To me there's no question of why smart people like LOTR: It's mythology completely void of superstition and inflated superimposed real-world meaning. Which makes it every more and a million times more beautyful than anything abrahamic or other book-religions have to offer.

You can read LOTR, dive into the very first, very detailed completely fantasy world, with own languages and glyphs, poetry a huge history and lot's more with out it being degraded and shoehorned into real-world implications. Everyone know's it's made up - you don't have to debate knuckleheads who insist the fiery caverns of Mordor are below our feet and we have to pray to the allmighty Elrond so he and his army of Elves protect us when the end is nigh or any other sort of bullshit. ... At least not today. Who knows what's waiting 2000 years down the line. Imagine civilisation degenerating and only LOTR surviving. Some clergy smart-ass would hijack that two or three centuries down the line - "do as I tell and pay your taxes our you won't get into Minas-Tirit when you die" ... any power-monger would be stupid not to. ... Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

My Grandpa would count. He's been dead since 2002 and he was in his 90ies. Given, he worked with Grumman Aircraft on the Lunar Lander back in the 60ies as an electronics engineer (hearing the proud grandson? ;-) ). Basically high-end avantgrade technology back then, but he was a digital native none-the-less.

So is just about any computer kid of the eighties approaching 50 years of age today. We grew along in lock-step with the hardware, its capabilites and our capabilites to understand it. I'd argue that nobody will be more digitally native than our generation of nerds.

I'd also argue that I am way more a digital native than my daughter, since I not only can operate a computer or smartphone, but actually know how it works.

In short, I can't see how this is supposed to be an age-filter. Perhaps a fiter for non-tech-savy, ok. The age-filters I've come across are more like "willing to travel" (go forth and act as a fall-guy for that remote project heading towards a solid brick wall), "resilient" (german: "belastbar") ... meaning "young and stupid enough to work extra hours under shitty gouvernance for no extra pay and a fake career outlook" ... and similar telling lines in the confidentials.

On top of that, how hilarious is an HR person asking for "digital natives"? We all know the bizar truth behind this.
Most of those people couldn't distinguish Google from the Web in general if their life depended on it. It's idiots like these who know less than nothing and actually think they can judge tech and its requirements. Admitted, quite a few if not most of those actually *are* above 40, but they shouldn't get to call out for digital natives. They'd mistake a resus monkey for one.

AFAICT it was illegal.

Berlin is in the eastern hemisphere.

USA geography at work? ... If Berlin is the eastern hemisphere, then Japan is the far west. ... But I guess it does depend on perspective.

Personally, I'd bet on Detroit for future economic ascendance- at least for the U.S. Rent ist dirt cheap and there's a distinct artsy/berlinish vibe to the people rebuilding Detroit right now - lot's of creativity and pragmatism ... For the western hemisphere in total Berlin is a good bet. Abundance of talent and creativity and a digital culture that is one abstraction level away from hardware (which will be built entirely by robots in just a few years from now anyway) plus a culture that emphasises a post-scarcity economy.

On a global perspective we westerners shouldn't delude ourselves. Far-east asia and india and perhaps the arab nations (after the terror has calmed down and the people are clamoring for an age of reason again) is probably where the parties at in 2-3 decades from now. India is the youngest country in the world. We'll all be pensioners when they'll just be warming up. 1.3 billion fairly well educated people in their best years ought to pack some economic and innovation punch.

I expect the valley and bay area to turn into something of a modern day Paris meets Amsterdam - which it basically is already. A tourist attraction and real-estate investment haven for the super-rich.

My 2 cents.

With all this hassle for updating the web recently, including the permanent surveilance by Facebook/WhatCrap/Whatever, the Snowden leaks and the NSA/BND disasters and the broaded discussion about encrypting services it's becoming more and more evident that we need a complete bottom-up redo of all popular services on the internet.

The most pressing and obvious is E-Mail, which, by any standard imanginable is about the worst protocol and service still in widespread use. But before that can happen properly, there's another thing that should be redone befor everything else: DNS.
DNS needs to be abstracted away from the carriers and core services into something based on cryptographic signature. It should be possible for me to buy a domain for life simply by purchasing a slip or paper or a piece of code containing a register key to which I can tie a domain that is still free for choosing. Moving to a different provider with my domain or hosting it on my own small VM should be a matter of minutes.

Next up would be E-Mail. Zero-fuss end-to-end encryption and cpu-expensive hashing to make mass-mail expensive and spamming virtually impossible. Setting up a mailserver should be as easy as setting up a mail client today. In fact, it should be much of a difference wetther I'm setting up a client or a server - one of the big problems with E-Mail today.

Next up would be the Web. Let's face the facts: The Web today is a pile of junk. It's only thanks to Netscape freeing its browser (Mozilla) and Goolgle buying V8 and fighting for a free (beer) web that benefits their business that we have a half-way feasible free web. Flash - and I'm sorry to break this to the /. crowd - was lightyears ahead of everything else on the client-based web. CSS3 / HTML5 and JS are a joke in comparsion. Clients are strange hacks with arcane technologies strapped together with glue and duct-tape, doing insane stunts and feats to build rich clients. The entire service could use a complete redo for design/UX, documents and programming. Javascript is neat and fun, but I can think of a few PLs that would do a better job, be easyer to use and perhaps even easyer to compile into binary.

Moving the Web into https is all fine and dandy - it's using FOSS technology and open standards - which is always the main big plus - but yet again it's only a dirty hack compared to what would be possible if we would base a rebuilt web-like service on what is technologically possible today.

My 2 cents.

There are too many imature idiots and spoiled brats in college. That's a plain and simple fact.
So many times I've wished to be rich enough to start my own ivory-leage style university for that exact reason.

Best teachers in the world. Best equipment in the world. Best building in the world. Best campus in the world.

But:
Babble in class: You're out.
Babble repeatedly: Get a warning.
Cheat: Fail and you get a warning.

Drink and misbehave: You're out.
Drink and misbehave repeatedly: Get a warning.

Dress and/or behave like a bum: Get a notice, then a warning.

Three warnings and you get booted from campus for all eternity, you're last semester tuition forfeight. End of story.

I am effing sick and tired of these countless spoiled f*ckwits clogging up the first two or three semesters until they're weeded out by the math curiculum in CS.

I further propose that every student should do 15 months of German-style civil service (Zivildienst) taking care of elderly or handycapped or do some other solid useful work like fixing damns or cleaning out environmental disasters before he/she is allowed to enter any higher education of any kind whatsoever. Grow the f*ck up before you waste my, the teacher/professors and everybody elses time!

If you want to drink yourself into a coma or slack off for a year or two: By all means, go ahead. Every yound person should take a year or two to travel the world, slack off and surf in indonesia or hawaii. But they should also be sternly corrected if they can't act like grown-ups when they finally come to college.

It's also for this very reason that I'm probalby going to roll in a remote tutoring college. (I'm planing on heading a CS degree or someting real soon now in part-time)

New Zero Day Discovered In WordPress Core Spagetti.

FTFY.

(Note: I currently make a living developing/deploying with WordPress)

Hitchens says it best:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Modern phones and tablets have thge same problem as PCs - they fall victim to loads of crap and bloatware. Don't burden your smartphone with shit and it will stay stable. If you're having trouble doing that use one with a smaller softewaremarket such as the Jolla. If you're unsure about which phone to take I'd actually recommend that one.

Brilliant, that's what!

Tech workers, especially engineers, should get paid more than lawyers since our skills actually create value.

Yeah, like really important stuff like the 20th instagram clone or cloud computing service.

What a load of shit. Luckily there are other MD's posting in the comments on just how biased this writer is. He's basically claiming ADHD is a kid's only issue, and all adults are just abusers. People like him must HATE people like myself...a doctor-monitored adderall prescription for several years now. With it, I'm able to more fully use my capabilities. Without it, people would always comment "your really smart, but..." due to all the random and chaotic things I would do and say. Honestly, without my prescription I'd probably either be dead or in jail. Even so, being unmedicated has already lead to the accidental death of someone VERY close to me...if I had been on it then I probably would have thought the situation through further. So this guy can go fuck himself, and I'd tell that to his face is ever given the chance.

My uncle tells me ADHD runs in our family. However, I consider the frictions in our family to be normal or based on psychological heritage brought down from a grandmother incapable of handling 4 children and having an immoral stance on her responsiblities. Plus living in an ending WW2 in Germany, including carpet bombings, fleeing Koenigsberg and Stetin to the Rhine area and being fugitives and 3rd class citizens as a result. Such things are passed down, no doubt.
I also think of my uncles ADHD fixation as an excuse for his alcoholism - he like to rag on how ADHD people work better with drugs. I would allot his problems to the regular beatings his generation received.

However, I do have character traits that some people would consider "ADHD".
I wouldn't. Or at least I would consider them to be a disability. I would appreciate the theory that my brain works differently due to me moving around roughly once a year during most of my childhood and said psychological heritage.

I'm basically a hunter-gatherer in a farmer-settlers world, or should I say: I'm adapted to hunter-gatherer mode in a world that is currently mostly adapted to farmer-settler mode. Yes, I'm one of those pretty much down with that theory.

While others have spent their entire childhood at one place, I had to move around a lot. I intimately and intuitively know things about this world and the people in them that others have to learn in hard lessons. I smell a con from 10 miles away, I can handle myself in a fight and I spot financial risks or flaws in complex systems (such as software architecture) in an instant. I find the usual vanity that comes with societies living in abundance strange, bizar, pointless, silly and sometimes flat-out repulsive. I recently re-read Paul Grahams Why Nerds are unpopular and I have to say the man once again pretty much hits home - read it if you can relate to what I am saying. That essay pretty much sums up my youth and the way I feel about the world and the people around me a lot of times. If I'm having ADHD it is not a disease, but a natural reaction to the at times bizar and backwords world around me.

However, there are things I struggle with that others have no problem dealing with. Regular chores or maintaining a home with more that two rooms. And who wouldn't? I'm just this week picking up Scala and starting a new company internal software project. A the side I'm keeping my mood by going out or doing some sort of contrast programm. I don't have *time* to do the laundry regularly.

I run up to speed when shit hits the fan. Basically I consider any other situation boring. Which, let's face it, it usually is.

I also see absolutely no point what so ever in performing in a job that is basically 90% pointless. I'm the lead developer in an agency and 90% of my work is politics and explaining to customers the difference between a client and a server and what the internet is and how it works. And the difference between Google and the Web - which very many people do not know or are aware of. And setting up WordPress and repairing the junkpile the last plugin-testing frenzy my project people left behind.

I do 25 hours a week for a feasible salary and that is just the right amount. In my spare time I help out my daughter, do to evening school, cook, dance (I'm big into Tango and the cute girls that come with it). The point is: I see no point in taking drugs so I can sit at the desk longer. I think its a healthy reaction when I get a headache after 5 hours of diving into LimeSurvey and its inner workings.

Note: This is my take on *my* situation. You may very well have a condition that requires drugs to function. However, I challenge you to question that assumption and perhaps try an alternate career or something. We are not built to sit at desks, and frankly, computers aren't built to be sat in front of. They are built to do the dirty work while humans do the stuff they enjoy and are good at.

Bottom line: I wouldn't want to take drugs to perform on my job. That's not a job for me and it shouldn't be for you either.
I'd rather switch the job or go on a world trip.

I am Groo!