I don't understand why you think 'yum install gcc' is somehow different from 'download and run the installer for the VS command-line tools'. Especially on a modern Linux distro, where libraries come with -devel variants to save you the 10KB taken up by the headers in the normal install, so you end up having to install a load of headers as well to get the system useable.

I was a consultant for a few years and didn't find that it did. Most of my customers found me, as a result of my open source work (usually to work on the same projects, sometimes to work on projects in similar fields). Contract negotiation didn't take very long (they list some requirements, you mutually agree on a date, you pick a number, if they haggle then you politely decline).

Just increase the energy on the surrounding laser beams to evaporate any water in it's path. That way it can also double as a security measure.

This is not so insightful.

1- Foreigners who do come to America and then leave after a short period (a few years) do not take long-term jobs away from Americans. Clearly the jobs these undertake are like internships, post docs and other temp positions, these jobs are not meant as career jobs who would be of interest to an American.
2- Foreigners who come to America, get some training and then leave are *good* for America. These people will know and like America, will speak english, will have a network of friends and people they know back in America. If they start companies, maybe these companies will be friendly to America as well: import stuff from there, rely on American technology, and whatnot. The importance of creating goodwill cannot be overestimated.

How people who come on a H1B for a non-training job, and then stay by being sponsored for a green card, this is a different story. But notice that these people eventually become American. This has been a recognised way to extend the power and importance of the USA for a long time, because the best and brightest come to America to the detriment of the country they leave.

In reality the job situation in the USA is not nearly as dire as some people make it, compared with most other countries around the world. What is not so nice is that unemployed people have it very tough, very quickly. Better not fall sick.

Exactly. Also the NSA doesn't even need warrants. How convenient for them that everyone is leaving these fine files in the same place for them to search...

Are you are saying it's more nimble, can survive economic changes, and is useful to more people?

Good think that's not what they are doing then, isn't it?

I had hoped it mean and end the the stupid several version and disk confusion.

Really MS, just release one version.
I'd love to see the math on how manufacturing different boxs, colors actually mkaes them money.

The phishing emails I get (and I get a few...) are targeted at semi-literal morons that have no clue how the world works. But it may be that there are a lot of these people around, judging from other observations.

Sometimes yes, but not always true. Sure, "Free Porn" will get a whole lot of clicks, especially from uneducated people (who are usually schooled shortly thereafter by the spammer).

Professional phishing is geared to make it look like something the target company sent out. Working in DOD for about a decade, I saw some exceptional work. They register domains similar enough to the company and often related (support-raytheon for example) so that even people that look for questionable URLs can be fooled.

How are spammers successful so often? Simple, companies don't train people.

At the DOD site I worked at, it was a weekly training memo from our security team on the latest threats. Phishing was always a topic. People had to read the briefings or they could be terminated. 3-4 questions were enough to ensure people at least skimmed the content. Before you get anal about productivity, the email was a 2 minute read max, so even if you had to read it twice to answer the few questions it was a whopping 5 minutes out of your Friday.

We experienced numerous well crafted phishing attacks, and had 1 person out of 5,800 click the link. That person immediately contacted security, and we reset all of their account data. That was 1 out of 5,800 once, and we had professional campaigns run against us several times a year.

Now, take the average IT company in Silicon Valley which spends no time training on these issues (if your company has security awareness training I'm not referring to you, your company is not "average"). Since their people lack training, it's not uncommon to see 10% success in a phishing campaign. Compounding the problem, people often won't report the breach until it's too late if they report the incident at all (cultural issue with many companies in SV).

thanks for the info!

Indeed. Concentration camps soon to follow. Oh, wait...

You are doing this wrong. This is not about friends of the government that may have done the one or other evil thing. It is about all the people the government does not like.

You are naive. There are maybe something like 20-30 active terrorists in the world. They could not be a threat to the US if they tried really hard. This is about mechanisms to mark "undesirables" and make their life miserable in order to keep all the sheep in line.

At this point, I think many are overlooking one important part of the whole dragnet surveillance.

They have compromising material on EVERYONE. The amount of surveillance they ensures it. That means it doesn't matter which politician gets into position of importance and power, because they have blackmail material on him/her. There's no such thing as a human being who's interested in power who doesn't have significant skeletons in his/her closet.

That's why it's pointless to point fingers at leaders at this point. They are part of the problem, but most definitely not the source of it, and haven't been for a while.