I agree. Most of the time it's trivially easy to adapt to new procedural languages. And the more often you do it, the easier it becomes.

However, a primary problem is that although the syntactical differences are comparatively minor, the libraries may be structured very differently. You may well spend a great deal more time adapting to the gross differences in philosophy as well as the discovering the idiomatic nuances of the libraries.

I would hesitate to call GE Healthcare a small company. I doubt that Lawrence Livermore National Labs would be considered small as it's part of the government. Joyent is the company that supports node.js.

Anyone can sue anybody about anything, but winning is different matter. ZFS is considered safe from a legal point of view.

No they would not be sued by anyone.

Sun open sourced ZFS under a permissive license. Oracle close sourced it again. However, a number of companies are supporting derivatives of the open source version.

ZFS is available for a number of operating systems today. A non-inclusive list:
FreeBSD from iXsystems
Linux from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and also Pogo Linux
SmartOS from Joyent
OmniOS from Omniti
Osv from CloudOS

In addition a number of companies are using ZFS in their products:
CloudScaling
DDRdrive
datto
Delphix
GE Healthcare
Great Lakes SAN
Losytec
High-Availability
HybridCluster
Nexenta Systems
OSNEXUS
RackTop
Spectra Logic
Storiant
Syneto
WHEEL Systems
Zetavault

ZFS can detect and correct silent corruption when configured to do so. I have a NAS that has 24 TB of raw storage, 16 TB of useable storage, running under OmniOS. I have well over 10 million files on the NAS (it is used as a backup for 8 systems) - I haven't lost a file in 4 years and I don't expect to lose any.

The GOP has made it very, very clear that anything that Obama favors will automatically receive a negative from the House of Representatives that they control. They have done this multiple times. They have openly stated that their primary objective is to oppose Obama on everything.

Now I'm supposed to believe that Obama pressured the GOP to weaken the bill? That seems... laughable. The GOP would never bow to Obama's requests - they have their image to consider. It seems more likely that the GOP revised the bill because Obama said he supported it in its original form.

It's also strange that the mainstream press doesn't seem to have picked up on such a monumental achievement by Obama. I'd have expected that any such successful pressure from the White House on the GOP would be a major headline in most newspapers that cover US national politics. But the best we get is a press release from the Center for Democracy and Technology. The EFF also had a press release about the amendments to the bill but they don't suggest that the White House or Obama was generating any pressure for the changes.

I work from home often. However, I installed solar energy about 11 years ago. I have to rent the meter (around $6 a month) but other than that I haven't paid for electricity since that event. I have natural gas heating, and the cost of that has been reduced substantially over the past few years.

My point is that I leave the thermostat set to a low of 72 degrees and a high of 76 degrees and let the system figure how to keep the house in that range. Works well, all year around. Very comfortable.

The items you mention are all extremely useful when using a computer and should be taught in schools.

Speaking generally, programmers need to be proficient users but it is a separate skill that requires a substantially greater amount of energy to acquire.

Understanding computers in one thing. Understanding how to program them is something else entirely.

My 17 month old understands my iPad, sort of, and has done for a few months. She can unlock the device, page through it to find the couple of apps she likes, fire them up and interact with them. On my laptop she knows ho to use the trackpad and left-click on buttons. I have no idea where she will be computer-wise by the time she's in first grade, but one thing seems sure, she will know how to use one.

But programming is not necessary to understand how to use a computer, no more than being able to repair your car's brakes is necessary to use a car. In some fairly rare circumstances extremely useful, but not something that NEEDS to be learned to be a good driver - mostly it's sufficient to know how to use the brakes.

By all means, offer programming classes, but don't require people to take them to graduate. Attempting to learn programming if your mind doesn't work the right way (detail oriented, highly logical) would be torture indeed. Understanding how to use them should be sufficient for most people.

Instead of WoW, worry about the national infrastructure. Imagine all the SCADA devices insecurely connected to the Internet going down more-or-less simultaneously. No electricity, natural gas, or water distribution systems, no sewage treatment, etc. After a few hours/days without electricity the backup systems would start dying, so no phones or Internet either.

So no WoW, as you pointed out. But that would be the least of our problems :)

I started programming professionally in 1969 with Fortran, followed by COBOL in 1970, Algol and IBM 360 Assembler in 1972. Since then I've coded projects in Basic, Simula, ESPOL, NDL, Databus, PL/1, PL/S, Rexx, Forth, Pascal, and half a dozen different assembler languages such as 6502, 6800, 68000, x86, Datapoint, PDP-11 and PowerPC. My current languages of choice are C, C++, C#, and JavaScript, although I can do Transact/SQL, Visual Basic, and Python if needed.

Here's my point. A computer language is just a way of expressing simple commands. The concepts are pretty much the same across most procedural languages. A DO loop is a DO loop, regardless of what you call it and the exact syntax. A much bigger issue is learning the idioms and the libraries associated with each implementation of a language. Just like human languages, the more of them you know, the easier it is to pick up the next one.

I've never had any formal computer classes. Back when I started there was no such thing as a computer science degree - most university classes in computing were done the math department. But you still have to learn. Buy books, read them, do small projects to familiarize yourself with the languages. Make yourself learn. It's your career, manage it. Make certain you have the skills that are needed, and if you think you don't have the skills you need then be proactive in getting them. Use the Tiobe index to see what's trending up.

I'm at my sixth company at present. I have never been unemployed. I don't code as much as I used to because I'm in an architectural role now, but I still can code and I enjoy it immensely. I'm still the go-to guy in my areas of expertise. I made the mistake of going the managerial route at one point and discovered I hated it. Computers are easier to handle than people - they don't lie, they do what you tell them, and they don't have hidden agendas, and they don't backstab.

18 years is less than half of your working life. Coders will be needed for long time. Application coders will needed for years to come. People will be needed to code operating systems, drivers, environmental software, IDEs, compilers, etc. for many years. Don't give up, and don't believe all you read about ageism. I interviewed for my current gig with a full head of grey hair.

In the UK, the right to remain silent has been around since the 17th Century. However, it was removed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1984.

Since the UK doesn't have a written constitution, it's impossible to argue that a law is unconstitutional. The question cannot be taken to the European Court of Human Rights, because the tight to remain silent is not mentioned in the European Convention on Human Rights, although the majority of E.U. countries have laws giving that right.

Further, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 make it a crime not to disclose an encryption key to police when asked.

In the USA there is a constitutional right against self incrimination, and the right not to answer questions from the police has been the subject of many movies, both fictional and non-fictional. It's generally considered that "taking the fifth" is a well known act by criminals.

Without doubt it is possible to argue that not answering questions is impeding an investigation and therefore obstructing justice, but it is balanced by a suspect's right to remain silent when questioned by police. Now whether a person can be compelled to answer questions about a password is a different twist on the question "where did you hide the key the safe" or whatever, but I think the answer is well settled in U.S. jurisprudence.

You do know that this occurred BEFORE the movie started? The guy who was shot dead (whom you call a jerk) was not texting during the movie, but during the opening adverts. You know who the real jerk in this story is?

The man who shot him had to go to his car to retrieve his gun. This was an intentional and premeditated act of violence that deserves severe punishment.

Now a child will grow up without his father. A wife will have to bring up the child without her husband's help. All because some jerk didn't like the adverts being interrupted.

The title of this story is "How much would it cost to build a Windows version of the Mac Pro", so I described a system I specced that is very similar.

The user wanted a system, I specced it for him. It was built and he's happy. Your comment notwithstanding. And I am hideous :)