I do not understand why the need to give foreign aid in the first place, I really don't

I am from China, and when I was in China, China was hit by the double whammy from Chairman Mao - in the form of great famine and cultural upheaval

Tens of millions of people perished

Despite of the suffering, China didn't receive any fucking foreign aid from nobody --- and at the end of it, China still survive, and the population of China is still over one Billion

Why then the West wants to give out money to help those "poor" countries? I mean, what the West is thinking?

They think without the "foreign aid" those poor countries will die?

For thousands of years the people of those "poor countries" were there before the "West" is known as the "West ... and they never got any "Western aid" at all, and still, they survived, right?

Don't care if it's brown skin, white skin, dark skin, yellow skin or whatever shade of skin those people are, with or without foreign aid they will survive

With or without the "disruptive method", those "foreign aid" is a waste of money anyway

Hey, let's be frank

In technology almost everyone is a thief

Not only in the corporate settings, even in the academia setting thievery thrives --- you do not even need to look far to read stories of professors stealing and patenting students' ideas from himself / herself

And I am speaking from experience ... I had (at least) one idea stolen by my professor(s) and I couldn't do shit about it --- basically I had the choice of litigation (which would linger for ages) against my professor(s) and the university (which means I would never graduate) ...
 
... or I moved on ...
 
... by not disclosing any more ideas to anyone until I got my chance to try them out myself and patent them if they turn out to be useful

It used to be that the entire world was very scared of the Pressure from the *West* because it would be a crushing blow to whoever the West decided to punish
 
It used to be, no more
 
The West is getting weaker by the day - as their technological / military / moral advantage get plummeted - nowadays even the banana republics in Africa / Latin America / Asia do not care so much about what the *West* wants anymore

Not that long ago people were talking about the huge breakthrough the spintronics would bring - that we are going to have terabytes of DRAM which could retain their memory even when power was switched off, that we could turn on our PC and have an almost instantaneous boot-up

So where is the spintronics nowadays?

If Google is an EU corporation EU will not do _anything_ to Google

EU doesn't care if Google is a monopoly or not - they only use "monopoly" as an excuse to do what they do

What EU really wants to achieve is to break America, starting by breaking American corporations, corporations such as Google

And if they can do Google in, Apple will be next

That's the kicker, ain't it?

No matter how much the citizens have protested, TPTB still REFUSES to listen

We call ourselves a "democratic country" but are we truly democratic?

Our government, the government of the United States of America, is behaving exactly like a tyrannical regime - in which it not only conveniently ignores the wish of the citizentry, it continues to carry out programs which are designed to undermine the validity of the democratic principles within the country

While I will agree with you that some of the NSA spooks have betrayed the United States of America, I do need to point out that it's the POLITICIANS who are the biggest traitors of all

Politicians in Washington DC, many of them, no matter if they are Democrats or Republicans, do not care about America. They only care about power (unlimited power), money (enormous amount of money), and getting re-elected, again, and again and again, ad nauseum

Although the time I have spent in the field of IT is not very long, at least for more than 30 years I have been in this field

And the 30+ years the people that I've met, and I mean, those who can be considered as productive members of the IT fields, none of them are from the "illegal immigrant" category

Yes, there are a lot of immigrants in the IT industry in America, myself included. But none that I know sneaked into America through the porous border between Mexico and the United States

In other words, what Obama just did, giving the 5 million illegals their "legality" hardly benefits the IT field, if at all

The people who choose to be spooks are ordinary people, just like you and me. Many of them choose to become spooks because of their patriotic feeling towards their respective countries, and their willingness to do everything they can (within the confine of the laws, of course) to contribute to the well being of their motherland/fatherland

Not all spooks from CIA/NSA are bad dudes either. There are conscientious people within those organizations because I do have friends (close friends) working in there

On the other hand, the politicians, whether they are the career politicians or otherwise, have no conscience. One has to have no conscience to become a successful politician

The matter on hand has illustrated one thing - that the spooks themselves have raised alarms but it was the politicians who have overruled the spooks and insisted that the illegal programs be continued, and expanded

FTFY

The tag "Rock Star" isn't the tag the TRUE rock stars use for themselves

It was used by the OTHERS to describe those who are so good, so productive that an entire roomful of code monkeys can't even begin to hold a candle to them

And when I mean "productive" I do not mean in code volume alone. They are productive not only in the volume of the quality code that they produce, but also the innovative, the inventive aspects (for the lack of a better word, English ain't my mother tongue, btw) that their code brings

Plus, they are PRODUCTIVE, as I have mentioned above, in up-lifting the people around them, bring people to new heights that they never imagine they could attain

As I have mentioned above, I have have the fortune to work with several of those legendary programmers, and I benefited greatly from the experiences, and I am forever in debt !

A lot of lonely empty people in this world, and they are so afraid of being feeling left alone they would _anything_ to attract attention

In fact, many of those who committed suicide are did what they did, in the vain hope that their death would attract some attention

This, and 10^9999999999 this !!

It is so sad to read comments by the know-nothings who think that they knew everything

They never get any chance to meet with the real top notch talents and the arrogant, disruptive PITAs that they claim to be "rock star developers" do not even come close to the real stuff

I have have the fortune to work with several of the legendary programmers and when I use the word "legendary" I really mean it

They are legendary not only because of their programming skills, not only because of their extra-ordinary ability to conceptualize and implement and produce things that had never exist before, but also because of their willingness to share, to motivate the team, to lead the team to go with them on the most wonderful journey of power achievements

If you are of the top 1% talent you wouldn't be feeling so butthurt over how much that "agent" skims over what you take

Look, I've been in the industry even before Al Gore started his "information superhighway" stump

I worked as a grunt in research labs, buried deep within the big corporate behemoths, I started my own joints, one after the other (they were not known as "startups" back then), sold some, re-invest the $$ by help funding other startups, and so on ... and along the ways I got acquainted with many legendary talents, some still with me, some parted ways, but I never stop searching for talents

Back then there were no "agencies". Heck! Back then there was no linkedin or anything like that, but when we needed talents we went crowdsourcing (no, that phrase wasn't invented either) and via our network of friends and/or acquaintances we got what we want

And yes, I do pay those who helped find me the talent I need, and no, I do not count the money I paid to those (so-called) agents as part of the money I am willing to pay the talent

What we have are business opportunities. What we want is to make money. And to make money we are willing to hire the right person to do the job, and we are willing to pay.

If you are really good, you will be paid what you are worth. Whatever those "agent" skims from you will not eat into your worth

This ain't a zero sum game, man !