The only bad programmers I've ever encountered, are programmers that are inconsiderate.
Those who do not consider that the purpose of a computing language is to communicate with other developers, not just the computer. That's really the main common-factor I've found among "bad programmers". It's a skill, that can be learned, but it's an emotional skill. Some people can be very intelligent, brilliant even, and still not want to learn that one crucial skill.

yes

>Are there any plans for additional desktop package repos for any of the Redhat based distros? I Remember looking for a little while a year or two ago but I didn't find any.

Yes actually, It comes with KDE or Gnome out of the box.

Ask yourself: what does the TSA do to detect iron oxide and aluminum? (Much less magnesium! MacBooks, anyone?)

They've known about this for years. They have quite competent "red team" people who think up possible threats, and they're not remotely so stupid as to believe that the Bad Guys can't think up this kind of thing themselves. Ask a classroom of sophomore-level engineering students to come up with ways to get plane-killers aboard and this is one of the first ones -- although it's a very, very long list.

However, stopping thermite from getting onboard is going to be way more of a public inconvenience than their mission statement allows.

Yeah, no. You can't enumerate every permutation of every weapon imaginable. At some point, you have to expect an adult to assess a new situation using generally acceptable principals to reach a reasonable conclusion.

Ask a random guy on the street whether Scala is a declarative language and you should expect a random distribution. Ask him whether a disassembled rifle is a weapon and you should expect a solid "yes". You shouldn't need to train on that.

Also, this guy was a dumbass.

Commoditizing certain human labour. It's been happening for decades - you don't see gangs of people digging ditches anymore.

A little harsh but dead accurate. They're not legally obligated to sue the grieving parents. They could even draw up a contract and sell them limited rights to have this one statue in perpetuity for a dollar, or some such. For PR reasons, the DC rep could even donate the dollar to the rights purchaser.

There are many ways DC could do this, legally and protected, without being asswipes. They chose "fuck 'em; none of the above".

That, or they could be normal decent non-fuckhead humans and let a little boy have a grave that looks like the hero he wanted to be. I prefer that option.

A family acquaintance - let's call him "Joe" - worked as an airport screener. This is a true story: I was personally in the room when Joe was complaining to my dad that he'd been fired.

They run periodic checks where an undercover agent tries to smuggle contraband onto a plane. When questioned after the fact, Joe didn't understand why everyone was upset that he'd allowed a disassembled rifle through screening: "but it was in pieces! He couldn't have done anything with it!". "But Joe, he could've taken it into a bathroom and put it together, couldn't he?", followed by an expression of horror creeping across his face as the realization sank in.

>there certainly is a shortage of tech workers in the US willing to work for 19,000/year

Up here in Seattle, there are blocks of apartment buildings manned by outsourcing companies like Mindtree where there are 3-5 Indian contractors living in each unit getting paid under 30k each. With houses going for 3-4K and 3 bedroom apartments going for 2K-2.5K, they have to have so many people living together to save money.

I saw ATT Wireless replace an entire billing department with cheap overseas labor, VP gets a big fat bonus and leaves. Then department fucked up and was billed 1 million dollars a day for almost a month and they had to bring in very expensive contractors to fix the issues. Funny thing, this is happening all the time, the PHB outsources, collects a fat paycheck, moves on, and boom, issues appear.

But I've also worked with NOC's from India and helped build one out. We pay 5K a month for 4 people for 24 hours watch our network and take tickets. There is no way we could afford that here. The problem I have is the NOC use to be a stepping stone for jr sysadmins to work their way up, and that stepping stone is largely vanishing.

WE don't lack the will.

We lack the power.

The ones with the power lack the will (or desire) - because their power depends on control of generation of energy through resources they control; namely fossil fuels. They're not going to give up that power while they have it. Not voluntarily.

The reason thorium never hurt anybody, is because it is complete fantasy. Nobody has ever built one that has demonstrated any degree of industrial reliability and usefulness. Thorium is up there with Fusion, as far as being a demonstrated technology.

Mostly because they're not interested in mandating specific aproaches. Instead of the old-fashioned approach of Nixon's EPA, they're going for market-based solutions: putting a price on carbon emissions, for instance. Or a conservative variant on that, George H. W. Bush's cap-and-trade mechanism updated by John McCain for carbon dioxide.

Or the most recent study's proposal: just eliminating taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels would get us halfway to the 2-degree target.

I suspect that there are more than a few groups and people with influence who disagree. And from the evidence, they're likely to continue to get their way.