Guess what? I *AM* an asshole.

If you want "nice" managers and project leads, check the unemployment lines.

I'm guessing you're a twenty-something who grew up in the age of "everyone gets a trophy" instead of learning that failure IS an option.

Self-training is YOUR responsibility. The days when companies would pay to train you have been over for 20 years at least.

The fact that he treated it as "free time" instead of investing in HIS OWN CAREER is the problem.

Although the copyright holders can send out threatening letters here in Canada, they're not allowed to collect the thousands of dollars that they do for "infringement" in the US. They're only allowed to collect *actual* damages.

So if you're a "leech" and just download without sharing later, they can only claim the loss of one copy. If you shut off your torrent after uploading to a 1:1 ratio, they can only claim loss of one copy.

It really takes the wind out of their sails and their idle threats if you know that fact and can respond to them appropriately. Their claims that you could be subject to "thousands" of dollars of damages is absolute BULLSHIT under Canadian law.

I hate to tell you this, but I wouldn't hire you no matter what "skills" you try to pick up in two months time.

You knew the project would finish someday, yet you spent three years content to sit on your arse and while away the time on the current project instead of learning something new at home on your own time.

You dropped the ball. You didn't plan.

And because you don't plan ahead, I wouldn't want you.

I must admit it's been a few years since I last used C#, and I've yet to shift from Java 7 to Java 8. Both have moved forward.

But at the point I was heavily using both, they were more alike than different. At that point, LINQ had just come out so no one was using it for production systems yet.

What amuses me is that many people rave on about how great C# is, while denouncing Java. Yet other than a few minor syntax tweaks (like the way you write getters/setters and the "?" indicator for nullable attributes), they are virtually identical right down to the API.

They're both very easy to read and code with, and if you know the packages/libraries of one you'll find the equivalent in the other in short order, with very, very few differences in the details of the APIs.

Yet C# is "great" and Java "sucks".

Go figure.

Can you imagine the dystopian dictatorship where trekkies come to power? All of the halls of power full of people walking around in spandex and fake ears and brow ridges, the fed directed to work toward the absolution of currency, the military directed to accelerate development of phasers and for all recruits to undergo "Kobayashi Maru" training.... NASA would finally get their proposed $18,5 billion dollar annual budget passed - except that the bill would have the word "annual" crossed out and the word "monthly" written in its place. National anti-bullying legislation would be passed, probably with a name like Spock's Law. And of course they'd insist on referring to the UN as the United Federation of Planets.

Annoying your wife/GF's pet annoys her. Annoying her puts you in the -- no pun intended -- doghouse.

Thus, don't annoy your wife/GF's pet.

And dogs? Heck, cats hear even higher pitches.

I find it hard to imagine music is even a major target for downloading these days - it's way too easy to simply go to youtube, find the song you want, download and convert it to an MP3.

My theory is that with Crave TV and such coming on the market, people don't need to pirate everything that they used to.

There is also a new IP TV provider in Canada that isn't tied to the internet infrastructure provider. That may have something to do with it as well.

Clusters? Been out for decades.

Virtual machines? Been out for decades.

Hosted operating systems? Been out for decades.

Distributed clusters over corporate networks? Been out for decades.

The only thing "new" about the "cloud" is using the public internet instead of a corporate VPN for the network.