Well, actually it's YOUR faked comparison. You said "Go to Monster.com or Dice.com and do a search on Java/J2EE/JEE versus .NET/C#.". So he did. He's being a bit tongue-in-cheek and obviously you missed it.

Well, all users that don't care or don't understand are going to pick one of the first 5 browsers. The other 7 are going to be initially hidden and no one who doesn't care is going to bother scrolling down. (Ok, "no one" is a little strong. I'm sure there are some people who will do it).

Actually, I have a feeling most of the users who don't know what they're doing will look for "Internet" and find "Microsoft INTERNET Explorer".

What does your hair style choice have to do with anything?

Well, first of all the only events that you listed which could potentially make the human race extinct is the meteor(ite) and gamma ray burst. All of the other ones will have major consequences but aren't going to destroy human life on the planet.

the Yellowstone volcano is fascinating; it hasn't exploded for 640000 years and, perhaps coincidentally, it normally erupts every...640000 years. So we're due for another one at anytime. It's pretty scary to think about except that it could be off by 10-20 thousand years. So it could blow up tomorrow (it's already showing warning signs) or it could be another 10000 years. That's about twice as long as all recorded human history which means we'll have plenty of time to "become spacefaring people".

A large enough impact event could certainly destroy life as we know it. The last one was 65 million years ago (ok, it's up to debate if the K-T was because of a meteorite, but let's say it is for the sake of argument). There is a huge span of time between these events. In fact, it's such a large amount of time hardly anyone can really comprehend how long that really is.

As for a grb, well, the chances of one originating close enough to us and being pointed in our direction are also very very low. They estimate we should get one once every billion years or so. Again, that is a long time.

So really, what is the point of living in fear? It may happen tomorrow and we don't have time to do anything about it anyways. In this case hiding in your basement isn't really going to help and neither is any amount of money we spend on space travel. It's more likely that something as monumental as this is going to hit us anywhere between the next 10000 to tens of millions of years from now. Space travel IS advancing, albeit slowly when compared to a normal human lifespan. In 10000 years, though? I think we'll get off the planet in time.

I am, and I did!

I'm a CS university grad and even though I did a database course in school, the practical database knowledge I acquired in that course was almost non-existent. I only realized how little I actually knew when I looked back at how much I learned in my first 3 months of work.

I was thinking we could give them our nukes so that they can fix them up for us.

Well, that was a good debate but these posts are just getting too long for me to keep up. I guess I'll just add a couple small things.

So did you grew up here? I can't really believe we're still arguing this point. If police were truly useless then the jails would be empty. They aren't. Maybe the police aren't as effective as you feel they should be. Maybe you truly think that everyone can actually defend themselves from everything ranging from murder to fraud. I'm pretty sure you will never change your mind no matter what anyone says. It doesn't really matter, though, since most of the rest of the world throughout human history disagrees with you. So the police will still be around to give us speeding tickets and take our police reports before promptly ignoring them.

There was wealth centralization in post-industrialized Britain where the government took a very hands off approach. It's not caused by big government corrupted by big money. It's big money being corrupted and wanting more big money. Ok, here's an example of what you're saying. Big money corrupts the government and forces them to get rid of the BBB. So you say wouldn't it have been better if we got rid of the BBB so that Big money isn't able to corrupt the government and remove it?

As for the rest of your posts, I'm fairly certain that nothing will change your mind on anything and so I'm just going to give up.

I'll go one further for you and mention that Police are not legally responsible for stopping crime. So they don't stop a theft. However, they do catch the person (ok, obviously not all the time) and put them in jail so that they don't steal something else, which limits the number of thefts. Sure, the vast majority of of people are not going to be breaking in. But if there was nothing stopping someone from breaking in then those select few could break into every house in the neighborhood in a relatively short period of time. Wait. So there is a big difference between "never needing them" and "useless"? Isn't needing something that is useless an oxymoron? Your problem is that you're thinking like everything would stay exactly the same without some sort of policing presence.

I can't really argue with people having the right to reproduce, but this isn't a realistic solution. You could never restrict peoples' right to reproduce without causing a riot. Then again, what right does a person have to live if they can't afford to eat? A HS diploma could be worthless in terms of competing for a job, sure. But allowing everyone to go to high school isn't. Plus, on a national scale an educated workforce is a large bonus. Remove education for anyone but the rich and see how many drooling retards you will suddenly have to deal with.

Yes, I know you didn't want to get rid of all government. Just the parts that don't concern you. No, it's not your fault that people are poor. It's their parents. And the parents before, and the parents before them. It's not your fault that someone is given a crappy lot in life with little chance to succeed. People should know how to defend themselves? How, exactly? Should everyone be packing guns? Because a self-defense class isn't going to help my wife stand up to a 230lb guy. Glad to hear that you only have ONE small house and ONE car. Same with me. In fact, I probably also pay a larger percent in taxes than you do since I don't live in the US; but lets just assume it's roughly equal.

You think the middle class is being squeezed out by the poor? I'm going to assume you think I'm poor. Or by "people like me" you mean people who lazy and live off welfare so that they don't have to work? Either way I'd have to disagree. First, people on welfare don't make a lot of money. I'm actually ok with this because there just isn't a better system (or at least no one has come up with one). If you give too much welfare people will STOP WORKING. But if you give too little there's no point to giving any at all because they will just starve to death anyway. If you give none, though, a lot of people would be in a lot of trouble and not because they're lazy. Things happen to people. Life sucks. Imagine the family of 4 with a single income. Then the wage earner is killed in an accident and didn't have life insurance. That family is going to need a buffer before they can get back on their feet. Second, I'd say that salaries not keeping up with inflation and wealth centralization have more to do with the middle class being squeezed out.

Yes, people are inherently selfish. That's why so many government programs exist. It's a required check and balance to man's selfish nature. (uh...this sounds super lame but hopefully it gets the point across)

Of course I assume that you wouldn't help someone out if given a choice. Your very first comment is "No, and I don't really care about the other citizens... just an FYI.". You follow this up by saying fuck the school children who are starving. Where the hell do you live if the government comes with guns to collect your taxes?

You'd donate more if you had more disposable income? FANTASTIC! Obviously I was wrong about you. I have a question, though. Have you ever had a raise or moved to a higher paying job? If so, what did you do with the extra money? Did you donate more? If the answer is 'yes' then that's great. For most people the answer is 'no' (even for me to tell the truth). You said it yourself. People are selfish. They aren't going to donate more. They are going to spend more.

Ok, so less government means that you pay less taxes, so you make more money. Same with me. But that does not mean everyone has more disposable income. It means that certain people will have more disposable income, but what about everyone else? Not everyone is in your situation. Maybe let's look at this on a larger scale. Case in point: why didn't the government let the banking industry collapse? The government basically took all the taxpayers money and gave it to companies who were too stupid and greedy to invest well. Why not just give all the taxpayers back that money and let the banks collapse? That would mean you everyone would have more money, right? Except that they DID let the banks collapse back in 1929 and somehow people didn't do so well.

You mean demography, right?

Except that it doesn't really work that way. Plus, if you DID want to think about it that way you can say the bacteria has already realized that if it glows in the presence of explosives then we will grow large batches of the stuff to spray on the ground. If it decides not to grow then we will just destroy it and make another batch.

And yet you're still going to answer 2-5 because after having 5 different careers you wouldn't consider that paper route you did as a 12 year old as "conventional".

I'm not sure about the idea of more than 5 jobs being unstable. I heard somewhere (yes, citation needed) that the average person has 7 different careers in their lifetime. Of course, the average person hasn't lived their whole lifetime yet, which would drop the number of careers down to the 2-5 range. Also, I think there is also a general sliding rule to the concept of a "conventional" job. You wouldn't consider small jobs that you did for 6 months 30 years ago, but those same jobs would be considered conventional to someone who is 20.

If you never needed the police it means that they're doing their job. Do you really think that you could protect your house from being broken into when you're at work? The job of police has pretty much been a requirement for a stable society in all recorded history (such as Lords who are given a portion of the farmers yield in return for protection from bandits).

Like you say, you don't care if children are able to go to school or not. Even though the result of this is that a good number of children will not be able to obtain enough education to do any but the more basic of jobs. Of course, a lower education in the general population is going to result in less disposable income, which of course means less people buying whatever product your company is selling. But who cares about that because it will take years for that effect to be felt fully.

I really don't care to argue any of your other points (I would, but this post is too long already), except that your basic premise that you don't care about anyone else is saddening. It's sad that there seem to be so many people who are so greedy that they seriously don't care how many people they step on to get their own way.

You probably feel that you aren't greedy; that you earned your money fair and square and that you are fully entitled to all of it. After all, it's not your fault that people are born poor or sick. It doesn't matter to you if some girl is raped, beaten, and murdered because it's not you and obviously they deserved it. It's much more important for you to be able to buy that 3rd car and 5th big screen TV. It is, after all, all about you. That Reminds me of something.

I think the part that bothers me most about this is that people who want to remove government services really haven't thought about the long term effects. How hard is it to really see beyond the very first step? Is it really that hard to see that education helps to improve the economy? Is it that hard to see that the existence of a police force helps provide a stable society?

Where are those mod up points when I really need them?

I guess I can see how being afraid of losing medical coverage would be an issue for people in the US...the concept of losing medical is foreign to me.

As for my wife's company, they do know and she left yesterday. I see your point; is this something that companies are doing? Are they actually buying information from grocery stores to analyze what kind of items you're buying and basing decisions on that as compared to your actual work performance? It seems like something that is perhaps technically feasible but not actually practical.

You mention that Targeted advertising is the worst because it means they've found you. But what exactly are the implications of that? Who is the "they" and what does "found you" mean to me? Is it the mafia and they know where I live so they can extort money from me? Or is it a sporting goods store that found out I like hockey? Does "found you" mean that I will suddenly get ads for buying hockey gear instead of ads for buying V!@gr@?