When I was in high school I did a science fair project studying the levels of CO2 generated by exhalation from different people. The most interesting finding was that there was a high (positive) correlation between average exercise levels and CO2 exhalation levels. Given this highly scientific finding I propose extending this new tax on bicycle riders to all healthy people: They are ruining the environment with their toxic exhalations.

That dozen doughnuts? That's my tax shelter.

I don't know. I think you are both right: They read good speeches well. Because most of them have the sense to hire someone to tell them what to say.

Because Manning did what was right and those others did what they were told.

Yeah, you know we should have saved all the money on the whole Gemini program and Apollos 1-10 and just gone straight to the moon. This iterative approach to new discovery is for the birds.

You know, more people should ask themselves this question. Everyone's answer is a little different, but they all boil down to an analysis of opportunity cost. You only have so many hours in the day/month/year/life. There are lots of things to do, but you can't do them all at once, so while you are doing one thing, you are losing out on the opportunity to be doing something else. For me, I value my hobby time at about 3 times what I make at work. Build a computer or buy a computer? Well, I'll probably spend 6 hours finding and ordering parts for a computer above what I would just ordering one. Then there's the time to assemble, and the added risk of building your own. Given my level of disposable income, the amount of free time I have, and the enjoyment (or complete lack thereof) that I'd have in building my own system, I'd probably have to save $2k to make it worth my time.

When I was in college, and I had very little disposable income, saving even $100 was worth it, so I built my own systems.

As a side note, this is why I should (and do) pay a higher tax rate. The value of my last $1k of income is much lower now than when I was in college, but the value of stable and effective governance only grows as I get more wealth.

It should end about the time we get hit with a sufficiently large heavenly body. Given our infighting over insignificant questions I doubt any of us will ever get off this rock. Honestly can we set aside the bitter rivalries over whether, how many, and which gods exist? We dont appear to be making progress towards an answer, and even if we did the answer wouldn't solve any actual problem.

Don't think so small. You could write a real-time ray-tracer using LOGO and turtle graphics. Talk about geek cred!

I mean, look, it lowers corporate revenue and increases operating expenses! Competition lowers tax revenue and taxes are how corporations support our troops. This competition thing has *got* to stop!

The existence of your comment?

I'm pretty sure that's exactly the argument that just about every terrorist/freedom fighter in the world falls back on when targeting civilians.

I believe the universe was created by an omnipotent, antisocial hedge-maze 3.5 years ago. Science can do nothing to prove me wrong. You actually *can't* know the truth in these types of questions, which is why it's called faith. Please stop confusing the two.

Oh, and when religious types can't define their faith in non-disprovable ways they are rank amateurs, and should be ridiculed for their ignorance. Attack ignorance, not faith. We'll all just get along better.

-Your friendly neighborhood theological non-cognitivist

Can anyone become a programmer?

Apparently.

Yes, this can happen. It's called Horizontal Gene Transfer, and it's been happening for a long time. I figure in another 25 years or so we'll discover that some disease we have newly discovered will have been caused by the introduction of some novel gene and then its horizontal transfer to some vector we hadn't thought about. I'm just hoping that whatever that disease is doesn't outright kill us before we get good enough at gene manipulation to design a counter to it.

In the business world innovation is only ever justified by some cost-benefit analysis. Yes, competition will drive new features, iff the return on those features is great enough. Patent and copyright laws are specifically intended to widen this profit making window with the intent of fostering innovation.

Decreasing the time you can monetize any new idea serves to decrease the monetary value of that innovation. Decreasing the value of innovations doesn't sound like a winning formula for fostering innovation.

When you figure it out, you should be able to apply the same term to any grade school course the subject of which they hand out graduate degrees. Math, English, Biology, Physics, History, etc. These beginner courses provide the lingua franca (programming languages) which we use to *begin* teaching Software Engineering (well the parts that aren't just pure engineering principles). If you want the academic, abstruse term, how about "Fundamentals of Algorithmic Expression".