Exactly. If you want to regard yourself as an engineer, you have to start by accepting you are working to serve the interests of the client, not your career. I've seen so many problems occur because programmers want to have a certain technology on their resume. And the sad thing is that it works to get them through the HR filter. If HR is told to look for experience with a particular technology, it doesn't seem to matter whether the candidate's experience with that technology is failure.

maybe they should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I am a fatalist. I think that if it's big, the building I live would still collapse and living on the 8th floor (out of 10) won't save me no matter what I do.

Java as a language isn't fun - I haven't used it for many, many years now - but the advent of JVM-targeted languages makes the Java ecosystem fantastic.

Starting with the JVM - a very good machine that runs on pretty much anything, without having to re-compile your program. Perfect, no, but is anything? And the performance (given that it's a virtual machine) is top-notch.

Then there are the JVM-targeted languages: Scala, Groovy, JPython, BeanShell, etc, etc... Pick your poison.

Then there is a crap-ton of very useful libraries out there, and they can be used with any of the above targeted JVM-targeted languages.

So, we can whine about Java (the language) but really, I use it (the JVM, the other languages, and the libraries) to get stuff done. Cool, no. Productive, yes.

And I said according to whose figures? The official Chinese figures? Including the millions in work camps? Or do those die off fast enough to keep the count low.

What's needed is a layer of editorial fact checking. Today, the broadcast media instead checks for compatibility with their political party, instead. Many blogs many do the same, of course, but there are already a few that at least view favorable stories with suspicion, at least do a cursory google search first, ask around for technical experts on technical topics, and often update stories with retractions. None of which ever happens in the mainstream press.

Let me explain to you as I would do to my 2 year old son.
If we have an argument and you give me an apple, and I give you an apple to settle, who wins?
NOBODY.
DOH!

Some people don't get jokes.
Or the math behind the jokes.
Oh well.

Because instead of holding corporations to their promises and showing them who owns the tanks, governments in the west have spent the past 10 years selling themselves to the cheapest bidder, with treaties allowing corporations to sue governments if they dare pass laws that impact profits.

Sometimes I wish we had a king with a big ego, who'd on as much as the proposal of such a treaty arrest all those corporate bigshots and hang them publicly.

I am entitled to have some fun every now and then :)

I seriously doubt that would work.

If you're entirely oblivious to American politics (fair enough if you're not from here) then some facts: The Republicans are the pro-gun side. The Democrats are the anti-gun side. Public schools in the US are profoundly dominated by the Left (or was passes here for the Left).

Also, the left here is pro-"that religion that cuts girls clitorises off", the right is anti-that-religion. (But I thought that was true in most of Europe too?)

Please inform your future hate-filled rants with these simple facts.

Just making shit up doesn't help your argument any. I can only guess you're talking about the incident where we heard the gunship crew radio that they saw a group of hostiles (true) and a guy with a tube-like device on his shoulder (true) and requested permission to engage. They were given permission to engage. There was no laughing. There was no evidence they knew there was a reporter embedded with the enemy troops. (There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)

"good old boys"? If you think that anyone with a southern accent is a bad person, you are simply a bigot.

Based on what? The official numbers published by China? China executes so many of it's people that they need custom-built execution vans for logistical convenience. America is a China-wannabe when it comes to human rights violations. We try (Delaware apparently bought 1 execution van in 1986), but we always fall short. Write a story about violence in Tiananmen Square and see what happens.

But that doesn't change the fact that the US has gone absolutely fucking insane about both guns and drugs in schools. When you punish a student for eating a Pop-Tart in such a way that it briefly looks like a gun, it's time to back slowly away from the levers of power and let someone sober, sane, and rational take over. And at least that incident has prompted a couple of state legislatures to take action in defense of sanity, but clearly not in South Carolina.

Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).