Expect the way down to be tumultuous occurrence.

Funny that you mentioned those information holes. I learned all of those facets from a technical diploma 14 years ago, and I know more than a few CS degree grads that several years into the workforce have confessed that they never 'got' multi-threading. Basically, everyone has holes and most have a ton of them. Being ignorant isn't the end of the world, but being ignorant and incapable of learning is a much larger problem, but I doubt educational background has as crutial in determining the latter.

Assuming that the 'average' 12 year work experience individual is less capable than the 'average' BSC new grad is rather insulting to the veteran's, full stop. If you want to compare individuals of the same seniority, that's a different matter, but frankly at that point you should be able to talk to a developer for a while in order to know which one is full of it.

Its the exact same reason why you work hard when you own a part of the company you work for, vs. one you just get paid at. You have a sense of entitlement (ownwership) that you're working hard for your own (and others') good. The US economy revolves around the US dollar in very substantial ways. Nobody wants to see themselves or everyone else fail, so 'a dollar' stays relatively static within the bubble of comfort. Outside the bubble of comfort where USD isn't the universal trade tender, one must be realistic and pragmatic about things. That's why there are thousands of people who go to work daily just making sure the relative 'value' of currency remains in check along with adjusting based on the ability for the backing governments to pay their debt obligations. This is also why its a hell of a lot more volatile to trade in currencies than it is to go to the grocery store to discover the price of milk.

Ther 'loss of confidence' inside the bubble almost always follows the collapse of banks who are no longer able to honor the depositors. When it becomes systematic (think Greese if they still had their own currency for instance), people immediately attempt to pull their money out of the banks. Pulling money out of banks means there's less credit for businesses to draw from. Less credit means either companies collapse or raise their prices. Collapse means less value in the bank, whereas higher prices means there's more inflation on prices, which yet again forces people to invest in tangables which then 'hold their value' better than a nose diving currency.

I'm sure there's a ton I've missed and some that's just plain wrong, but it gives an idea on how 'currencies collapse'

This is Singapore, the country continually rated as one of the world's greatest countries for economic freedoms... soo

That said, there were a few (large percentage of the few ladies in the program) 'skirt flippers' in my classes going through my CS program, so I'd say they aren't totally unjustified in assuming that some ladies are taking advantage of their minority status. It's -possible- that they don't want their tribe looking bad by having a lot of fat skimming loafers ruining the program for the rest of them. You could say that about a lot of tribes all the same.

It has to be false to sue, and even if it was false, the falsehoods have to be presented as a fact (not a supposition) in order to be a successful law suit. All of which would likely cause more headlines before being resolved. Plus, if it was the real whomever/whatever, it is of complete non-starter unless there was actual continual harassment, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Diamonds like Oil are essentially 'unlimited' in the grand scheme of things, but its very expensive to make Oil (well in a crude oil form anyways) and Diamonds (by crushing various other carbon). But both have a rest value which is the raw cost of just producing them synthetically one's self. At the moment, its cheaper to just dig them out of the ground, so people still do, but that may not be the case always (especially as scarcity increases).

Not if your wallet just got stolen! ... .. . Boorah!

Bears are always looked down on regardless of the situation. Nobody wants you to rain on their parade and afterwards, nobody wants a told-ya-so.

I was in the same position in my beliefs of BitCoin, so you weren't totally alone. Don't fear, there will be at least one more major peak and major bust before this roller coaster is over for sure. Lock in for it!

Yes, society is a contract of cooperation and when you fight against general social norms, expect to be punished for it. What now, not fair? Who the hell said life was fair for everyone. I could cry for unborn babies aborted because their potential mothers didn't want them or for the thousands of cattle slaughtered every day, but I don't, and neither do I care about your disestablishmental libertarian views. Society as a whole could care less as well it seems.

Putting all the finances, benefits aside for a moment (since they've been covered to death earlier), you have to realize that modernizing an existing established piece of software is a huge mine field. Trust this from soneone who's had to deal with several large projects varying from small refactoring of existing architectures to complete software rewrites. There aren't many happy problems, as you'll often face problems with integration, performance, ops support, stakeholder buy-in's, resistence from users (for every even trivially minor change to the existing platform), etc..

So much of this problem is out of your hands that you'll always need to keep a lengthy detachment from the process or go insane frustrated that nothing works the way you like, and in the end its a system that you'd wish was never born. It could take years of maintenance and bug fixes before the software gets to the point where you'd consider it 'good enough'.

Be very sure you want to load yourself up with this responsibility, because I assure you, that there's no easy solution for this problem domain, which is why large software consultencies charge obcene amounts of money at companies wishing to update/rewrite their legacy systems.

Define the difference between visionary and forward thinker exactly? Ah, thats a minor quibble. Architects are supposed to be developers with more wisdom, and hopefully though not always more bredth of knowledge. I'm still technically a developer but I worked in IT between development jobs years ago, and I have significantly more broad knowledge than most of the Arch's that typcially come from strictly Dev/Ops/DBA backgrounds. That doesn't mean they're bad at their jobs, but everyone on the team has something to bring to the table, and if you assume the hierarical development roles as the pinacle of perfection, then you certainly will end up being doomed from one mistake or another down the road.

Even the most junior straight out of university kid can have great ideas, and its up to development leads and managers to decide the merits of such thrrough their years of development experience. Maybe they're wrong, maybe they're not. Its not the junior guy's fault if a major screw up in design jeopardizes the project / company (assuming it wasn't done without permission).

Rule Engines are one very tenuous issue. Here are some thoughts on them as I see them:
1. It requires businesses significant overhead to bring in expertise to allow developers / architects / solutions providers for new products, but
2. most products are legacy, so when moving into a business rules eninge model, you need to essentially re-implement everything you've ever done, because
3. Integration with a system of this sort becomes very difficult, and somewhat unmanagable, especially when these outside systems share much of the same behaviour

I have a customer who's debating 'replacing the crown jewels' with a rules engine, and every time I hear them talk about it, it makes me cringe. This mind you is replacing the implementation of 10's of millions of lines of code and hundreds or even thousands of inter-dependent data elements with multiple workflow stages increasing the complexity factor. The higher ups just don't realize how complicated their system really is and someone was like 'fuck it, its the new buzz word!'.

Nah, but some people can be royal jack asses, just like everyone else.

I generally go for the self-deprecating developer style. If I earn people's respect without being a braggert, then I know they're not tools and we get along just fine. if my current compensation is any indication, it seems to be working.

Who the fuck cares? Even if you were bravado enough to punch the number in front of everyone in the restaurant in broad dayight, they can't do anything about it unless they steal the card along with it. Chip-in=pin requires both the physical card (or at least a chip clone which to my knowledge doesn't exist -- maybe with destroying the original card to get it) and the PIN number. If my waiter wanted to steal from me, they'd also require the card itself, which is why the 'new norm' for credit cards is to never let the credit card leave your sight/possession. Most sales associates won't even take the card offered. They just direct you to put it int the POS device.