So if you were witnessing illegal behaviour in the DoD, you're saying you shouldn't report it or whistleblow?

Dude. That is just so wrong.

Exactly. Surely exposing criminal activity by the government is more legal than covering it up.

And doesn't the constitution trump whatever snoopers' charter they were operating under?

Early 30s, undereducated, curmudgeonly, senior software developer here.

Not only is math my weakest area, but that weakness was probably partly due to my self-defeating and self-fulfilling belief that I didn't *need* much math, so I got my CS degree from a shitty university with just through Calc 2 and a couple non-calculus-based stats classes. No linear algebra, no dynamics, no quantum-anything, no Fourier analysis, no algebraic topology, no number theory, no discrete math, etc..

And so I've spent the last decade writing stupid CRUD-and-forms apps. It's boring shit that only pays high-5-figures (in my top-3-by-population U.S. city as I work in university research, though I am repeatedly sought by some of the biggest names among tech employers. But I choose my current employer for the work-life balance).

But to go anywhere more-interesting -- say, working on self-driving cars, or data-mining stocks or health data, or building robots -- I need more math. Shit.

I have taught myself some linear algebra from a LA book, at least, as well as learned some slightly less-basic stats (e.g. Markov models) and taken a couple graduate-level CS courses in AI and ML. But it's definitely not enough to break-free of my self-imposed intellectual chains.

So, get as much math as you can -- not because you'll definitely use it (maybe, maybe not), not because it's fun (but if it is for you, great; it is for me, when I understand it), and not because it's important for its own sake (by definition, anything that isn't eventually useful is useless), but because it gives you FLEXIBILITY later in life. And you have no way of knowing, a priori, whether you will need that flexibility.

I'm not original in this thinking. Learning more math is what Nassim Taleb would consider an example of "robustification" -- becoming robust against unknown undesirable future "bad" events or scenarios.

My strong advice: Don't be so damned efficient - or arrogant/overconfident - in your learning that you fail to robustify yourself against a future you that is smarter and wiser than the current you.

Although I have to say that the downside is that these are going to be just as annoying as jetskis, but in places where jetskis can't go.

The other day I had two share a beautiful, quiet, peaceful woodland with two irritating idiots on noisy little dirtbags. not nice.

Corporation tax is a small fraction of the taxes companies pay. All their employees will be paying income taxes, for starters.

Well, it certainly isn't an operating system either.

Your English is fine. Your German isn't.

Nein! Nein! Nein!

P.S. Reductio ad absurdum much.
P.P.S. If you confess to knowing Luxemburgish, just how A do you think your C is going to be?

A "roadable helicopter" makes as much sense as a product as marketing bicycles to fish.

And a "flying car" that can only land at heliports might be great as an easy to fly helicopter, but it's utterly useless as a flying car. As a hint: If you can afford a helicopter and its running costs, I'm sure that the limo from the airport is small change for you.

BTW, in the UK ( so a heli pilot friend tells me ), in general you can land your helicopter anywhere where the landowner has given you permission.

The height from which a fall kills you is significantly lower than the minimum operating height of a parachute.

Just saying.

Traffic jams are real, but putting the cars in the air isn't going to fix that problem. The key problem with driving cars into cities is that they take too much space per passenger (at rush hour, on average, 1.02). Granted, putting traffic corridors in the air gives you a bit more space, but you also need to leave a lot more safety margin.

Flying in a straight line might save fuel compared to flying detours, but that doesn't mean it saves fuel compared to driving. These flying cars don't stay in the air all by themselves, you know? And, seeing as we're all bitching about the price of gas to drive... ask your friendly helicopter pilot how many gallons his chopper burns per hour.

There are solutions to traffic jams. Telecommuting, walking, cycling, public transport.

Oh yeah, and if your hearing's still too good: Suggest to Air Traffic Control that they replace the couple of hundred planes / day over, say, LAX, with a couple of hundred thousand planes^H^H^H^H^H^H"Flying Cars" per day.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a flying car. But frankly I'd rather save up for a one off trip to space instead. At least I won't have to kid myself that that's solving any problems.

You'd seriously pass on a flying Ferrari or Lamborghini?

Pfft. Your parents were telling you lies. You're definitely NOT part Italian. Not even one tiny little bit. ;)

Always happy to oblige the young ones.

I think you'll find that's _my_ lawn ;)

Has the man never heard of FX markets? Currencies trade exactly like stocks or commodities. They don't have a fixed value either.

She didn't kill British Industry; the Unions did that.

She just put it out of its misery.

That's a feature, not a bug..