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Comment Re:how does JavaScript work without computers? (Score 1) 112

So you need to solve the issue of electricity, internet access, education to read and write, education to read and write English, and the inapplicability of most modern hints and tips to subsistence farming that goes on in most of sub Saharan Africa, and also local crops.

In most cases, the local farmers know how to get the most out of their land, that isn't the problem - its that getting the most out of their land does fuck all for them, it won't raise them out of poverty, just like it didn't raise their parents out of poverty.

And in most of Africa, it isn't the local officials which stand in the way of these sort of things, its the locals themselves - I have extensive experience of Uganda, Namibia, Botswana and other countries, and in pretty much all cases its the locals which reject real means of raising themselves out of poverty because they haven't changed their mind set about what is important. One of our friends is a qualified nurse, and all of his siblings have been through similar education, while his father cannot read or write, cannot speak English, and still lives in a mountain village with no running water, no electricity, and a several hour drive to a tarmac road. So how did he do it? He sold his land. Was it easy? No, the rest of the villagers derided him for selling his ancestral land and no one would buy the land off him for three years. But now he has seven educated children, and a comfortable retirement ahead of him, while he has already outlasted Ugandas average life expectancy...

In another case, my wife treated a man who had been put through university - be came to the hospital with a growth. Except he came far too late - he had had the local village "doctor" treat it for years, only coming when it started bleeding. Cancer, spread to the bone - he died later that night. Wasted money.

Its not technology, education, medicine, or farming hints and tips that is needed, its a fucking huge epiphany by the locals.

Comment Re:should be banned or regulated (Score 2) 237

On each of your points I will say why for a different reason:

1. Licence / certification: What does this bring to the ability to ride in someone else's car? They are already licensed to be on the road, why should this license magically not apply when they carry someone other than a friend / family member?

I can already cook and make meals for my friends, why do I need various licenses and inspections to open a restaurant for someone other than a friend / family member?

2. Insurance: This is more of a problem with the insurance system than anything else. Why do different levels of insurance exist when a vehicle is used in different circumstances. Either apply a blanket policy which is compulsory (Australia has compulsory third party insurance for any registered vehicle), or change all insurance schemes to grade the vehicle by real time risk, i.e. km driven in a period. Why should a car be perfectly fine insurance wise to drive on the road and then suddenly not be fine when it's carrying another passenger?

My home has perfectly fine accident damage for when I invite friends and family over, so why do I need public liability insurance if I then choose to run a business from it that involved people coming over?

Hint - when you aren't doing something for profit, that is taken into account in liability cases. The moment you intend to make a profit from the action, your liability changes and so you need additional insurance to cover it. When running a business in both your own and my examples, the standard that you are held to changes dramatically, even when there is a comparable non-business version of your actions.

Comment Re:Too little, too late (Score 1) 525

Mono is actually very incomplete, and I'm not talking about the major components that people usually bring up like WinForms - its missing a lot of the lesser used method overloads in various places, so if your code uses one then you are SOL. You are encouraged to treat it as a bug and submit a report, but its still an issue when you have deadlines approaching.

Comment Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score 1) 525

They are integrating major parts of the development process into other, existing editors rather than porting VS (which would be a huuuuuuuge job) - for example, serious effort is being put into adding debugging and intellisense into SubLime Edit for .Net stuff.

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