they're also the country least successful in preventing the sexual exploitation of children.

You'd have to be delusional to believe this. The UK is a developed nation with an operational police force. That alone is enough to put it miles ahead of some countries.

And if you do, too, then I have this *great* little moneymaker for sale, I just can't move right now, but there's this bridge that you can set a tollbooth up on, in a northeastern city.....

                    mark

Now *that's* strange... but yep. I see *zero* difference between religious discrimination based on gender and racial discrimination... oh, except that the former means you need to pull down your pants so they can decide whether or not to discriminate against you.

And trolls, it doesn't matter what sex you really want to get laid by, deep down inside, you *still* won't get laid by anyone.

                      mark

Absolutely and evidence of this is always only a Google search away. Search on how to do something with a database and the results you get are riddled with things like SQL injection vulnerabilities, even when the source of the official documentation.

To follow on from this: Language Community Litmus Test: Database Placeholders. An informal survey shows PHP joint bottom, with all but one of the top 5 hits for "PHP database tutorial" promoting insecure methods.

And, as you mention, the official PHP tutorial had beginner-level security holes in it for YEARS. The whole community is riddled with this crap.

"You say anything to the GAO people we don't like, we'll find out, and you'll never work again".

And I was a contractor for a company that was sold to them... and they proceeded to get rid of those of us who knew the project best, on a variety of excuses.

I read, a few years ago, that the client manager was in legal, or was it criminal, trouble.... (and he was a city government employee).

Do you *really* think NG is all wonderful, and doing everything right (and that it's all the federal gov't fault that the telescope is years late and billions overbudget? If you do, then you've obviously never actually worked for a living....

                mark "I recommend Dilbert"

Yep. Sure. And how do they find the best people?

I assume you're saying that overwhelmingly, most people other than white males are the best. And that sure was true... look how well it worked out 15 years ago... ooops, that was the dot.com buble, wasn't it?

At any rate, looser, my daughter is a better programmer than you are.

                  mark (and so am I)

That's funny, here I thought there were laws against that, if you're a public accommodation.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and the Civil Rights Movement never happened, and Blacks, Jews, or anyone else can be turned away in, say, a public restaurant, or a motel, or....

              mark "if you don't like an open society, and want to be a bigot, you can leave and start your own country;
                                            I recommend Iran for your tastes...."

Sorry, not their job.

HOWEVER, there's this other three-letter organization whose job it *is*, and who are likely to be all over this one: the FBI.

            mark "let them do what they're *supposed* to be doing"

Go look it up. I don't remember if that was the article that told you how to build one at home. The really hard part of that was the centrifuging, where you put the solvent and uranium in a bucket, and spun around as fast as you could in your living room for half an hour....

                mark

Blaming the language for bad code is asinine.

This is bullshit. A shitty language promote shitty code. Aside from the whole taking pride in your work and other "soft" effects, in PHP's case, there are several big, concrete instances of this happening.

For example, older versions of PHP were obviously designed without any clear understanding of how a web request operates. So, for example, you'd have SQL escaping happening in the input layer rather than at the database layer. Nobody who understands what they are doing would design something to work that way. But the core PHP devs totally fucked up in the beginning. They have since started to pull this crap out of PHP, but take a look around. Big, widely-used PHP packages like CodeIgniter have replicated this topsy-turvy design fuckup even in recent versions. That's no coincidence - that's inherited from PHP's design flaws. The blind led the blind into hell, and this crap permeates the PHP developer community as a result.

Likewise with the cavalier attitudes towards correctness. Error handling, character encoding, testing, release management, things like that. Where PHP fucks up, the community is sure to follow. The low quality of PHP has a direct negative effect on the code its fans write.

I'm fed up with the equivocation PHP fans trot out whenever any criticism heads their way. Yes, the quality of a language really does have an effect on the quality of the code you write with it. This is plain for anybody to see, and if you don't see the difference in quality, then you should seriously question your competence.

And for all the brainwashed suckers (aka libertarians), who say they're all the same, and nothing ever changes:
            unemployment insurance
            Medicare (or don't you have parents?)
            Medicaid
            The Voting Rights Act of 1965
            NASA puts a man on the Moon, 1969

Oh, that's right, if it doesn't involve you getting rich, and screw everyone else, it's not changing, and they're all the same....

And we keep reading of countries where they finally get to vote, and stand in line for a day or more, and then there was the in-all-the-media disgrace in France 10 years or so ago, when they didn't even have 72% turnout.... and you little shits think that tweeting's all you need to do, and not put your body where it matters....

Why, yes, I *do* vote, so if you don't, SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, and listen to me - if you don't vote, you ain't got no right to open your mouth. Voting is my license to bitch.

                    mark

Vint Cerf, when he gave a presentation where I work, mentioned that the latest version of Google's self-driving car didn't even have a steering wheel.

Allow me to present my two arguments that they're complete idiots:
          1) It's now a few years from now, and half the self-driving cars on the road are 5-10 years old. Many, if not most, were purchased used.
                            How do you feel knowing that many of those cars' owners have never seen a safety recall, much less had one done?
            2) Pull 11705 Dewey Rd, Wheaton-Glenmont, MD up in google maps, go to street view, and rotate to the left, to look at the road. One two
                                  parking lane, directions, no lane markings, and, oh, yes, the bus uses this road, and if I drive to work, I usually drive on this
                                  road. Tell me a self driving car's going to handle it...

Oh, and argument 3: I can go most places without driving. I use this thing called "public transit". If I really, really need to get somewhere faster, there are these things called "taxis". Consider how much a self-driving car costs, and how long you'll own it, and how much maintenance will cost, and then how much you'd spend on public transit, with or without taxis, and tell me which is a *hell* of a lot more money.

                mark

I've been complaining for a few years now - the last five or so, google search returns a much worse signal-to-noise ratio. And they keep taking away search tools, *and* theyve begun ignoring search criteria. Just last year, I was looking for high leather men's boots, with criteria of -"ladies" -"womens"... and among other things, saw a sponsored ad (a *complete* waste of the advertiser's money) that had "womens/bold" in the text.

So much technical computer info is buried in rubble....

                mark

Mostly, our laptops are Dell Precisions or Lattitudes. NOTE:: DO NOT BUY A CONSUMER-GRADE LAPTOP.. Spend more, buy the "business grade". They'll last longer and have better support and warranties.

I'm not happy with HP warranties. Don't even *think* about Sun....

Does she want to work on computers, or physics? And how knowledgeable is she? A Windows box is a bad joke, spending most of it's CPU cycles on eye candy. Ditto with Macs. For real work, run Linux, which will use the system much more effectively. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, but if she does go with it, she should *only* use the LTS (long-term support) stable releases. Here - and we're mostly on workstations and servers, we run CentOS (same as RHEL, but free). System software and libraries are "older"... but *VERY* stable. You don't have to debug the o/s....

                  mark

PS: Dell's OMSA, their maintenance disk, boots... CentOS, so if a saledroid says "huh?", ask for someone who knows something. I believe Dell also offers RHEL as an alternative o/s.

And one of these days, I'll take a picture of a road I use going to or from my home on the occasions when I drive: 3 lanes wide, parked cars in one lane, no center stripe, oh, and did I mention that buses use this street? No, a self-driving car will have smoke coming out of its ears....

On the other hand, self-driving. They're going to be *really* expensive. For less money than that, couldn't you use existing methods of getting somewhere without having to drive? There is this thing called "public transportation", as well as this business called "taxis", and all your fares, over the estimated lifetime of a self-driving car are probably a *lot* less than you'd spend on the car.

Oh, and how safe will you feel knowing there are 5 and 10 year old self-driving cars, some years from now, many bought used, whose owners may, or may not have had the recall upgrades applied?

                    mark