$110K doesn't seem like a good salary for a programmer to me, but in some regions maybe it is.

The biggest problem with C# (and the Microsoft ecosystem in general) is the lack of documentation. There are definitely some interesting ideas, like entity framework, but figuring out details when things aren't working is a real pain because of the poor documentation.

Python + Javascript, or just Javascript (via node.js or similar). Everyone is trying to make a Javascript framework. Everyone is trying to find the good parts of Javascript.

10? I think you mean 18.

That's the interesting part.

This is what engineering is about: meeting a need cost effectively. The point of a toy RC airplane is to have fun. Traditionally it was expensive fun that didn't last very very long before you crashed. Having fun for longer with less $$ outlay == better engineering.

Specifically: the demand curve half of the equation. The other half is the supply curve. A platform can have *no steam whatsoever*, but so few programmers that the salaries are reasonably high.

Consider Delphi programming. I see Delphi positions come up once in a blue moon -- it's not used much any longer. But those salaries run from $80K to $110K plus. Sometimes you see a Delphi position come up in the mid 40s, but I suspect they're government positions.

I've seen listings for COBOL or PoweBuilder programmers both in the $60K to $110K plus range. You can bet when a company offers $110K for a PowerBuilder programmer it's because it's having a hard time finding one.

Yes, gas is under $3.00 here as well, joblessness is back to pre-Bush levels, and people with pre-existing conditions can now obtain insurance.

Damn you, OBummer!

Sin is a perfectly reasonable social construct. The dictionary defines it as "Any reprehensible or regrettable action, behavior, lapse, etc.; great fault or offense." It is often used in the context of morals (another perfectly reasonable social construct), but not always.

Original sin is superstitious claptrap. The offspring of a heinous murderer is not, in any way, responsible or culpable for the acts of the parent via inheritance. Japanese and German nationals born after the end of WWII (and in many cases earlier) cannot be held responsible for the atrocities perpetrated by their ancestors -- the idea is fundamentally unsound.

Likewise, "Sinning before God" is utter nonsense. It carries all the significance and weight that "Sinning before the Easter Bunny" does. Both ideas gain only the weight that their communities, through delusion or disingenuity, care to arbitrarily assign to them. A good example is the assignment of sin to a person for wearing mixed fibers as a matter of theist dogma; it is purest meaningless claptrap. Delusion or disingenuity.

Mental health issues are not cut-and-dried.

Agreed. But racism is. When an animal is rabid, you put it down. It's not the animal's fault, but it's dangerous. With racism, you don't make excuses for the perpetrator -- you call it what it is and you don't encourage or make up reasons why it's ok -- it bloody well isn't ok, and it makes absolutely no difference as to why it's being put forth. Racism deserves zero social support, direct or indirect. Zero.

When mental illness foments, supports or creates hate and divisiveness, the situation has escalated beyond any reasonable level of tolerance. "Living with it" transforms abruptly from a kindness to abject stupidity. Even the very weakest grasp of history tells us that racism never, ever leads anywhere worthy, and that's the upside. The downside is absolutely horrific.

Try living with a serious mental illness for a while and then get back to us, mkay

Don't make baseless assumptions, m'kay? You'll spend less time savoring the taste of your own shoes, deluded into thinking that is the flavor of rhetorical success.

July 20, 1969 was, possibly justifiably, the biggest national ego-validation event in human history. The problem was after that when it came to national achievement, our eyes were firmly pointed back in time. We no longer do things "because they are hard". We're more focused on cashing in on the achievements of past generations.

When you tell Americans we have a backward mobile telephone system, a technologically primitive electric grid and distribution system, and Internet connectivity that lags behind the rest of the developed world, the reaction is usually disbelief. How can that be? We put a man on the Moon -- although by now it should be "grandpa put a man on the Moon."

He was also a conspiracy theorist who had the money to indulge his paranoid fantasies.

He had the phones of his own employees tapped. He hired private investigators to spy on his friends and family, and to dig up dirt on friends of his children he didn't approve of. He went beserk when he found out the designer of the Vietnam Memorial was an Asian American, calling her racial slurs and hiring lawyers to harass the veterans who supported her.

This is a man who thinks that both the Carter and Reagan administrations conspired to hide the presence of hundreds of POW in Southeast Asia.

I often tell my kids "there's no kind of dumb like a smart person's dumb." It's a warning against arrogance. Smart people can get too used to being right when other people around them are wrong. But in truth there is a worse kind of dumb: rich person's dumb. That's because money can give ideas instant credibility with people in a way arguments cannot. There's a strong inclination in this country to idolize rich guys.

Machismo has nothing to do with it, a person has the right to protect himself with deadly force when attacked and should not hesitate once it's a full frontal attack, do not leave the attacker capable of returning, coming from behind, coming after you later, take care of it once and for all right there and then and be done with it. Yes, taking another man's life is better than losing your own.

I don't think they are permanent - or at least there seems to be a process to have yourself reinstated. I've played against people online which had a red "Ban(s) on record" label on their account, and that was on VAC-secured servers.

I have to note, though, that every time I encountered such a label, the person who had it was blatantly using hacks as well (this was mostly in L4D, and things like extreme speed hacks, which are really obvious).