Seriously, I'm blown away by the amount entitlement in those words he posted.

You want to make something you own? Use all the knowledge you have from your job (you own knowledge unless they contract otherwise), work AFTER HOURS, and replicate the functionality.

If you become successful using work, or work secrets, you WILL BE SUED. Until you're successful, they won't notice you--so you'll think you got away free. The lawsuits come when people have money to get.

The guys that made the MOS Technology 6502 didn't steal from Motorola in the crazy sense the OP is suggesting. The only thing any of them did was quit Motorola to start their business, and one engineer took some documents he wasn't supposed to. Motorola sued the balls of them under terms much "nicer" than the OP suggests doing, and their lawsuit was said to have a "plausible chance of winning." Their investor left. They were running out of money (regardless of whether or not they were right), and had to settle--likely under terms that were worse than if they were financially stable enough to continue fighting.

Isn't it fucked up how "powers that be" will take any news and use it for their agenda, even when the people actually "at risk" are not worried at all?

You never think about it till they get a hold of your home town and you go, "Wait, that's not at all what we think! We're not all southern slobs / rapists or tech/woman/man/cop-hating hippies / etc."

...even if it was all wrong. What's the side-effect of reducing pollute? We're all less likely to die of cancer?

Woe is me--such a terrible world! Why did not we do the rational thing and spend all of that money on bombs?! Hindsight, I stab at thee!

You have to be crazy to think a TI-83 is expensive because of its parts and not trade agreements forcing out competition. The TI-83 is well-built. There's nothing that says well-built has to be expensive. It's just more plastic in the right places and proper fasteners--engineers allowed to do their job.

Moreover, any money spent on research has been paid back 15 years ago.

The situation might be different if TI didn't make all of the chips that go into it (dwindling inventories), but it's not. If it was, they would have replaced it with a newer generation model like every other company does on the planet.

"Justice may be denied because of a opaque walls in your home or wearing clothes... people need to think about how their weird need for privacy affects our ability to do our jobs. Why should we expend effort to get better when the general public can expend even more effort to help us do our own job?"--Comey

Scientists are proud to announce a new echelon of understanding that will finally allow humans to see the microscopic penis of people who yell, "First Post!" on Slashdot.

We're fixing one link in the chain. Just because the chain has multiple breaks doesn't mean we shouldn't start fixing any single one of them.

I love how any mention of qualified programmers means you automatically generalize them to white and entitled. Who's the real bigot here?

If your company constantly requires programmers to go over time, then congratulations, your company has shit management.

Ask yourself if that kind of "code faster, monkey!" attitude would be acceptable from other professions.

Seniors can always learn new toolchains and ideas.

But expert knowledge of fundamentals and experience cannot be magically implanted into novices--it has to be earned.

So any time you see a company firing off lot's of old people and hiring young people (it's cheaper!), you can be rest assured they're taking tons of knowledge with them out the door.

Some of my favorites:

Dear God Why?
https://github.com/search?utf8...

Ugly as sin (Javascript wins, C a close second)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

"BUG" (Holy God, 52 million entries in C, Javascript has 5.4m in second)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

TODO (20.9 million C entries, 7 million on PHP in second)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

FIX (24 million C entries, 6.3 Javascript in 2nd)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

"Why does this work?" (C, 2.9 million, C++ 307,942 in 5th place)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

"What does this do?" (C, 10.9 million, C++, 1 million in 5th place)
https://github.com/search?utf8...

One would probably have to divide those results by actual number of files in that language to get a percentage. You also might want to control for code complexity. But if we were gonna be quick and lazy, I would guess C uses more hacks/obscure code to get the job done and when that veteran leaves, nobody knows what it does.

On the bright side, C/C++ look like they tend to have tons of comments which (as long as they don't rot) is a very good thing. And if you're describing "why" and not "how" with comments, those will rarely rot.

Today I learned that languages are people.

The point is, we can undertake riskier missions if we know the crew will be safe.

Uhh.... how about using Windows to check to see what ports it's using?

> netstat -b -a

This is confusing to me. My job is literally installing Dynamics software for people. (Disclaimer: If you're offered that job, consider suicide as a better career path.)

Microsoft has put tons of money into their enterprise products. They're absolute piss and crash after a fresh install, but the work is still there. What good would acquiring Salesforce be for Microsoft? The only thing I can think of is that their software sucks so bad, they're going to eliminate their competitors by buying them. Because taking one gigantic, bloated, aging set of codebases (which have trouble even talking to each other!), and buying someone else's gigantic bloating, aging set of codebases, and finding some way to merge them into something new... that seems insane.