Yes, seriously. I spend a surprisingly lot of time googling stuff for others (I don't magically know everything, either, even though they seem to think that I do). If they knew how to do it themselves, they would save (a) their time (because I usually can't respond immediately), (b) my time.

I'll have to agree with this. Programming should be only taught to people who have already managed to learn the basics by themselves, using whatever methods available to them. They are the ones that will benefit the most from being taught, having already proved that both motivation towards subject and required reasoning capability exist.

Nowadays, there are plenty of self-learning resources available on the internet, both the tools and documentation are available mostly for free. The remaining obstacles for kids today would be motivation, and time. And let's face it, no one actually learns to program by doing school exercises (because the trick is not knowing how to implement all those complicated algorithms, but knowing how to avoid having to solve the complications in the first place... KISS).

Instead, I would put "using Google" to the required curriculum. Based on my observations, a lot more people would benefit from that...

Income from tx fees that they will lose when they're out of business? I'd say running an exchange seems quite profitable even without a scam.

And without the exchange you used to run (esp. when you're the last one), you'll have a hard time converting your stolen BTC into something you can use.

I happened to be watching BTC-e on monday when the $102 dip happened. It was a result of someone (or more likely, someone's misbehaving bot) dumping about 6k BTC on the market, at once. It was back over $500 in about a minute.

Those few who had set ridiculously low bids (expecting crash due to expected MtGox bad news) or bots that didn't have a failsafe to just stop when something crazy happens, probably made a good profit on that dump.

Building a wall (or a better analogy, designing the house the wall will be a part of) is no perfect process either.

I just recently thought about why software is so difficult, compared to physical engineering tasks. A big difference I found (aside from the obvious practicalities, such as lacking proper specification and resources) is lack of tolerance in how software is being built. When you're designing a supporting wall for a house, you calculate how much weight it needs to be able to carry. Then, you multiply that weight by a safety factor, adding tolerance. Similarly, when actually constructing the wall, the bricks don't need to be perfectly aligned, good enough is good enough, the final adjustment can be fixed with bit more or less mortar.

A lot of software is built with low tolerance. Part of it is cutting costs, part of it is just immaturity of the industry. There are already known good practises for increasing tolerance of software development process. Worried about buffer overflows? Use a language that makes them impossible. Data loss? Use a known good DB (and learn to use it) instead of inventing your own storage. Developers writing bad logic? Require proper testing and code reviews. All of the previous requested, but not happening? Bring in a competent project manager.

Then there's the whole other unique issue that software development faces, changing requirements. Construction workers will likely give you the finger, then go drink some beer and laugh about it, if you tell them that the garage they have built half-way actually needs to be a cathedral by the end of the month. In software, that's business as usual.

And then, every once in a while, walls collapse too. Sometimes they find someone who had not done his job properly, sometimes it's just written down as a sum of consequences.

I think the smart fridge thing is more interesting for inventory management at your local grocery store, than for an individual person. It would be worth a lot to them to be able to track when people are going to run out of specific items, so they can have the right amount of inventory at right time.

OTOH, almost every time I go grocery shopping, I buy something I wouldn't have needed yet, simply because I didn't remember if I had it or not and get one just in case. So being able to check your fridge contents while at the store might also be useful.

Btw. Before trying it, I thought the beta hate might be just nerd rage, but I'm starting to understand.

However, when expressing such opinions on ./, it has become customary to omit what languages the poster is comparing the subject language against. Surely that only happens because the poster's great programming knowledge makes him forget that not everyone has similarly vast amount of experience and therefore is able to draw the same conclusions without presenting any actual comparison.

Maybe you should watch the movie referenced by GP ;-)

Having a guaranteed-inflation currency around doens't seem to be doing much to prevent this: if you are wealthy, it's likely you were born wealthy. The problem is, that the currency we use, is just currency, it has no real use. And all the actually usable things, natural resources, have guaranteed deflation built in (assuming continuing population growth and no off-planet resource import). So owning natural resources is a bit like owning Bitcoin. It is always a good time to invest in gold.

That is a long day. 24 hours == 86400 seconds.

Quite likely. Similar to how there are parents who buy tobacco and/or alcohol to their underage kids, and parents who report the store for selling to kids (to the effect of the store losing their license to sell these substances) when their little princess manages to buy a bottle of vodka with an id borrowed from her older sister.