Yep. I've personally been working state government for 10 years now, and it's take 10 years to work UP to over $60k/year. I started out with a Computer Science degree doing actual programming at $28k/year (though I am thankful they took me with zero work experience).

The pay really does stink. The only bright sides are that I get to live where I want (basically near family - I have no desire to move for a better job), my employer pays for my health insurance 100%, and I'll be eligible to retire with a real pension plan (50% of my average salary, adjusted for inflation) at 51 years old. If I'm being completely honest I don't see myself leaving until I retire. The job is just to stable to give up. After retiring I may look elsewhere, but if I can't find anything or it takes a long while I'll have enough cushion that I can make it anyways.

That's because it's government work. Government jobs (particularly state or local) tend to pay less than private sector, so you end up with a lot of older folks who have trouble finding work elsewhere.

Where I'm at (also government) I'm currently interviewing candidates for a web developer position. They want 6 years of experience and are willing to start at $40k per year - and they're shocked when all we can get are people who are obviously unqualified, people just looking for something to bridge the gap between unemployment and retirement, and people who are obviously just looking for something to tie them over until they find a "real" job. The latter category typically gets hired - and they can't figure out why the last 3 people in this position stayed less than 2 years.

FWIW, if I can find anyone qualified, I typically don't care how old they are. At what we're offering I'll take what I can get. Also, FWIW, at 34 years old out of a 25 person department I'm the 2nd youngest except for the secretaries.

You're misunderstanding the premise. It's not that the helmet would be scanning the player's head for injuries, its that it would be active during the game and would have sensors that say "You know what - I just detected a blow of significant force on this side of the helmet - that's probably enough to give the player a concussion.".

That said - I just don't see this happening from a financial perspective. Most high school football team budgets are probably less than ONE of these helmets would cost. They'd probably have to give up the game entirely if force to use such a thing.

Realistically - football is a rough sport. You have to know that going in and accept the risks. I personally played in high school and never suffered a concussion, but did get a hairline fracture on my arm that bothered me for quite a while. It's just part of the sport.

Wal-mart isn't overpricing anything. They may have made a fortune, but their margins are pretty darned thin - they make it up on volume. Many sales deals are actually loss-leaders. IE, they get you in the store and hope that you buy enough other stuff to make up their loss.

By price matching, Wal-mart is hoping to get you in THEIR store rather than the competitors. And if you happen to just need to pickup bread, milk, some sheets, and fill your prescriptions while you're there, then they're ok with losing a bit of money on that one price match.

Never trust an in-store rep to do ANYTHING. They will say one thing and when the plan is changed they can't get it back.

If you're going to upgrade, you upgrade at full price, and you do it from the website where you can verify yourself that the plan is still the same.

Way back when each individual part was serialized (and for such guns an "all matching" gun is indeed worth a premium), but these days its just not efficient. Plus we've come a long ways in parts interchangeability. 100 years ago if you bought a part for a gun it needed to be fitted to that gun to work (and that is still true today for many "old" designs from that era, such as the 1911 handgun). On most newly designed guns parts just drop in and work. Being able to match it to a certain gun just isn't important.

That may have once been true (about the price), but not really anymore. The Mini-14 starts at around $750. You can get AR-15's for under $600 now.

A big reason for that is simply market competition - the AR-15 patents have long expired and it's popularity has led to be it being one of the most heavily cloned rifles in the world, so all sorts of companies are making them (its to rifles what the 1911 is to handguns).

It also presents a problem for the anti-gun folks trying to present the gun as some niche purchase for whackos - its by far the most popularly sold model of rifle in the country.

By your logic its ok for the government to tell you you can't wear a shirt with a certain logo, so long as you're allowed to wear another shirt with an approved logo.

In times past, yes. Nowadays however gun-rights activists indeed are heavily recruiting minorities to try and appeal to them. The NRA brought on Colion Noir (a black gun owner/vlogger) as a spokesperson, and they were very quick to jump to Shaneen Allen's defense when she (a black woman) was arrested in New Jersey for accidentally violating one of their draconian gun laws.

Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.

The Constitution was written almost immediately after citizens had overthrown their previous government (England) via armed revolt. Many times England had tried to disarm to Colonists to prevent just such a thing from happening.

Do you honestly think its "nonsense" to think that a group that had just overthrown their government would not think it possible (and in the right circumstances necessary) to do so again?

I've been using Linux since 1997 (pretty much exclusively since 2009). I still prefer MInt over anything else. Eye candy is good, package management is good - and it is the primary platform for Cinnamon which removes all the retarded aspects of Gnome 3 to make it back into a decent desktop UI.

I don't see how this is going to work. They mention "hardware and software solutions" but how are they going to make this apply only to the driver? Seems every legitimate way of doing this would block everyone in a moving vehicle - even passengers - from doing it.

For the most part. Crapware isn't really like Malware you get from the red-light districts of the web. Most of it is just junk installed by the OEM that goes away when uninstalled.

That's not to say it might to leave a config file or registry entry lying around afterwards, but as far as visible, executing processes, most of them respond well to just uninstalling.

Yeah - $30 or 40 may be a bit more reasonable. Still though, computers have gotten pretty cheap these days. I paid $199 for my Windows 8.1 laptop on sale. $30-40 is still a decent chunk of the purchase price to upgrade the OS (which I'm sure when the computer was assembled the OEM was charged next to nothing for the original copy).

Because "web only" is what Google is about. It works pretty well for them honestly. Android phones and Chromebooks are selling pretty darned well.

For the most part that's what people seem to want these days. Even for the "keyboard, mouse and screen" form factor you'll likely see a shift to those type of devices. As said Chromebooks are already selling very well, but they're also introducing Chrome "desktops" - basically a chromebook that connects to external peripherals (ie, the Acer Chromebox CXI).

In less than 10 years a full computer running local apps won't be commonplace for "regular people" anymore. You'll likely see them relegated to use by content creators, programmers, and hobbyists like us.

It's kind of odd that Linux might finally succeed as the dominate desktop OS eventually - because eventually a desktop OS might not really be a viable retail product anymore.