younger people are (generally) better at thinking up new ideas/paradigms and novel ways to do things

As a guy with some experience, all I hear is "younger people blindly follow the newest fads". As it turns out, there have been very little new ideas in IT, and most of the New! Improved! ways promoted these days are merely restatements of old ideas, or old ideas that got discarded for being unpractical.

But in an industry with an institutional memory of barely a decade, that sounds like innovation. And it's self-reinforcing due to the fact that not a lot of employers appear to be interested in hiring experience, instead being dazzled by the Cult of Youth.

In other words, it's effectively practising a religion.

Not a popular thing to say around here, but that's what this speculation about alien life comes down to for those on the side of 'it exists': it's a religion, with SETI as its High Mosque, and the Drake Equation its shahada

. Those who come down on the side of 'it might be possible' are the equivalent of the Christmas-only Christians.

Yes, God forbid someone should have a pride being competent at something. The horror. Think of the self-esteem damage to the incompetent.

Oh, Asterix (bugger, stupid keyboard doesn't do accents, can't be bothered to fix right now) has always had absolutely brilliant translations. I grew up on the Dutch ones, and they're quite as good as the original French.

I just pointed out I have them in French these days to ensure no misunderstandings: I'm quite at home in European comics. I am thankful for the suggestion, but it's superfluous in my case. And bonus: I get to enjoy brilliant if occasionally silly wordplay in multiple languages.

I like the campy fun of the Silver Age, and the Bronze age has its highlights (isn't Spider-Man more or less the #1 Bronze Age Superhero?); it's the needless 'Darker and Edgier' hype of the later ages that put me off comics for a long time, they were nothing like I remembered from the few volumes I read as a child.

Now I'm getting into it a bit more, I just want to round out my experience with a genre that feels closer to my tastes, hence the question.

The GF is mostly a late Silver Age Marvel fan, so willing to help she may bey, she knows just as much as I do of this particular period. From what I've seen so far it would be closer to my tastes; I read her comics and enjoy them, but the enjoyment is just a bit off.

Thanks, that was a useful answer!

I am Dutch, and as it happens I have these, in the original French no less.

It's fairly obvious that any real geeks have long gone from Slashdot, and the site has been taken over by 13-year old Rand-worshipping basement dwellers.

I had hopes some of the old spirit was left to give an answer to my question, but I now have come to regret this.

Because, as it so happens, Golden Age is not to her taste. Now, did you have anything useful to add? No? Then kindly STFU.

As it so happens, the partner in question is a woman. But thank you for your completely pointless misogynie.

Tariffs are passed straight through to the buyers of the products.

No. If importers could pass on the cost of the tariffs with impunity, then they could have sold at higher prices already and pocketed the difference as profit. Since they do not do so now, there is a strong indication that their competitive position means they can't.

They are willing to pay others to do parts; Amazon is trying to drive those others out of business. That was the whole point of the rant.

What do you think fuelled the race to the bottom for PC's? The money software companies gave the hardware companies to pre-install trial versions their shit.

I'd like to see a citation for this. The way I remembered it PC prices dropped because of a rise in production based on the demand for applications like Wordstar, WordPerfect, dBase and Lotus-1-2-3.

The cheap trial versions and adware only turned up after PC prices had hit such a rock bottom that it was seen as a way for suppliers to increase their margin.

But that's my recollection. Apparently you know something I don't, so I'd like a reference.