This. The Wall is what gives users a reason to go back to Facebook. You don't want to call everyone every day, you choose the people you want to keep informed about, get a look into their lives and know what they are up to without having to bother them.

Of course, MySpace and Friendster had the same but Facebook has both the clean implementation and the reach to keep people hooked. Unless they do something stupid they will remain king of the social networks for quite a while.

concentrate on systems that encourage one time reasonable payment for good ideas that become free, or partially tax subsidize informational works by merit and by vote

I think that such positive (dare I say it) government-rewarded incentives are the only way forward when it comes to rewarding authors for their efforts.

Instead of subsidizing the poor and instead of harming ordinary people who simply share information freely, the government should encourage this sharing and reward the efforts by providing benefits to authors who have made works that all can enjoy. Of course, the question then becomes which authors may benefit from the tax-payers money, but this is a much more positive forward-thinking approach than using said tax-payers money to seek out and penalize individuals.

Marx would be proud, his vision of communism would only work an enlightened society where such a construction would be possible. A society without scarcity.

Not holding my breath...

There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?

From the money saved by not buying e-voting machines? I doubt purchase and 'support' would cost less than a few hours of your time, evened out over a number of years/elections.

Another vote for Hamilton, the Void series was awesome.

I hate marketing stuff, I hate business stuff, and I really hate "networking" .. what I love is building software.

Hear hear!

I've been self-employed for quite a while now. It's brilliant in the good times and less so during the hard times, but overall I wouldn't ever want to be a wage slave. Each their own.

Marketing, networking... I'm terrible in it. Oh I try, and I see my fellow self-employed programmers try. I can fake it pretty well with clients, the suit and slides I can cope with. I've learned to deal with the bullshit and others enjoy my cut-to-the-chase mentality. But I'm terrible in anything with a large group or anything related to marketing.

I'm glad I know non-geeks that are much better in it than I am. For them, they enjoy giving presentations, networking and making folders. They do it with the passion that I have when I'm developing software, and it shows.

So, now I've partnered with one of those people and together we're building up a new business next to our own. It's still early, but we trust each other and we're doing well. There's still bullshit, but we both do the work we enjoy doing and are both prospering.

So for all you wage slaves: keep an open mind. If the corporate bullshit gets too much know that there are ways to do what you enjoy without going to the dark side.

And the reviewer's book has the same publisher as this book (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media). How blatantly obvious can a shill be?

At least Taco would have the decency to not state that the reviewer is also an author...

Perhaps people want to reinvent the wheel because they think it simply can be done better?

This is evolution in progress. New things come up, some live, some die. Some old things come back with a different purpose and thrive. The field as a whole keeps getting better and more efficient, sometimes taking a step back but later pushing forward again.

If fish complained that there were too many means of propulsion and everyone had to stick with fins we'd never have evolved.

The only alternative to evolution is stagnation. But I'll get off your lawn now.

There can never come a day when the US government cannot pay it's debts, because no matter how bad things get they always have the Option of Last Resort: Print as much money as they need.

Printing money and inflating currencies is the norm, but printing a couple of USD $1TB bills to pay off China would indeed piss off everyone having money. It would be a blessing for (people and countries) debt though.

This is also the reason why Greece doesn't have any options left and why the Euro-zone keeps bailing them out. It's less costly than inflating the Euro with multi-digit inflation rates, which was the pre-Euro way to escape debt.

Your use of future tense surprises me.

But when they see some tedious task which would take them hours to solve and they sometimes run into it themselves solved in seconds, now THAT is cool

Talking about tedious tasks, show them how they can automate their homework. Now that WILL get their attention... and probably you'll never be invited again.

By the looks of it Mojolicious does support stuff plain Django doesn't pay much attention to or leaves to the webserver (long polling for instance). Useful!

Then again, Mojolicious doesn't have a built-in ORM or input-validation via forms. Together with URL handling and the request/response loop these are the basic building blocks in Django.

So 'superior in important ways' depends on what you find important. I'm guessing 99% of Django users beg to differ.

I can protest Apple using slave labour in China, and still buy Apple products. I can protest McDonalds destroying rain forest and still buy a Big Mac.

Of course you can. It makes you a hypocrite though. You don't have to buy an iPhone. You don't have to eat a Big Mac.

Totally agree about the financial system though, it's tough to find alternatives in the US. Over here in Europe we have banks that are collective in nature, cooperatives instead of corporations. They have in general weathered the financial storm a lot better than the corporatist banks with their plummeting stock prices and big bonuses.

So 99%: why not start your own, cooperative bank? No one is holding you back, there are alternatives. I guess that's just too damn socialistic for the US.

Note that I used 'over-protective'. It's probably just as well parents being lazy, but the end result is the same regardless.

Using your analogy: children won't learn to swim if their parents steer them away from water.

Those parents might do so because they think it is too risky. They might not want to put in the effort. They might not be able to swim themselves. Regardless of their reasons or how they explain their actions, they are indeed harming their children in the long run.

Someone please mod AC up.

These books weren't censored, they were challenged by over-protective parents fearing that their children might ask them uncomfortable questions. The books themselves weren't removed (I'd assume successful challenges might not even make it to ALA).

"And Tango Makes Three" got the most challenges. Seriously America, you're worried about two male penguins hatching an egg?

If I or anyone else were to have told such a joke in the middle of last weekend's anniversary markings, or on a forum for those affected by the events and subsequent fall-out, or so forth, that would be a deliberate attempt to cause offence. It would be bullying. A petty crime but a crime all the same, and should be punished.

That's not bullying, it's just being an arse. Punishment is fine: someone being an arse should be banned from such a website, but not incarcerated.

Locking people up merely because they said something others find detestable is a slippery slope. An act that one person might find offensive might not be offensive for someone else. Do we now need a judge to figure out what can be said online and what can't? Do we need a judge to rule where I can say something and where I'm not allowed to say the exact same statement?

No, I'd rather have my free speech and the trolls. Being offensive is not a crime.