There's a difference between using an open Wi-Fi hotspot and doing a man-in-the-middle attack to collect data about what sites other people using the hotspot are visiting.

Your strawman is that there was some regulation, so that proves that regulation doesn't work. Perhaps BP should argue that they had some mechanical safeguards at the well head that were supposed to keep this leak from happening and those safeguards didn't stop this disaster, so obviously the lesson here is that safeguards are not the answer.

If you're arguing that government is inherently so corrupt and incompetent that it's impossible for it ever to regulate effectively and so we should stop trying, that's a slightly more valid argument, but I'm going to have to disagree with you. It's not an easy problem, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

We're talking about giant, ridiculously wealthy multinational corporations. The government is the only hope that people have of making any sort of stand against them. The fact that it's imperfect and requires serious work to function properly is a shame, but I fail to see how doing nothing would be any better.

"Somewhere along the line, a CS degree became a way of ensuring yourself a job in much the same way a degree in accounting did, and CS began to get people who didn't really give a shit. "I'll pay the money, go to the classes, get the degree, and get a job. Then I'll be safe and happy until I die."

That was never entirely true and it certainly isn't true now. Besides today programming languages aren't that big a factor in hiring. You need to have experience in the 10 frameworks, libraries, or technologies that a company has selected out of the hundreds available. You could try learning about those items, but it won't help - because the other companies have selected a different subset.

I'm glad I started my career before integration and "glue" code replaced real programming.

There's more than one way to skin the OOP cat. Message-passing, like Smalltalk, is not the only way.

Simula, the first OO language, that predates Smalltalk, and predates the term OO, uses a model that's very similar the one used in Java/C++/.NET. To say that C++ is not "object-oriented" is absurd.

or they could answer their own question. Three reasons:

1) Government already writes much of its own code. I see gigs posted all the time. Thing is, each office/department/etc tends to be a silo, so there is no "central" coding department. Can you imagine the bureaucracy around change processes then? Sheesh...

2) On average, public sector pays less. The idea here is to improve the quality of code, right? Not really possible if you can't attract the best and brightest.

3) Using external (this can be commercial or open source) products is key. Who makes the computers? Who makes the IDE's? How can we guarantee compiled code is fully secure if you aren't controlling every step of the process? Not possible. Even the government's most important asset, the President, is transported around in products made by commercial interests (albeit, with some customizations after the fact).

For certain values of "forever", but long enough that the human race will be long gone from the Earth before it's a problem.

But what never ceases to amaze me is the mentality that an energy source that is only good for 200 years (of which about 150 we've already used) is somehow better than an energy source that is good for 1 billion years or so.

Chrome can be as fast as a fly, and firefox can be slow as a turtle - as long as firefox has adblock, and chrome doesn't, I'll use firefox.

I've been a programmer at the same company for 18 years now. I'm a full time employee, but work with a lot of contractors. Here's my advice: - Find out what time you're expected to be at work, then show up on time, every day. Don't arrive late and work late thinking that you'll make up for it. Your teammates might need your expertise early in the day. It's incredibly frustrating when you're in at 7:00am and need something from a coworker who "might" show up around 10:00am. If you want to work late that's fine, but do it in addition to starting early and you'll go far. And don't make a big deal about how late you worked last night. We'll all notice how late you worked from the timestamps on your emails. - Be honest about your progress. If your code is 20% complete, don't tell your boss it's 40% done. If extra help is needed, it's best to get someone else involved early. - Dress appropriately. An untucked shirt may be fine at home, but it's not going to work in the corporate world. - Act like a professional. Throwing curse words around in meetings or even in your cube really doesn't get you very far. - Own the problems that you cause. If a program abends in production due to a change I made, I'm quick to acknowledge and own the mistake. Don't throw blame somewhere else. A buddy and I once took down the entire ATM network for a large bank because we forgot about the referential integrity on one of the main tables in the database. We went straight to our boss and told him what happened. He thanked us and asked us if we'd be making that mistake again. We said no, and we never heard about the issue again. There's lots more, of course, but most of these things are common sense. The corporate world doesn't care how 'cool' you are, or how far you've gotten in whatever the latest game is, or how much beer you can drink and still write functional code.

I think it would be hard to do something completely open sourced that also had very strong privacy built in. Some sort of distributed Shamir Sharing coming to mind... As for Facebook people will vote with their feet or not..

You are effectively denying all science by grouping AGW sceptics with "useful idiots".

There is one huge problem with AGW: we cannot measure it. So how can you claim it is a scientific fact? If Earth is warming we certainly should be able to measure it, right? Why cannot we?

See, last decade "warming" could be, according to statistics, due to just random fluctuations. This is a mathematical fact and there is no way to deny it. Yet you never hear that fact, you only hear "last decade was warmest ever measured". Why should I trust AGW proponents when they do bad math while knowing it is bad math? Similarly for purposefully claiming Himalayas will dry off in 30 years while knowing it is 100% bogus. What else have they done, cherry picked "scientific" papers perhaps? Who know as they will not tell.

Then there is another, even bigger, problem in the news. Everything "could be caused by global warming", everything, even the Icelandic volcano eruption! But no matter what happens (last winter was exceptionally cold in many, many places) it does not show anything, it is "just weather". This, although true, does not make good science and is very sickening.

I do not claim CO2 emissions are not bad, I do not claim we are not raping the Earth in many ways, I am not even claiming AGW is not true. All I am saying: stick to the science, please, don't deny it.

Yup. "No more load times" is only going to happen once solid state storage sizes are so huge that assets don't need to be compressed, and so fast that it's as efficient to access them from the storage as it is from RAM.

And given that RAM access speeds are always increasing as well, and as storage increases game assets keep increasing to fill them up, I don't see this happening any time soon.

And for small games that don't have these limits? I can download an entire iPhone or XBox Live game over my broadband connection in seconds. Why would I ever want to deal with physical cartidges!?

I disagree I think the major problem we are suffering is that we aren't securing the machines from the get go. The environment is a kludge, but if you don't let everyone run as an administrator all the time, teach them not to click yes blindly to every pop-up box without reading it, teach them not to fall for every phishing attempt under the sun then you don't have to worry nearly so much. Not saying it would be impossible to crack a system, just that you don't have to worry nearly as much. I run a network and am both network and systems admin and I haven't had a virus or spyware incident (at least that i know of ;) hehe) in 4 years, the one I did have at that time was contained to only one machine and really wasn't much of an incident. But I run a tight ship security wise, though most of the users don't know it.

> Surely that depends on how stupid your populace are? If you're dumb enough to repeatedly get caught speeding and not learn from it
> then yeah, they're not going to improve things.

I wouldn't say I have been repeatedly caught, I have gotten one speeding ticket and two that would have been but they did me a supposed "favor" and ticketed me for something else. Either way they get their hour and a half on their time sheet for a ticket (yes they do here in MA) and my insurance company still got to bilk me for supposedly being less safe.

What have I learned? Be more vigilant in looking for pigs on the road. I have learned that my government does the bidding of insurance companies. Thats about it. Overall, I try not to be intimidated by thugs and let them dictate my driving style since, I know I am safe. Just look at my record. Its mostly paperwork violations (because, as we all know, paying $50 to the RMV for a renewal is one of the most important habbits of a safe driver) and speeding stops... the one accident thats still even on my record was when some road raging moron slammed on his breaks in front of me while I was trying to change lanes in heavy traffic, called the police, and went about raving about how I was swerving in traffic because I made one lane change to avoid blocking an intersection at a red light. Seriously.

All they do is enforce laws, whether its absolutely retarded to do so or not.

-Steve

The 2K baseball games are horrible. They are full of bugs and totally unrealistic. I picked up 2K7 out of a clearance bin a couple years ago and in my second game playing I struck out 23 batters. 23 out of a possible 27 outs were strikes outs. No, I wasn't pitching as Randy Johnson or someone like that, I was pitching as Ted Lilly!! If you want a real challenge, pick up MLB: The Show. Overall a more realistic baseball game, and you definately won't be throwing a perfect game after an hour of playing.

I live in the UK, and I know how much tax I am paying. Every single receipt comes with a line item at the bottom indicating the VAT. It is required by law, but so is advertising the price at the till, rather than some number that can be used as input in a calculation to work out how much you will really pay.

When I buy stuff in the UK, I can add up the things in my head and either have exact change, or know that the total is right when I pay by card, when I get to the till. In the US, I have to add city and state sales tax, which means that I need to multiply by two fractions in my head. I can only do that approximately, and the two values vary when you travel more than a short distance (in some, one or both is zero).

It amazes me that Americans seem to treat this is a false dichotomy. Either shops don't advertise the final sale price, or they hide the tax completely. These aren't the only two options, but it's about what I'd expect from the country that invented the phrase 'nickel and diming'.