You know, if he can't use Google he's really bad off.

Back in 1990 if you were an experienced C developer and hadn't looked seriously at OO languages it was understandable. In 2014, if you haven't at least dabbled with C++, Java or C# I think it shows a definite unwillingness to learn. So that's why the OP is getting "condescending" answers like "just hire someone"

Oh really? Drink some more koolaid. Remember how long it took to lay Carbon to rest. And the Cocoa APIs are still incomplete in many areas. Then take a look back at all the new programming languages and frameworks Apple has introduced over the years and then shot in the head. Dylan? OpenDoc?

I'd say it's 50/50 whether or not Swift will get enough traction to continue on.

But which do you think is more common?

Mind you, doing it in a way so easily traceable is a sign of being so upset that you count as crazy, but there's often a reason (or more than one) that people go crazy.

FWIW, "going crazy" in ways analogous to this is a part of our evolutionary toolkit for dealing with abusive management. It doesn't work as well in modern society, as those in control have learned to isolate themselves from the possibility of retribution, but in earlier times reactions analogous to this would lead to the abused person being killed, and the abuser being injured, often permanently. Which would make it much easier for his successor to take him down. The math justifying this is too complex for me to follow, but those who have worked it out say "it's probably right". It does assume that most of our evolution happened in small groups of reasonably closely related individuals, but that seems a quite reasonable assumption.

If you've spent this long avoiding modern languages why start now? If you're not interested in object oriented design you're just going to spend your whole time cussing at the frameworks. Just hire a contractor.

You are right. But sometimes if you don't have a car, you don't have a job. If your car dies, what are you supposed to do? Some people can scrape together enough to get the use of a car. Clearly, however, they couldn't get access to the car where you looked.

Actually, often it would be cheaper to buy a car from the current owner, but that can take significantly longer, and by the time they got the car, they might no longer have the job. I'll agree that it can also be quicker, but it's a gamble. And how do you go to look for the car if you don't have a car?

That said, I'll agree that many people make choices that I consider stupid. But often they're making the best choice that they can.

FWIW, I only own a car so that my wife can drive. I don't drive. There was a time when I did, but *I* decided that I wasn't a safe driver.

You were right, however:
I can't consider Wikipedia a better source than the history text I read in college.

(Actually, I'm always rather dubious about any "fact" that I find on Wikipedia. Many of them I have known-for-sure weren't facts at all. OTOH, most were indeed correct. But don't use it as a reference site for anything where anyone disagrees with it.)

OTOH: (from http://www.phrases.org.uk/mean...)

As to the origin of the expression, two notable contemporaries of Marie-Antoinette - Louis XVIII and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attribute the phrase to a source other than her. In Louis XVIII's memoir Relation d'un voyage a Bruxelles et d Coblentz, 1791, he states that the phrase 'Que ne mangent-ils de la croÃte de pÃté?' (Why don't they eat pastry?) was used by Marie-ThérÃse (1638-83), the wife of Louis XIV. That account was published almost a century after Marie-ThérÃse's death though, so it must be treated with some caution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 12-volume autobiographical work Confessions, was written in 1770. In Book 6, which was written around 1767, he recalls:

        At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat pastry!"

So I guess my history book was wrong. And apparently nobody knowns who originally said it, either.

There are definitely many who simply can't get ahead. AFAIKT, it's the great majority of them. Unfortunately, that's not newsworthy, so it doesn't get written up. What gets written up is the 1 in 100,000 who scams the system up to a middle class level of living.

I also agree that often poor people go for "shiney!". This is often because they don't have any hope of any real value, but sometimes it's just short-sightedness.

If you have no hope of getting ahead anyway, then borrowing will put you behind some time in the future, when you may not even be alive. (Many really poor people don't expect to live very long.) And at least for a short period of time you can have SOME measure of ,,, (it's here I get stuck. I don't understand their reasoning either. I think it's the admiration of their peers, but I'm not sure.)

FWIW, I've never known anyone who really fell for this loan scam, but I've known several who fell for the analogous credit card scam. (20%/month is just unconsciousable usury. There's no excuse for allowing that to be legal.) And I *do* consider that to be a strictly analogous scam.

Ah, memories. That had us rolling on the floor at my office at the time.

For those who missed it, or want to relive it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

You may not be rich, but you have clearly never been poor.

I, also, buy with cash, even (especially?) products as expensive as cars. But I have known many people for whom that was not an option. Not even on the used market. (I, personally, prefer to buy a car that's about three years old from a representative of the manufacturer. They often buy cars from people who are trading in on a new car. And they also want to keep the brand name in good repute.) But I've known many people who couldn't scrape together enough cash to purchase even an old used are.

Your question of "why people don't just get cheaper cars" is strictly analogous to Marie Antonette's "Let them eat cake." (though to understand this you do need to know that the cake referred to was dough that was caked to the sides of the baking oven during the baking process). For many people that is not an option. (There are, of course, the others. And, yes, foolish people exist. Just about everyon is in one area or another.)

No. The only possible (not probable) long term solution is technical...but the technical method involved is AI. And yes wit will be centralized, fur the reasons you gave.

What *could* happen is that an AI could take charge of handling communications. But it couldn't start there, it would probably need to start with handling business records (perhaps at AT&T) and branch out from there to handling users calls. Your information would not be secure from the AI, but the AI would, as it was designed to handle business records, be designed to protect them. You'd get end-to-end encryption that was transparent to the user. And nothing that could damage the corporation if revealed in court would be retrievable.

As I said, I don't think of this as probable, but it is *A* solution. Perhaps the existence of one solution implies that other solutions exist.

I've read the Quran. I've also read the Bible. The Quran isn't much worse. Both have their vile spots.

  (And how should that word be spelled. I've always spelled it Koran. "qu" should be pronounced about like "cw", since that's the french spelling of Old English words: "cwen" vs. "queen". I suspect that the better spelling would be something like "Q'ran", but perhaps it depends on which country you are transliterating from.)

That's my question. I've wound up with it installed plenty of times because it's the default on too many distributions but use?

At least with terminals you could arrange them how you like. Ah, the joys of 3 VT100s on your desk.

So it's telling us just what we already knew? Interesting.

For three or more decades. (Before that some of the classes of things they're comparing didn't exist, with enough deployment, to characterize.)

On the other hand, it's nice to have it confirmed with some rigor and measures.

Oops. Typoed $/watt to $/kW in part of the above and accidentally hit submit rather than preview. My bad.