the Fair Tax.

The Fair Tax involves eliminating income tax, replacing it with a federal sales tax, then giving ALL legal US citizens a check every month to offset the tax against basic needs. At the time it was originally proposed I think the suggestion was a $400 / month check.

To make it a basic income and take it a step further, bump it up to $700 / month (effectively doubles the minimum wage) and reduce social security and welfare payouts by the same amounts. Eliminate unemployment since everybody gets this now and institute a flat 10% income tax to go with the 10% federal sales tax.

The combination of the two creates a tax system that ensures if you're in this country, you pay taxes. If you're a citizen, you get the payout.

The most important part of the equation is eliminating unemployment. In some parts of the country where the cost of living is low there's a lot of unemployment abuse. Unemployment gives somebody the choice of whether or not to continue having all of their time while getting a check or giving up that check and going to work. That's important, because under this structure if you go to work you make more without giving anything up. Period. Part time work becomes much more viable.

Although, on further examination it looks like it is structured almost EXACTLY the same.

No idea. Hadn't seen XL before.

I saw that EnterpriseDB offered to support XC though. http://www.enterprisedb.com/se...

Have you seen Postgres-XC? It's pretty much built for this purpose.

http://postgresxc.wikia.com/wi...

Unless you're talking about AWS re:Invent, the bulk of conferences are not worth it. re:Invent was by far and away the best conference I've ever attended though and I'm still implementing things that came out of it last year.

Java as a language is a pain to develop with. Java selling points have always revolved around the JVM itself and a bullet proof, over-engineered backbone that is needed for "enterprise" workloads. In big company's who don't have urgent timelines where they are willing to invest time to micro-engineer solutions it's used very heavily. For applications under heavy workloads, the high stress parts are usually built in Java for maximum efficiency but it's been the JVM, JDBC, server infrastructure and the polished library of tools around it that have buoyed it's success.

With the ability to run other languages on the JVM and get ALL those benefits without actually being required to code in Java though...now that's pretty cool. jRuby, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, etc are making the Java world a heck of a lot more interesting. If the early rumblings around the dramatic gains that jRuby is making with Java 8 are true you might just see the world implode at the idea of Java performance with Ruby development timelines. Early public benchmarks on Techempower are already looking about 30% faster than Scala.

Pushing to Github is nice and all but for a project to get any type of traction you need to tell people about what problem it helps to solve, show them how, and ideally make it easy for them to try it. Something up on a corporate blog. Compare it to other solutions. Have an instructional site in your space review it and write about it.

Unless you can show what it does and then differentiate why it's better than existing options, rust is exactly what will happen.

Or mine bit coins maybe. Could help pay for the remaining lease term.

Show me a liberal that advocates for states rights and I'll accept your "bollocks".

I'll not deny that there's a segment of libertarians that are anti-all government. I'll not deny that libertarians are generally anti-tax as well, because taxes feed the size of government.

Imagine a corporation that could simply decide, despite it's inefficiencies, that it needed more money to operate or that it's employees all really deserved raises despite almost 2 months of paid vacation, almost no fear of job loss, excellent retirement packages and the best health coverage...so they simply choose to make everybody may them more money. That's what government does every single day and that's where the idea that "taxation is theft" comes from. Government is the only part of the economy that doesn't have to get more efficient as technology improves. The salaries remain comparable to private sector but the benefits on top of them are dramatically better. It used to be that choosing to be a "public servant" warranted all of those protections and benefits at the expense of private sector comparable salaries.

"country from an on-high dictate "

Also, I'm aware states "chose" it. But they chose it based on having money dangled at them from the federal government for choosing it. That's how the federal government elicits control over states and it's been going on since Reagan started the trend with highway funds being tied to raising the drinking age. Reagan set the playbook for Federal control which is something that a lot of conservatives aren't comfortable hearing.

Liberals want an improved education system handed down from on-high at the level of the department of education. Libertarians want education localized enough that people can decide what the educational needs are for their area. Some people advocate for private schools or school choice and there are certainly good arguments for that, but the best argument for private schools is simply allowing them to make their own decisions based on their own research.

I was curious so I actually toured a private school in my area recently where the cost per student is $1000 more per year than the cost per student everywhere else in the county. The differences were staggering though. The administrators actually had to justify WHY their school was the best place for my children. They provided numbers. They provided programs that teach principles I wish were taught in public schools. They have 3rd graders doing BUSINESS PLANS. The music program is amazing...every kid learns an instrument. The build the entire curriculum around teaching life skills with every single lesson at every single level. If you're going to learn information you're going to learn a skill while you do it. Despite all of the hullaballoo around the common core approach to math, they actually settled on using it...but it wasn't forced on them. They researched programs. They studied them for a few years. Then they presented them to their teachers and got proper training for all those teachers on HOW to teach it. Additionally, they developed strategies for teaching it to kids at different levels who hadn't started out in those methods.

Contrast that with how common core was thrust upon the country from an on-high dictate and the ensuing chaos that resulted from it. With a school choice program in place, I could take the entire "cost per student" amount and send my kids to that school, only having to come up with the $1000 difference per year. As other schools in the area saw parents flocking there, they would find out what was being implemented that worked so well and follow suit.

I see this as a way of applying competition to education but not in a sense of number crunching. You can throw out numbers all day long, but the real success of a business is word of mouth and repeat customers. People choosing to use that business. That's the aim of school choice programs and certainly, it's a really interesting solution.

Wouldn't it be something if a state could decide they were going to try that while another state could stick to the current approach but watch curiously to see what happened? We'll never know under the current system.

Taxes are necessary as a society. Federal taxes and policies are not.