Iran's current government is abysmal...but as a *nation* it has suffered a lot from foreign interference, including from the US, UK, and USSR. The main ones being an invasion during World War 2, an imposition of a dictator a decade later, and supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iraq/Iran war that caused millions of deaths. Yes, their current regime has behaved badly, and continues to do so, but so has the western world. On the balance of things, not looking at the smaller examples only, they have suffered more as a people and country.

And a little googling will show that Iran *did* offer aid after Katrina, but the US rejected it, as it did most foreign aid offers. Not a criticism though, its often for valid reasons. Aid hardly ever comes without strings attached...from anyone.

Buses are safer per miles traveled too, but people still drive cars....you cant just use safety stats. Nuclear is a sexy technology, and everything in me as a geek screams for me to support it. However its not an economically better option, and even less so if you factor in all the external costs; including nuclear waste, WMD proliferation fears etc. Fukushima might not have killed anyone, but what is the economic cost of the loss of all the productive land that has had to be evacuated? Countries like Britain only ever built Nuclear reactors because it produced the Uranium for their Nuclear weapons industry, and to reduce power of the coal miner unions....not because it was cheaper, even by the very optimistic calculations of the people that wanted it.

I always see the same arguments by pro-nuclear proponents here. I divide them into two threads...(1) Dont judge us by previous reactors designs....newer designs are safer...fair enough, but their still super expensive and can still fail catastrophically in a worst case scenario...and (2) My magic bullet will fix everything e.g. thorium, fast breeder.....sorry, none of these options exist commercially yet, are feasible, or meet all critical concerns.

Im not anti-nuclear...it has current applications like big bombs or powering very expensive warships... but ive yet to see a good economic power producing argument for them that includes all the external costs. I don't close my mind to new ideas e.g. a travelling wave reactor.....just make a good case for it first.

Part of the problem is you. Bosses can be jerks, but a lot of that is determined by how you let them treat you. As a coder, you shouldn't be an interchangeable part...you have skills and knowledge specific to organization. Use it....do a good job, but also be confident and stand up for yourself. Your not a easily replaceable factory line worker.

Next, work on your social skills. Be diplomatic with everyone you deal with. This means understanding where they come from (even if their jerks), and trying to make them happy. Often this means just listening, and framing your responses in their language. Its funny how easy it is to introduce people to new ideas if you come from their position but add something new.

Be proud of your work, and communicate it. This doesn't mean crowing or anything "in your face". Document it, comment your code, make it nice so that others understand it. It will form trust and respect from other workmates.

Finally, don't get stuck in a rut. Even if your day to day job is boring, be open to new ideas. Read, learn, experiment, and code on the side. Try to find something you enjoy, and find a way to relate it to your work. This doesn't mean introducing every new technology or pattern fad to your current project, but if its something you can do on the side, or something you can discuss with your team, its all good.

If you do these things, add them to your CV...even if you have no intention of moving jobs, its just something you can take pride in. Its easy to get down about work, but in software development, there is so much scope to do things that make our work more enjoyable. Even if your current job continues to be a pain, these are all things that will help you find something new. If you don't change, then your situation wont either.

I'm not disagreeing completely with you here...but judging popular protests by the fact that they don't "suggest something better" in not fair. A mass protest movement is never going to have a single better alternative to offer...there are simply too many people with contrary views. That doesn't make their grievance with the status quo unjust, and it doesn't mean that the government / system cant be reformed improved in ways to make it better for the majority. Most of them don't want to bring the system down...most still want their iPhones, they still want to use Facebook, and drink Coke....they just want improvements for everyone.

Just because hippies were dirty and smelly and high on pot, and had some loony ideas, didn't make Nixon a good president...

That has nothing to do with iOS or Android being a walled garden... iOS just has a better design; its applications are sandboxed from the underlying OS or need explicit permission to do the things that malware on Android easily gets away with.

I think people exaggerate the walled garden argument for the iPhone. Yes, Apple imposes some draconian conditions sometimes, but its still a pretty open platform. Most of the apps i use, and the content i have brought on my phone, have not been provided by Apple. I believe most of what the people here associate with a walled garden and criticize Apple about, are really decisions Apple made to make its devices more appealing to consumers e.g. iTunes pricing, simple content purchasing, and simplicity...

Want a more open device...dont buy an iPhone...most likely you will still be using a lot of technology and ideas pioneered by Apple e.g. Webkit, touch interfaces...but most likely, it wont be as great a consumer device.

Steve was a complex and amazing person....i dont mean to lessen all the contributions of all the people that worked with him, but he was the one that led and drove them into producing the most polished and consumer friendly devices that are with us today. He was a true leader and visionary...

There is nothing wrong with having a native client for specialized graphic intensive applications....but why cant the web browser also perform some of these more general tasks? No-one is suggesting you implement a Graphics API in Javascript, but a web browser is more then capable of hosting some fairly advanced graphical visualizations or games by building on top of lower level components like Canvas or WebGL.

Most "game engines" are based on similar architectures....highly performant engine components written in native C++, but game logic and user interface scripted in a higher level languages (LUA, QuakeC etc).

Native is always better for no-compromise performance and for taking full advantage of the platform, but web browsers have their place too.

Its not Active Desktop. This is a new shell and a new user interface paradigm, built on top of a completely new cross-platform API (WinRT). Metro applications run in seperate processes, sandboxed, and they never touch the win32 API. Furthermore, applications are installed from a trusted source (the windows app store). Its not a dodgy web page asking you to install an ActiveX control.

Microsoft are actually doing a lot of things right this time IMHO. Metro isnt for productivity applications or games, but its pretty good for tablets, status or information displays, or casual stuff. Dont like it, dont use it. Its not replacing the desktop. Excel, Blender, OpenOffice wont ever use it. Its just another shell, thats all.

My only gripe is they Metro applications can be written in HTML+js, but using extensions. This is so it appeals to a wide developer base. However, their not trying embrace and embed the wider web, so in this regard, its better then Android or iOS which use much more proprietary tools to write their applications.

There is a bit in truth in both of those statements. Google may be shutting down a lot of its "experiments", but they had all served their purpose and their benefits have been incorporated into existing products. Innovation doesn't mean green lighting every "neat idea"...they should all serve a purpose, but if you don't allow your employees to spend some time to innovate and try new things, your never going to improve your products. Some of the worst places ive worked at is where they punished you for thinking outside the box or doing something different, even if they had real potential to provide a lot of benefits.

I actually agree. I wasnt impressed when my local ISP outsourced their email to them. However, their recent mail upgrade is pretty awesome. It has nice web UI, and works well with desktop mail clients too e.g. archives everything you sent through SMTP.

I actually agree with you here...but to use your analogy against you...*which practices?* I'm sure medicine is full of examples of practices that were thought to be beneficial, but that later went out of fashion. Software engineering is the same. Tell me in what context a practice is good, how it should be applied, and what benefits it gives, what pitfalls should be avoided, and proof for these claims. A lot of the "practices" we do in software development is driven by trends e.g. the latest technology or the latest methodology, or politics e.g. excessive reviews, meetings, procedures etc.

Not the price up front, but through rewards in the game. Slashdot's karma works in a similar way. Everyone can post, its equal in that sense, but people with more karma get more recognition. Multi-player games could have the same mechanism. Playing nicely with others could do things like making it easier to join another multi-player server, and would earn you in-game rewards more easily. Designing such a system that rewards positive behavior would be fiendishly difficult though. Also, a global ranking might not work....i might like playing with this person, but someone else might not....i might like playing with this person in this game, but not in another...

This isnt an MS specific thing...its true for many ORM frameworks. In the MS world, most ORM frameworks sit on top of ADO.NET, but their abstraction is so much, that a lot of database features become hard to access. However, using ADO.NET directly, calling Stored Procedures, or using other database features (e.g. full-text search) is fairly easy to do.

My own personal preference (and im not saying it suits everyone or everything), is not to use a "heavy" ORM framework or abstraction layer to "hide" the database or its features and functionality. I use the old ADO.NET typed datasets to cache data in memory, helper classes to automate the simple CRUD operations based on the meta information in the dataset, and the more complicated data operations (multiple joins, searches, complicated updates) happen in database views or stored procedures. For me, its a good compromise between both worlds (ORM vs direct database access).

This article is not looking very accurate right now. Hindsight is 20/20, but there has been a lot of inaccurate pro-nuclear reporting and commentary too, especially here, to the point of being partisan and political. Many wont acknowledge it has real dangers and other pitfalls. Despite the best possible planning and design, worst-case-scenarios do happen (you would think anyone in IT knows that), and very sadly, we just saw the result.

You say you don't understand why the iPod ever got to the top, but you list the #1 reason why they did...they made it idiot proof. Most people are not geeks and don't enjoy exploring every piece of functionality or configuration option. Most people arnt idiots either, but they don't have the patience to explore every arcane bit of new technology. Apple just made it work and made the majority of people happy (except geeks).

I completely agree with this. Its not about quantity of lines-of-code or words-per-minute, its about being able to hold an idea as you execute it. Ive seen developers using a laptop keyboard and a trackpad losing focus as they try and implement something and they stuggle with the keyboard and moving the mouse pointer. Someone who has the right tools and knows how to use them well can focus on the higher-order problems more easily. Its the same in any profession.