Looks like he beat you to it.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2645355&cid=38866049

I totally agree with the sentiment and you are almost certainly right. However, the article goes further than just learning 20 shortcuts. I was just saying that the author is correct in my opinion.

You're missing the point. If everybody had at least a basic knowledge of computer programming (or at least the existence of it), everyone would know that copy and paste is a bad idea and do something about it. As it stands, the secretaries know no better other than the job is a PITA and the other end thinks that writing a webpage displaying the data is the best they can do.

Getting the secretaries to know how to parse XML and use Regexps is not the exercise here. The exercise is giving people a sense that computer programming is not magic and the barrier to getting something automated is not as high as people think it is. This goes from the bottom to the top of any organization so that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Where I work, we have secretaries copying and pasting (using a mouse) passages from a intranet website into our database. It made me cry just watching it. Now forget the fact that the other end could set up a ReST interface, a simple screen scrape would make a job that took hours into a job that would take seconds.

There is so much inefficiency in offices that could be eradicated if only people were a little savvier about what computers can do.

Thanks. I didn't know that.

Perhaps, but not ideal in my situation. I want to load up the car, get to Edinburgh, spend a month there or so, and get back. Putting the car on a train would mean I could load luggage at home and have /my/ car available to me in Edinburgh which I can pootle around while feeling smug (that is if I owned an electric car).

Rental would leave me with a petrol car (not exactly the point of the exercise) to do trips that, once I get to Edinburgh, are ideal for electric. It would also mean a long drive which I don't like. Public transport would limit the stuff I could carry easily (I have done courier before, which proved expensive, both upfront and in replacing the stuff they break.)

As I said, not ideal. I could work with either of your propositions, but for me having a train take me there so I don't have to think about a long journey (the plus of public transport) coupled with the convenience of having my car full of my stuff hits that sweet spot that nothing as yet offers me.

Just to be clear, that isn't what I want either.

I think you'd want a replicator to do that.

Personally, wrt your 1st point, some kind of long haul system would make this point mute. I make infrequent, but regular trips of > 400 miles. If I could pop my car on a train, everything would be gravy. I can't see it being too hard to get the infrastructure in place.

Failing that, I see many lorries carrying new cars to showrooms. If someone with enough clout and ingenuity could realize that with the growing number of electric cars, some kind of courier service for cars would make a lot of money, I'd be very happy to sign up.

Of course someone will come up with "it's too expensive", but where I live (London), money is the last reason I'd tout for being a car owner vs taking public transport.

Websites not written for an American audience perhaps?

Try "sudo make a great programmer".

It's case sensitive

I'd recommend pron browsing mode to bypass Google picking up your kinky preferences for your personalized search!

I can't really see how this is much different from the previous norm of people buying left/right-leaning newspapers to suit their preferences. Not that I'm saying that this wasn't a problem either.

Saying Flash sucks is fine. Banning the Flash compiler is fine. Banning the Flash compiler when they were weeks away from officially unveiling it? He could have done that from the offset and saved them the trouble.

I never said he didn't have valid reasons, but since you're going down this route, I'm sure he was never going to say "the reason we banned Flash was not technical, but because it would interfere with our revenue stream with our walled garden app store." Funnily enough, Bill Gates is not saying "we changed the APIs for Windows not for technical reasons, but because WP would interfere with our revenue stream with our Microsoft Office product" either.

I'm getting a sense of deja vu here:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_effectively_bans_flash_compiler_in_iphone_os_4_developer_agreement/

The only thing I would say is that Apple never, enticed Adobe to create a Flash compiler, but the end result was pretty similar.

Not that I disagree with anything you say, but I was just referring to the part

If the GGP wants to rename c to "speed of massless, noninteracting particle", by all means, but that particle would not be a neutrino.