There's an English version of the same thing; it's called "Threads" and it's much, much more horrible. It's presented as a docudrama with lots of explanations of how and why damage occurs and people die. Everyone should see it, too.

Go contracting, keep learning, and be philosophical about the things you can't change.

I'm 41, been a software engineer for 15 years, contracting for 10 of those, and I'm currently taking a year off work to do a masters degree in High Performance Computing. IT is a field where there's always something new to do and something new to learn - but to some extent you have to go out and find these things; they aren't going to just come to you.

Managers can be idiots, and co-workers can be infuriating, but you can't change either, so why waste effort and happiness by stressing out about them? Do what you enjoy doing, and do it to the best of your ability, get the good reference, get the next contract, take your pay and go home and live your life with the people you care about.

"Variable declared but not used" isn't noise. If you declared a variable, that means you thought you'd need it. If it turns out you didn't need it, then your understanding of your code evolved while you were writing it, and you didn't clean up your code to match. If you missed one loose end, there's a good chance you may have missed others as well.

Also, unused variables reduce readability.

Nonetheless, melchoir55 is right. Ask anyone who went to high school at an American international school in Europe; the local kids going to European schools were receiving a much higher standard of education. They worked a lot harder, too; we had it easy by comparison.

Another example: if a UK university offers a place to a student with an American high school diploma, the university will often require the student to do a preliminary year at the university to catch up with European students before starting the degree itself.

"In the military they get extensive training in weapons safety, weapons handling, following order, etc."

This is a crucial point which is usually overlooked: in order to use a gun safely, you need to learn the rules and practice them. Believe it or not, a car analogy actually works quite well here: no one would suggest that you don't have the right to travel, and therefore it would be wrong to deny you the right to drive a car, correct? But before you're allowed to drive a car, you have to learn the rules so you know how to do it safely, and you have to pass a test in order to prove that you've done so. No one complains about this because it's perfectly reasonable; unless you know how to use a car correctly, you're a danger to others. Guns are the same.

Nope. You assume that the claims of an atheist and a Christian are equally likely to be true. They aren't; in fact, atheists aren't claiming anything at all. Atheists simply respond to the religious person's claim that a god exists by saying, "Really? Got any evidence for that? No? Then why would I believe it?"

Try replacing the word "god" with "giant invisible man living in the sky" and see how the logic works. Now try it with "tooth fairy", or "unicorns", or "my invisible friend Jerrol". There are equal amounts of evidence - none - supporting the claims that these exist, and that's why the atheist doesn't believe in any of them.

Reddit. I'm going there now.

This. Education is good for society. It may not be practical to give everyone a PHD, or even a bachelors degree, so you have to choose who gets to go to university. The optimal selection criterion is obviously academic ability. Making people pay means the selection process is at least partly based on how much money a candidates's family has, and that will necessarily result in a less-than-optimal selection, and that means less benefit for society. Oh wait, I forgot, politicians have their *own* best interests in mind, not yours.

This was posted yesterday on Reddit, and refuted there as well; a couple of porn torrents are older.

Link: After nearly 9 years of seeding...

A country's constitution is important, but "what's morally right" is important, too, and "moral" essentially means you cause the least suffering for the fewest. Over-permissive gun laws cause harm to many, and so do over-reaching search and seizure powers. There is a strong case against both.

"... and the Supreme Court might declare execution without trial unconstitutional."

Without meaning to criticise what you said, the fact that you had to say that is very telling about how far the USA has fallen.

Gee, media, government, and technology partnership acts to provide commercial sporting event to soldiers despite the remoteness of their locations. How about not putting soldiers in remote locations to start with?

So a giant corporation behaved like a total cocksucker? Colour me a surprised wee bairn...

Did anyone else read that as "Former GOP sufferer"?

If it succeeds, then he got lucky. Doesn't mean it wasn't risky, or that doing this kind of thing is a good idea.