Seriously, it takes the criminal actively walking into the courthouse and proclaiming himself an enormous felon and requesting jail-time for prosecution to happen when they're rich. And "prosecution" that results in a fine is so non-punitive it's mind-melting.

This person stole 100 million dollars, bad person! 20 million dollar fine! Yeah, fines work real well. Oh fine more like "Bad person: 120 million dollar fine!" (all the while the person made 88 million off their 100 million over the 2 decades they were stealing it by way of interest and investments we poor people don't have access to), poor guy only walks away 68 million ahead.. stealing is dangerous, you could get caught and then...punished? no no.. what do we call that... shamed? Yeah that's it. Steal lots of money, get publically shamed. That's about the long and the short of it..

Sadly that is literally the argument of a lot of people "Regulation doesn't work so stop regulating!" translation: "Regulation has loopholes that are being exploited, so stop regulating and they'll stop exploiting loopholes!"... people actually think this way, but you can't blame them, if they're stupid enough to not realize why that is brain-damagingly backwards, they're stupid enough to think that way...

Would never pass congress, those loopholes are important to ensure the regulation doesn't stop people from making tons of money from committing fraudulent acts, err rather, those loopholes ensure the country's economy doesn't slow.

In all honesty, I have just realized a simple fact, America is a country with 2 economies. The rich people's economy and everybody elses, they follow 100% different rules, their money comes from 100% different sources, they are literally 2 distinct economies. The only way they intermix is that the rich one get's all it's money through tricking and extorting the money from the other one (and others, internationally), and the other one generates money for itself by internally ebbing the money about as well as importing money from other countries through valuable exports. The country's GDP comes from everyone's, however the country's GDP goes to the rich people's.

Viewing them as two totally separate and distinct economies the same way you view america's economy and mexico's economy actually makes a lot more sense...

...the trick I guess is that one of the economies has a monomorphic (or more truly catamorphic) relationship to the other one, where we need it to be homomorphic...hylomorphic might also be workable...

The balance has been struck: Deregulation is currently at a point where the economy for really rich people like federal politicians is *great* and Regulation is at a point where the entire public isn't 100% certain that more would be a good thing so the politicians aren't being bothered by their constituents to increase it (which would slow the economy for really rich people, but speed it up for the rest of us as we have more money in our pockets when we're not being gang-banged by the rich people's economy).

SERIOUSLY. Find someone who actually knows programming to get your kid writing code, this hands down has the highest transmission rate of The Bug. Someone who knows how getting him to do some piddly crap is more likely to give him The Bug than anything else hands down. Once he has The Bug, everything else will be taken care of. He'll plug himself into the internet and start downloading all on his own directly into his brain pan. CS and etc as very useful as they are, are no where near as valuable to someone who is "interested" as contracting The Bug.

You know how much goes into thinking up mathematical strategies for structuring those things, I wouldn't say it doesn't help at all.. :)

Also dead right, this will have you touch typing and reading so fast. IRC/MUD is how I learned to touch type, and I hit 140wpm if I know what I want to say.

Decent.. ugh, just to learn some coding all you need is a 486 with vi or emacs, immediately at his fingertips without delay will then be Lisp, Python, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, C/C++, Java, Haskell.. I'm not suggesting anyone dig up a 486, but the point stands, hell get the kid an rPi... don't tell this guy to trouble over whether or not to spend money and how much when he just needs to spend pocket change if he wants his kid to be able to code.

The real problem is the number of scammers who would immediately begin taking advantage of everyone who makes a cent over minimum wage (note, scammer: corporation, not person, people don't have the rights to get away with that stuff)

I've flatly said on many occasions to this question "Don't worry about it, X is what I'm looking for." the few who didn't get the hint and pressed were told their offer was suddenly irrelevant and I hung up on them. I plan to get paid for my skills by looking at the market and coming up with what I believe to be reasonable and then demanding that of businesses. Yes I have been flatly denied by businesses, but those places are jerkbags anyway and would be miserable to work for.

Aren't states rights fun!

I'm going with the guy who actually knows it's HIPAA not HIPPA. (That and I worked on FDA regulated medical software for 3 years where the database stored PII)

This is called retirement, because teaching pays dick. (who in turn pays the teacher NOTHING, which is worth considerably less than it used to be)

I don't know, if I say Yes, does that mean it is or isn't?

I just have to ask, if you're a mage do you still need a tank to breath under water?

Helpdesk != tech support. Help desk means internal.