Not really. In the eyes of most of the world, the names may have changed, but you still act the same.

Now I know you are a hard core Russian. You are denying your despot government never did anything in Hungary? What happened in 1956 is so well documented that only a moron who believes his own lies could possibly deny it happened.

All too often the programmers aren't given time to optimize the code. Middle management weenies hear the "we got it working" part of the demonstration, and don't care that it's running too damn slow. They have shit to sell right now!

And yes, too many coders have no idea how to optimize.

Do you have a source for that? The only things I can find in this area:

1) In 1995 they "re-centered" the test because scores were starting to slip.
2) In 2005 the Math section was made marginally harder to reduce the number of perfect scores. They also changed the verbal section to remove analogies.
3) In 2016 they will remove the more obscure vocabulary words to focus on more commonly used words.
4) MENSA will no longer take scores from the SAT after January of 1994 as criteria for admission.

None of this speaks to a steadily rising difficulty. And with one exception seems to indicate a little bit of the opposite.

If there were competition, the broadband companies would be going out of their way to roll out something bigger and better than the next guy. Except, all too often, a broadband company gets a monopoly in a city, raise their prices while cutting their services. They have zero incentive to roll out any improvements. They rarely even bother with doing basic maintenance. Upgrades and repairs cost money, that cuts into profits. It's not like the market has anywhere else to go.

A taxpayer funded project isn't a barrier to future infrastructure improvements. Monopolies are a barrier to future infrastructure improvements.

If waiving environmental laws and giving huge tax breaks for big businesses is good for the state, then doing the same for small and medium businesses is also good for the state. In fact, this kind of thing is evidence that the laws should be revisited and possibly revised. I already felt that way about the tax laws here in California (some of the highest taxes in the country). I'm not so sure about the environment laws, however.

I am severely red-green color blind. I am midly blue-yellow color blind.

And the correct term is Color Deficiency Disorder, you insenstive clod.

As others have already said, the original question is really vague since there is little information about what corner of IT work will be done. But since it is at a college, there is a good chance that it will fall under the area that SIGUCCS conference tries to cover.

http://www.siguccs.org/Conference/2014/about.shtml

I went and presented 5 or 6 years ago and found it to be an OK conference. I did not get a lot out of it from the technical presentations, but it is a really good place to get an idea of what your peers are doing, and the "hallway track" is really good.

I have a few text files on my Windows box with :wq scattered around in random locations.

Given that the executive branch, that being the POTUS, has never seen a surveillance law it didn't like, I seriously doubt this law would actually impede the government's lust for any and all information on the People.

Besides, the actual implmentation of any law is always the exact opposite of the bill name. My guess, "The USA Freedom Act" means "freedom for the government to do whatever the fuck they want."

Here in San Francisco, beggers will complain if you give them non-vegan food. That's if they don't complain about getting food since a good number of them are looking for drug money.

My read of this is that they applied as a charity, but the IRS's definition of a charity requires that you be serving a distinct, disadvantaged group of people. A quick look at the software that Yorba produces (http://yorba.org), does not lead me to believe that their software would particularly benefit any specific disadvantaged groups more than other people.

So by the rules that the IRS is working on, it does appear that they do not qualify as a charity. And to be honest, this is a correct definition, they are not running a charity. Now there is a valid question about whether there should be a method for them to run a non-profit without being taxes, but they are not a charity.

How do you propose removing an island, and to where?

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

If every single person who said they would vote third party if it wasn't throwing away their vote actually voted third party, we'd see some serious changes. Just accept that it doesn't matter one bit whether a democrat or a republican wins the election. The results will be the same. Once you accept this simple truth, you are free. Now you can vote for a third party candidate without that fear of letting "the other guy" win. Vote third party. Always. I don't care which third party. Just don't vote for the status quo.

I posted an article describing the "why" a month ago. Totally not surprised that the current reform efforts exhibited the same arc.

That general model is exactly why this initiative collapsed as well. Several aspects of this reform - such as "attributable owner" rules, i.e., implementing laws that require patent applications to reveal the real party of interest in the case, as a measure addressing shell companies - were supported by large interests that benefited from them, and opposed by large interests that didn't. The result is stalemate, just as we've seen countless previous times in the patent "reform" discussion.

The only measures that make it through the "reform" system are mild improvements that don't affect some entities differently than others. And even those can be difficult - e.g., the first-to-file change in the America Invents Act is great for well-funded enterprises, but more problematic for small businesses. In that case, large enterprises simply steamrollered the opposition with lobbying cash.

The upshot is that the "reform" sytem is, itself, deeply dysfunctional. An additional tragedy is that efforts that would objectively improve the patent system for everyone, such as giving examiners more time to perform their examination and implementing more accountability for technically incorrect arguments, get lost in the struggle.