Just do a google image search for "potholes of halifax nova scotia" and you can see what a 15% sales tax actually does. It produces a giant pothole for businesses trying to operate in the area so they either die or go away. You can guess what the other taxes in Nova Scotia are like which also are working together to kill the economy.

Also thanks for confirming that I was not way off base with the way that I have taught something so basic as sales tax. I don't know how many tellers have looked at me strangely when I hand them the exact change with taxes. More than once they have commented something like, "Wow that was lucky that you happened to pick out the exact amount." I don't think that they thought it was possible to work out tax in your head.

In my many years of computer consulting, I have ended up teaching many people various computer/math skills. I have no doubt that some people simply come under the category of thick headed. I will explain something simple 8 different ways and they just don't get it. While other people might not have a knack for things computery they only need to be shown something once.

The same with math. For some reason I have ended up teaching people elements of math. Some people I have shown how to calculate percentages multiple times, while others I will show something far more complex such as how to calculate a mortgage payment and it sticks. Both groups will have had roughly similar math educations.

I wonder if this is where some people choke when learning to program. There are many concepts in programming that must be mastered. There is no wiggle room with each concept such as ifs, whiles, switches, etc. You either get it or you don't, and with so many to learn they must be gotten quickly in a typical intro to programming course. Again I have helped people with their programming homework and while some would instantly absorb what I was saying there were groups to whom I might as well have been just making up words.

Maybe I am a lousy teacher but lets say I am teaching someone to do the local sales tax (15%) and I tell them to do 1 x 1.15 to get the total on a calculator. I might even explain that the 1 represents the original price and the .15 is the tax and together they get the total. But I also just say, do 1.15 and it will just work. Write it on the calculator if needed. Easy Peasy.

How about a standard protocol around devices like Yubikey hardware tokens for integration in the browser (or use with other applications):

https://air.mozilla.org/fido-u...

Google, Microsoft are already involved, Mozilla is looking into it.

I hated every day I was in school, I didn't kind of hate school, I loathed it. I hated at least 50% of my teachers, with maybe 1 teacher in 10 being pretty good. I think in of the maybe 200 teachers that I had, 1 or 2 were exceptional. I hated my school buildings (run down piles of crap). I hated the textbooks, I hated the curriculum, I hated the preachy pamphlets they handed out. I hated the chairs, the piles of broken down gym equipment.

What I did like were many of the friends I made, I liked snow days, I liked weekends, and I liked holidays; but what I loved was the summer break. I barely remember school. It is mostly one indistinct blur sitting in a chair while either the teacher droned on, a movie droned on, or I did drone work. But I could write a book series about my summer adventures and fun with friends. That is where I learned the magical things that made me who I am.

One of my dreams is that online teaching will devastate the school system. That what will happen is that smart kids (let's say average and above) are able to get all they want and more from online schooling and that they are able to abandon the traditional school system. That a secondary system of "practical" courses show up where kids can go in to learn things that require some hands on activities such as engineering, chemistry, nature studies, engine repair, etc. Then these secondary school course will have to "attract" kids who have them as a wise but optional part of education.

Then the schools will be left with the kids who are either too stupid to do online courses or are just don't possess the motivation. This way the lazy teachers and the lazy kids will be a perfect match for each other.

I am not merely motivated by some sort of vengeance but that our existing system is wildly broken. There are plenty of kids who could complete many grades of education per year; while there are other kids who can't. It is silly to hold back the kids who can progress faster by averaging them in with the slower kids. But at the same time it is stupid to allow only the most exceptional kids to skip forward and be freaks. Just let the kids proceed at a pace that they are comfortable with.

As for socializing that can be done through what was traditionally thought of as "after school" programs. So have lots of clubs, sports, etc.

But the last part of the equation are the teachers. My solution is simple. Create the new system, shut down the old system, off jobs as necessary within the new system to people who are qualified.

But think of all the out of work SQL injection hackers? But I still see code where people use a bound parameters technology this way:

sql="SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE ID="+user_id;

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

It could also act as a man-in-the-middle where everything looks fine.

I think all it needs is a copy of the data to be able to 'steal' it.

You can't do this for the webservers, because you build these datacenters to be closer to the users. To improve latency.

So you are not going to increase latency to save power.

I believe I heared someone from Google mention they do this for certain batch jobs, but I could be mistaken.

The problem might be: you can only move such workloads if you have the data in the other datacenter too and the data is up to date enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if you turn off the machines there is also a larger chance of failure.

So when you try to turn it on, it wouldn't turn on or some disk would have not spun up.

But I've never done the numbers if this is actually true.

Well Python 2.7 to 3.X is certainly causing a stir. But with C++ I can still compile really old code. Usually the libraries are where trouble might brew. PHP is really compatible from version to version. I wasn't around during the 4.x-5.x wars but it was 5.x features that I had to have before I would use PHP anyway. Years ago when I was doing .Net I found that every version of .net twisted my code into knots.

So some languages are far better than others. But a whole other part of the game is the IDE and other tools. That can be a huge problem that can really choke a version upgrade to death in any language. On the other hand the latest version of the IDE can be the thing that pushes people into an upgrade.

Then there can be whole other motivations. Many people are learning C++ purely for Arduino. I learned Objective-C purely for iOS apps, but have since switched to C++ as I can then multi mobile platform my apps with ease; not to mention that I really hated Objective-C.

Wasn't it made clear that: one of the things Oracle wanted to do is sue Google over Android when they bought Sun ?

That didn't work out, though. So their use for 'buying' Java has diminished greatly.

So, I think Oracle will eventually just say: we don't care about Java anymore.

This could be a good thing, but might be a bad thing.

Al though, most of it is open source/free software now, so it might be OK.

With most programming languages there are 3 sorts of programmers: There are those 9-5 programmers who examine their paycheck more closely than their code; there are those programmers who have mastered the language and can do amazing things to make it dance, and there are the hard core insiders who give talks at language specific conferences and are on steering committees.

With some languages such as assembler the bulk of the programmers are in the middle category, while with a language like PowerBuilder the vast majority were in the first category. But what I have found with almost all languages there are very very few people in the steering committee category and they can be very detached from the first category.

With Java I would hazard a guess that the absolute majority of programmers are in the 9-5 category and about the only thing they want from the next version of Java is to "Please please please" don't break their code. Beyond that their needs are simple.

So Oracle can let Java Stagnate and it will probably actually please that first group for the short term. Obviously, this can be unhealthy for the language so even that first group will lose out if the language dies as they will then have to learn a whole new language when they thought they could spend a whole career in Java.

But one thing that I have also observed in many of the mega Java based projects is that they are often 1 or more versions of Java behind. Thus even newer versions of Java are totally irrelevant unless they solved some critical existing problem in the codebase of these mega projects. The real issue is that as Java moves on it becomes more and more of an effort to upgrade a mega codebase to a newer version making it eventually impossible under that company's coding management.

So if Oracle ever did want to push forward with new Java ideas then it should also push a huge program where zillions of programmers were taught to manage a version upgrade for a large codebase and given the tools to make it as painless as possible. Remember 9-5 programmers love free trips to sunny places.

Learn how best to automate that task so you can start on other projects to automating other tasks.

An other reason, as I mentioned above.

Facebook runs it's whole infrastructure on bare-metal with containers.

There are no hypervisors in use for most, if any, workload in their datacenter.

But the funny thing is, Facebook doesn't run on virtual machines.

So I wonder what their plans are.

The MPTCP stack for Linux isn't in mainline, but is much further ahead then the FreeBSD version (not sure if it that in mainline).