One of the strongest arguments I have for why I want programs to work with local content.
HEY, your ad-driven phone app sends all it's data back to a central repository detailing almost every facet of my life. That's great, but I think I'll pass.

What's that? People want this data on other devices? Why do you think that means it has to go live out on a server somewhere? Have you never heard of sync?

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid here. There certainly doesn't look like there's rampant wide-spread abuse of this sort of data. Yet. But it's still the sort of thing that rubs me the wrong way.

And let's not fool ourselves, deciding which cases get the spotlight is the linchpin of our society now. Take this fiasco in Ferguson. Every year there are shooting deaths and potential race issues. Why did this one get the attention it did?

Or the Monsanto case against the guy buying feed seed, and killing off the non-roundup ready seeds. He didn't sign any contract or agree to any of the stringent IP rules from Monsanto, but Monsanto chose to push for this guy's prosecution so that they could get a ruling about how this practice is illegal for everybody.

The selective enforcement of the law is a form of corruption. When legal precedent is on the line, it's practically a controlling factor.

But some fantastically AWESOME things in the realm of unmanned exploration. Which got us all the useful aspects of space exploration which the big price tag or the trouble of launching from mars. Downside: No martian space heroes.

Give it a rest grandpa, robots are the future.

whoa ho ho there. This whole thing is about some language nuance. If you're going to try and use a broad brush, you'd best use it consistently.

Because MLK and Rosa Parks were typically refereed to as "civil rights activists", and the term "social justice warrior" (I had to google that by the way) only gained traction THIS year.

If we're going to get in a huff over language, I believe that civil rights and social justice, while having a large overlap, aren't quite the same thing. Social justice is farther-reaching while civil rights fall short of, say, firing people over whether they call you a negro or black or a colored person.

Justice is usually a reactionary thing. Retaliatory even. Rights are things you have all the time. (And violating rights should lead to justice). It's really best to stay positive, and the SJW term brings with it a negative aspect that isn't going to help the effort.

That was the entire crux of bws111's argument that I was calling bullshit upon.

Also that people like us have more control over the economic system and can pull in more money then what's really fair. It's a progressive system because a capitalistic system is regressive, winners take all and the more you win the more you can take.

Are illegal, per the definition. A tax dodge means you're not paying money you owe. ...ah ah ah, I see the term has evolved a bit. Apparently tax "avoidance" is all the legal ways people avoid paying taxes while tax "evasion" is a crime.... fuckers.

No. No no, don't drink the cool-aid. That's just a cynical view from the opposition. Capital gains taxes have a special status because, and this is the rational they use not the one I believe, because it's "already been taxed". They think that when you invest in a business, any gains the business has has been taxed, so when they sell that investment, they don't want to be taxed again. But that's bullshit and why the cynical view has developed.

If I buy a calf for $200, feed it till it's a cow, and then sell it for $1000, I pay taxes on $1000 of income. But if I buy a stock for $200, wait a few years, and sell it for $1000, then I pay a special lower rate because investing is some magical thing and it's not really property and all the other bullshit arguments.

But no, don't take the cynical view. That'll lead to an ulcer and make you a bitter man. Take the realist view that capital gains taxes are there because wealthy investors have control over the taxation system.

A variable is a hunk of memory that stores values that vary depending on what you put in there.
A const variable is variable that doesn't vary.
A volatile variable is a variable that might vary behind your back when you're not looking.

So what's is this?
const volatile myVariable;

If it takes you more than a minute you might not be a Sr. C programmer.

It's an input pin, btw. Because const is really just a euphemism for "read-only". And volatile means something else can write to it. A big hurdle that keeps kids away from C is just the language barrier and the archaic terminology. Culture has moved on and has solidified the english language around some of these sort of things, but C is stuck back in the 70's. And if the term "pin" throws you for a loop, then you're probably out of your water and need to head back towards the island of abstraction which is a safe distance from the real world.

I assumed you were referring to Nethack's blessed/cursed system.

I too, am a big fan of Piet. Loved programming in Paint, the RIGHT way!

Well, it's a bit of dark humor, but yeah that heaven's gate suicide pact had all sorts of one-shot jokes made about them. And jesus riding a dinosaur? Come on. Yeah, that's an easy laugh. If you consider comedy to be a sport, you've got your hard cases like the terminally ill and the depressed. The risky maneuvers like joking about ebola or the sectarian violence in Iraq. Making a joke that has faith healers as the butt of the joke? Easy and safe. The only people you'll offend are nutcases anyway.

Right. The unknowable. I think I covered that. Today's scientists make claims about things that are falsifiable. And there is significant incentive for other scientists to prove that other's claims are false. Back in the day of religious claims, ANYTHING could be said to violate some part of whatever scripture, and the result was either a schism or an excommunication. That's a significant difference. You're trying to say the two scenarios are the same, when they're really not.

Now... things like this primordial gravity wave are honestly above my head and I don't pretend to understand what they're talking about. I vaguely have an impression of what the big-bang was and a collection of tidbits about it. But I'm not going to particularly care because it doesn't impact me much. (It's actually pretty exciting if we can glimpse past the big bang though.) But I dole out my tax money, and vote in the people pushing money to things like the NSF which helped fund the BICEP2. I do this and, yeah, somewhat blindly trust that the people the NSF employ to vouch for and approve grants for this sort of thing. A lot like I trust my mechanic to replace the wheel bearing. I trust that dude with my life, I can trust the NSF guy to read up on background radiation.

Luckily for us we have enough PhDs in that specific field to call bullshit. Just like (some) open source projects have enough developers to keep everything running.

Not quite. Even people that aren't the most well read or brightest can question things, and if they happen to have access to a smart enough accomplice can have the thing explained to them in a matter they can understand. And they can pick apart any section of it they feel like and see if it jives with everything else. Honestly, that's the basis for the technologically savviness of most people around here.

I'd agree that it's a practical sort of faith. But the system has a large number of self-correcting actors and occasional reality-checks that was severely lacking with the religions of old. If you REALLY boil it down, all of mathematics is based on a number of axioms that you simply have to accept as true, dare I say, "on faith". Have you ever really questioned the null set axiom? But of course, 2+2=4, due to an overwhelming amount of evidence.

Science is more like math than religion in that regard.

Sigh.... *Raises hand*
Hey, in my defense, when most people say mid-west they really mean Chicago. And the cost of living there is not the same as here in miniscule Quad Cities. I know it's only three hours away, but it's still a difference.
Here, I only know of CTOs and one developer making over 6 figures. Most of the makerspace is making under 80K, with a couple exceptions.
The biggest factor is that, for an embedded guy like me, there are only about 3 companies that would employ me. And only one big fish. (It's John Deere). There are plenty of small side players for general business-level developers, and web-devs can live anywhere, right?

But yeah, with about a decade experience, I'm kinda feeling underpaid. The good news is that the whole family is headed for Colorado, where I hear there's more opportunity.

With a combined income of ~150k, we live a comfortable life in a 3 bed 3 bath and have saved up a net worth of about 300k.
That's two engineers with no kids most of that time. We certainly feel like one of the wealthier people in the area.

Well that had to be a lot of work.

Bravo for putting in the effort to explain how these things have socio-economic explanations. Usually I can't be bothered to put in the time and simply respond with "there have been studies". Which is admittedly lazy.

ShainhiBill was right. There is an IQ gap. But without pointing out the probable cause for the gap, it can come off as a little bit racist.

The part where he has all these leading questions is.... actually it just seems like a non-sequitur. I'm not even sure if he's trying to imply that it's genetic in nature.

If you're a Briton travelling abroad on vacation, and you buy a doughnut in Berlin, does the baker owe Britain a tax?

Because the Internet makes it REAL easy to go make a deal with entities in other countries. The crux of the question is where is the business being done? You're sitting in London, the server you're talking to is in the USA, the effects of an ad happen "on the Internet", the corporation is an ethereal beast that transcends borders. Does it matter?

Also.... couldn't Germany and Briton both claim that Google does 90% of their business in their country? How would Google settle that?

Taxation based on market share is interesting. But it's going to have just as many issues as the current system.

That's.... huh. I wanted to call bullshit on that because the system is ludicrously rigged for business taxes... but that makes a good deal of sense.

So while that might be true, putaro's point still stands. Practically everything is a business expense for a corporation: Planes, ludicrous CEO's wages, the rent on the building they pay to the owner to bypass taxes. There is no upper limit to the extravagance that a corporation can claim as a business expense. Their "lifestyle choices" are not scrutinized. Only when they try to invest in the company and see capital gains. Or hoard money. Meanwhile individuals are expected to just get by on the minimum amount, and taxed on anything past that.

Wait a minute, I can still call bullshit on this: if you think that the cost of doing business for individuals (ie, living) is built into the tiered tax-rate.... then why doesn't that argument apply to the tiered corporate tax rate? Why do they get to write off business expenses if people can't write off living expenses? If your comeback is "well that's what the lowest brackets are for", then YEAH, that's what the lowest corporate tax brackets are for!

Your argument sounds a good and rational way of dealing with individual taxes. We're just saying it'd be nice if corporations played by the same rules.

Not quite. We mock them when they believe their priests/pastors/whatever tell them bold-faced lies that can't possibly be true. You know, things like a 6,000 year old earth, jesus riding dinosaurs, faith healing, speaking in tounges, transubstantiation, and how their souls are going to be harvested by that alien space-ship hiding in Hale-bop's comet tail. Stuff like that is laughable, and if you believe in it, yeah, that's an easy laugh.

There are also the people that mock the religious sorts for trusting priests/whatnot on matters that are unknowable. The afterlife, who/what kickstarted the big-bang, and why we're all here. And philosophical issues. Yeah, those people are kind of dicks and I don't find that sort of humor all that productive. I see where they're coming from though, I mean, if the thing is unknowable.... why trust that guy over any of the other people preaching their flavor?

As for us expecting everyone to trust scientists, hey man, we have a pretty robust system of NOT trusting those scientists until they have a pretty good argument. If someone finds reason to question them, that is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged, whereas the religion side usually responds to questions with excommunication and damnation. Some of the religions have demonized the idea of being a skeptic. And skeptics can believe in things, you know. It's not like they're in a perpetual state of untrust. They can approach something, be skeptical, look at the facts, and then accept it.

Anyway, all that aside, you're fighting against people who believe in the scientific method. Good luck with that.

Sure, I want to play the top of the line computer games. AAA titles. Because let's say I'm a gamer.

Now which operating system do I have to buy? Do I really have any choices?

Diamonds. Debeers had a global diamond monopoly that extended to the USA. Huh, this has apparently gotten better in the last few years.

Monsanto has the seed market. But oh, let me guess. Because the US government enforces IP laws, that means that the big bad evil guy is actually da gobermint.

...Other than market dominance. And all the things they can do to keep competitors out of their market. Remember "embrace, extend, extinguish"? Come on dude, your'e on slashdot, are you just going to pretend companies don't do things like this?

Yeah, some natural monopolies, like the power grid and the cables connecting my house to the grid.
Your question is backwards. They don't have laws keeping out competition (pft, hell with all the regulatory capture, they probably do, but hey, I'm talking about in general here) they have laws regulating HOW that natural monopoly is used. Someone wants to buy a section of the power grid? Go for it, but the regulation applies to them just the same.

The "natural monopoly" of the power grid is that there's just the one. Alright? I don't have the choice to connect my house power to a number of competing grids.

"Even"? "EVEN!?" That by itself is some pretty bad mojo. No competition means shitty service, no price competition, and the consumer can suffer the entire cost of the barrier to entry, every year. If anyone tries to enter the market, the monopoly holder drops the price down to unsustainable until the new guy is dead and gone.
And in case this concept is entirely foreign to you, companies strive to increase the barrier to entry for their market. You're absolutely right that one of the ways they do this is by getting the government to pass regulation that is difficult to meet. And when those regulations dance to the monopolies tune, that's regulatory capture, and it's a terrible thing. But don't pretend that the government is the root of all evil, or companies are all saints, or the market will cure all ills. It doesn't always work everywhere. Like essential utilities with natural monopolies.