You're completely missing the point.

Why should ICANN get to have a free money machine, and what do they intend to spend it on?

It's the Ed Wood film festival of tech news websites, yes. Thus its charm.

Heh. At first glance, I misread the title as "Amazon Products buy .TLD For $4.6 Million" and then quickly realised my mistake--but now I think ICANN should sell the .tld TLD to me. :)

I'm 55, this is true, but it hasn't diminished my interest in software, it's just something else that fascinates me and just happens to be the root cause as to why "work sucks" sometimes. My Dad is 80, a retired mechanical engineer, last we spoke about programming he had got one of his games he wrote in Delphi running on android and was playing with the python graphics library.

That's what inspired me to switch to Linux full-time, I'll say that much for it.

It's "SHe" and "Hir", dumbass.

But then, you don't read much, do you?

Welcome back, Barbara!

Solving coding problems the fun part. The work part is getting the solution to the customer, ironically few engineers are willing to tackle the work problem, or accept other people's solutions to it. So what you generally end up with is an imposed solution from above that doesn't work because the people who wrote the process haven't got a clue how the engineers are currently keeping it together. Rather than tackling the problem by demonstrating a superior answer, the engineers do their best to pretend the work problem doesn't exist.

BTW: If you're solving the "same [coding?] problem over and over again", you're doing it wrong

I hate to disappoint you further, but we were in fact talking about a vessel. If you've veered off topic, that sounds like your problem, not ours.

They give out .edu domains to "some random guy" now? Do tell.

I mostly agree but I would say that a good engineer provides (and meets) a deadline of his own making. Good managers have clear business plans but they can't create them if software systems randomly pop out of the basement shouting "surprise". The most overlooked and underrated skill for a "professional" engineer is business administration skills (and vica-versa with PHB's). Someone who speaks both languages is far more useful than someone who speaks only his native tongue.

Yeah it's easy to become disillusioned, if you don't have the political clout to organise your own work and "lead by example" to meet their vague goals, then get it or get out. If you do have some influence then vague, numerous, and ever changing management goals are your best weapon against the idiocracy, simply pick the brain farts that give you license to do TheRightThing(tm) and politely deflect the others.

*you - the royal version.

No, it is not. Facts matter.

Microsoft have no connection whatsoever to my workstation or what I run on it. Now explain to me how their demise is going to change that.

The West Lothian question will only be solved properly by the devolution of England.

Judging by the number of broken web sites I've seen lately, we could use a bit more staticness and a bit less dynamicness. :-}

...laura