I do not think rerentering the programming workforce is impossible. I spend a lot of time trying to hire good, smart, logically thinking people who are willing to learn. I don't find many. I would gladly hire someone who hasn't programmed in ten years if they show all the traits I just mentioned.

The difficulty will be in getting an interview. The HR departments at large companies (like mine) filter the hundreds of applications they receive before I ever get to see them. They primarily look for keyworks (ugh) and education because they don't know what else to measure by. One way to avoid this is to get a reputable recruiting firm to back you up. We often interview people who we wouldn't normally because the recruiting firm stressed that the candidate's resume doesn't adequately describe their capabilities.

Once you are in the interview, your experience and past won't matter as much. If you can BS about being a nerd with some engineers for an hour, without sounding fake, you have a shot. Thinking clearly and logically is very important. Demo your Android apps; it is very useful to be able to show somethign you have developed in person. Don't sell youself as a one technology guy. I never hire those people. A real engineer or computer scientiest can learn new tools overnight. I have no need for people who self-idenitfy with only one skill. Good luck.

We can't even predict the weather tomorrow accurately, and yet some are trying to claim we have reached scientific concensus that humans are the cause of long-term climate change?

We very well could be the cause of this change, but the truth is that nobody knows.

This reminds me of how margarine was going to save everyone from heart attacks. Just because most scientists agree, doesn't mean it is true. Proof is replicable and undeniable once found. Margarine didn't stop heart attacks and our best models can't tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow. We are just guessing. When our fundamental understanding of the Earth's processes improve the truth will be found and the arguing will stop. We are not even close right now. This science is still in its infancy.

Fearmongering about children is counterproductive.

There is no doubt in my mind that competent hackers will be able to bypass the internet checks and redirect the DRM save/load requests to a local server. This is routine stuff.

The thing that could make this difficult is if Ubisoft transforms or processes the data on their servers before returning it to the client. In this situation, if Ubisoft was sufficiently devious, a real crack might never appear (without a leak from Ubisoft), as the hackers would need to reverse engineer this processing, which might be unfeasible.

The submitter's point is that the original firmware underwent extensive long term bug testing before it was released. This is embedded software, where testing is much more involved than with desktop software.

Most importantly, this is not a bug fix. Being able to press the gas and brake at the same time is not a mistake, and is essential for some kinds of performance driving. Imagine if every time you gently tapped the brake your car would cut the throttle.

This firmware update changs the very basics of how the car drives, and has been rushed together in 3 months, which certainly means Toyota engineers haven't had the time to test it in the stringent manner that embedded software requires.

I personally would not take a firmware upgrade that made my car less responsive to my inputs.

This is very similiar to the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) that was used by some F1 teams last year such as McLaren and Ferrari. The system failed because the gains weren't enough to offset weight and bulk of the system. All F1 cars weigh 600kg, but the cars themselves are actually much lighter and need to be ballasted to reach this weight. The distribution of this ballast is very important, as keeping the center of gravity low on a race car is critical. Cars with KERS has a higher center of gravity than other cars because the KERS systems couldn't be placed as low as ballast. Add to that the loss of development time on other areas of the car, and the result is that all of the teams with KERS performed very poorly. This Porsche could make a hybrid system work, as it has more design flexibility and a longer race. Fuel savings will be exxagerated by the extreme length of the race, which is 12 times longer than the maximum time allowed for an F1 race.