Well that's a dumb analogy, given the fact the person would be given eventually clothes at some point. As far as beging homeless, they would be given some shelter if they were arrested obviously.

You know, living in a society there are a few things you can actually get free (gasp socialism! everything should be paid for obviously) in a modern society complete glutted with products. I'm really sicked by people that make those arguments that the poor don't have it so bad since they have a TV. Oh it's so hard to acquire a TV. Let's just chuck those old CRT's in the landfill then while we buy our new flat screen TV's rather than give them to people that lack one.

That said, I really hope the law is struck down so that perhaps we can move towards an actual single player system like every other civilized country, rather than that horrible half-measure combining the absolutely worst of both private and public. Yeah those private health insurers are definitely looking out for my interests more than some government managed system would.

Well to put it as concisely (and more than likely as unintelligible to 99% of the people reading this :) as possible: The temporal order of events separated by a space-like interval is not invariant.

To put it it more simply, if you send a faster than light message, which thing happened first (you sending or the recipient receiving of the message) will be different depending on your the frame of reference. For some observers, the recipient will appear to receive the message before you send it.

Oh I totally agree, what kind of hellish existence is that? 10-15 hrs a week commuting, how in the hell do people do that???

My commute is 10 minutes each way, and my wife doesn't work in order to raise the kids, cook my meals, wash my clothes and clean the house, and my son mows the law. I only work 40 hours at my day job, and any extra money I choose to bring in from freelancing extra hours is just gravy.

Oh no hard feelings. I think this article has struck a chord with a lot of people, although now I've actually RTFA, I understand the headline is the typical Slashdot hyperbole and misrepresentation.

Yeah my wife feels the same way about my work hours, but hey, she doesn't have to worry about working and gets to stay home and raise the kids, so see, it averages out since she's not in the work force. Although taking care of the kids is a full time job in itself. Actually I only started doing about a year and half ago to raise enough money for a down payment on a new house, which we just moved into last month. It's just so addictive now, people pay me to do what I'd want to do anyway. Yay!

Well I absolutely agree someone right out of college is not going to be making that much. Although the fact the cost of living is so high in Silicon Vally that skews all of these figures. I'd like to see the statistics by metro or state.

Yeah I'm a senior programmer, in a somewhat niche role in particular area of game development, plus I make a killing doing freelance iPhone work, I pretty much have to beat clients away with a stick to keep from getting overloaded with work.

I mentioned this earlier that I get comments all the time from friends or family saying they should "learn programming" so they can make as much as I do. And my response is "Well, why don't you learn brain surgery instead? It will pay even more". As if they think coding is something you can just learn overnight and "make the big bucks"

Yeah I totally agree on the niche thing. Although honestly there's no way in hell I'd ever do that sort of corporate type stuff you're describing to save my life. That's probably why the pay is so good. :) I'll stick to coding video games and iPhone apps myself.

Yeah my work is incredibly varied. I work on big budget games at my day job (pretty much every major franchise you can think of I've worked on in some fashion), and my freelance work is all over the place, a childrens' educational apps one day, and energy auditing app for a company in Australia the next, some example code for a guy in Japan, a software component for some guy in Lebanon, my personal physics app, etc.

I'm not going to go so far as other posters and call people that don't do work like I do lazy and that it's the solution to all our economic woes. Not all of us can have super creative jobs we love working nearly every waking hour on. It takes all kinds to make the world work. That is, until we have some crazy post-scarity, post-Singularality, Culture-equese sci-fi society in which every civilization has 100% free time to do whatever they want.

I note you don't seem to have included kids in that equation. :) Granted they've done studies that show people with kids are less happy, but that's where all my extra money is going, to support my children and their education.

Really? That's exactly how much I make as a programmer at my day job. Plus I bring in side income freelancing at the same rate, so I make around 150K, and that's in Austin, not freaking Silicon Valley where that's probably like the minimum wage when you factor in the ridiculous housing costs there. :)

I believe the study was referring to WW I/WW II era conscripts during actual combat.

Well I wasn't trying to equate not killing someone with laziness. :) More like how it is surprising how a small percentage are "doing all the work", or not, as the case may be.

Yeah, honestly I wouldn't mind working a little less, but I just can't seem to turn down all the work I get. It's really pretty ridiculous actually, even when I'm not out there placing bids on projects I'll get a boatload of work from previous clients without even trying.

Hey no one is forcing me to work those hours, and I'll be damned if someone is going to stop me from working to make more money if I want to. And I might be overstating the average just a little, 80 hours is on an overloaded week like I'm having right now. Normally it's probably closer to 60. 40 hours at my day job and 20+ for my side freelancing plus my own apps. 60 hours is only 8.5 hours a day, including weekends. I've found that quite sustainable. And my clients seem to have no problem with the quality of my work, I keep getting projects despite charging much more than my foreign counterparts. I would say there seems to be a shortage of "quality" freelance coders that can communicate clearly in English, so I don't feel like making anyone jobless, unless you count some Indian programming drones, which is fine with me. :) Plus my day job is mostly porting games to OS X, so the actual bulk of the real coding writing and enjoyment I get doing freelance work.

Yeah, I find it funny you think there's a huge glut of quality programmers out there I'm taking work from. :) It's funny, occasionally I'll get comments from friends or family about how they should "learn programming" to make as much money as I'm making. My response is usually "Well why stop there, why don't you become a brain surgeon, you'll make a lot more than I make". Like coding is something you just pick up in a weekend and it's the automatic path to easy street or something.

Personally I have nothing against people that are working 1 hour a day at some mindless job (as long as they're paid significantly less than me, CEO's making millions on the other hand... :) I get to do what I love and make a comfortable living from it.

I should add I actually telecommute quite often (and freelance on the side as well) and put in about 80 hours a week and am compensated well for it, but I have coding job that requires all those hours. So I can't really imagine what a "normal" office drone type job is like, are there really 8 hours of actual work that needs to be done daily in those types of jobs?

How would it be any different if those employees were in the office? I'd bet they'd still only work one hour a day. And heck, if they are being given work that only takes an hour to complete (as opposed to not doing all the work they've been given) then more power to them. They can spend more time with their families and not waste time and gas commuting or being in the office.

This kind of reminds me of the study that found only a small percentage of soldiers actually fired their weapons at the enemy during combat.