Yeah, this is a big one, and it's especially painful when working with programmers who are less competent.

If you are writing it yourself, you can just wrap everything in try{}catch{}, which is what I do, but you never no what method is going to throw an exception.

If I were interviewing someone who programmed in either .NET or Java who had trouble picking up the other language, I would absolutely not hire them. They are both so similar that if you can't pick up the language, then you are incompetent.

It's been well-demonstrated that some cities adjusted the yellows downwards. That's not a problem inherent to red light cameras, but there's no other "good" reason to do it.

It's not about perceived quality, although the perceived quality is fairly low because all of the identifiably .NET software I've used so far has been slower than the competition... but I'm willing to imagine that the software I've used has been of particularly poor quality itself, and it's not .NET's fault. It's because I don't trust Microsoft. Now that they are apparently open sourcing the interesting parts of .NET, their primary influence over the language should be only their control over the best IDE, which is significant but not necessarily a deal-breaker. However, as long as the majority of the .NET world is Microsoft-based, I still won't trust it. And therein lies the problem; it's going to have to have a bunch of competing implementations and thus many of the same problems as Java before it's going to be trustworthy.

If you're happy being tied to Windows, more power to you, I guess. I'm not. I'm not happy about ask.com invitations either, mind you. But I don't actually see those on Linux.

Well, this is where you are wrong, as someone said, "the worst financial mistake you can make is to believe you are working for someone else." Sure, I need to work to provide myself income, but that's much much different than slavery.

The world was created that way. It's the natural state of things. We eat other animals, and they eat us if they can.

Randomized? So then the person who wants a puppy gets a cat, and the person who wants a cat gets nothing. Sounds brilliant.

It's an interesting thing to wish for, I guess. Anyone can make any story about the distant future. Personally, I hope we can have Stargates.

They are known to have a 'hackers university', state sponsored thats considered one of the best places to work. Not only are you taken care of and live in a life of luxury, so is your family, and its a pretty good life by all accounts, especially for a NK citizen.

'Hacking' isn't difficult when you're paid to sit around and do it all day long. Any serious network admin knows just how painfully easy it is to get into pretty much any network outside of a place like Google which has the knowledge and understands the dangers of bad IT.

Someplace like Sony? Please, Nessus probably explodes when doing a basic scan of their systems, let alone any actual effort into cracking them wide open.

Because the threat of hunger (and the allure of money) inspires many artists.

That sounds like generalized complaining. Are you arguing for anything, or just saying everything anyone might think about trying is off-limits because ... slogan time ... "race to the bottom"?

Isn't it possible that we don't need The Davis Bacon Act, which was enacted to protect white union members from having to compete with black workers on highway construction projects? Is "race to the bottom" really a counter-argument to the re-examination of The Davis Bacon Act?

Accountants look at the operating costs of a retail store as part and parcel of that store's profitability. Locks on doors, anti-theft devices on displays - those security systems and the people who maintain and support them are costs that impact the profitability of the store. Nobody running a real business pretends that the costs of operating that retail store aren't part of that store's profitability picture. Multi-store overhead (like, say, a loss prevention specialist who spends time at all of the stores) is still part of that store's P&L - her salary is charged to multiple accounts, so that each store's bottom line feels that cost.

Extreme low pressure starts moving in, they feel it, move away from low pressure. They feel the low pressure pass, and go back. Its not difficult or magic or even an unknown process. They detect the storm coming in the exact same way the weatherman does. These pressure gradients cover large areas, 500 miles isn't that far for such a thing.

What keeps a competitor from setting up a similar robotic production line and selling goods for less? Why wouldn't prices drop due to competition?

No, we don't.

It seemed like you were suggesting we try free markets, but now you're agreeing with people who are pointing out that they "cannot exist".

So? Times change. Why shouldn't we re-examine old laws in the face of a new problem? Maybe unemployment is a bigger concern than some protection enacted to help, for example, 1930s coal miners?