If they all have a bad reputation I start the good one, advertise myself as the less-fleas brand and cash in on that market.

So the state cleaning it up is the solution instead of establishing a brand with a good reputation?

If I have to call a taxi I'm going to call the one I'm less likely to get out of with a case of fleas.

Sadly there is something worse than the protection rackets that already exist. Too bad most of these people will just yell "tinfoil hat!".

Why?

Compensate them because their government backed monopoly in which they prevented hundreds if not thousands of others from profiting because they worked the system in such a way that guaranteed the laws of supply and demand didn't affect their business? They're lucky there isn't a lynch mob coming after them for the affront to the natural market, losing a protected monopoly is no reason to reward them.

Look, we're fucking that group of people with uncalled for protectionist laws, shouldn't we fuck the others also?

It's their own fucking faults. They lobby to make sure this is the system that's in place to prevent competition from companies like Uber. They got the laws they paid for, it's the people who bought the first wave of licenses/medallions whatever that made bank, now everyone else has to deal with it.

An upstart breaking that system is exactly what real business needs.

I've always hated the Fn key position, I use the Ctrl key way to often to like that.

That being said my W540 is the best laptop I've ever used.

Score!

Beautiful reply!

I really liked your approach on how to sell it to girls too. I'm going to try to figure out how to sell my daughter on learning a bit more. She's unfortunately part of the current 12 year old generation of thinking that she knows about technology because she can use it. I'm working on getting her interested in how it ticks, unfortunately as the parent that doesn't have her most of the time it's difficult to work into a couple of days at a time.

My story, while not as bad in many respects as yours was just as bad if not worse as far as learning was concerned. (Better home life thankfully) I lived in the deserts of West Texas, in a poor community. There were no computers I could use, and my parents actually said "we didn't have computers when we were kids, you don't need them now", so I had next to zero family support, and next to no opportunity to learn elsewhere as the industry of my town revolved around cantaloup, onions, and cattle. I couldn't even get something from a business trash pile because business trash piles in that are consisted of animal waste and rotten vegetation.

Despite that I read Discover Magazine, I read 321 Contact when I was young, I read Omni, I read Popular Science, I kept up with what was going on even if it was what was going on in what was practically a parallel universe. Every piece of electronic junk I could get my hands on I drug home and took apart, one of the first things I successfully fixed was 45 lb Sony Betamax. I had motors, batteries, LED's old telephones with asbestos and cloth insulators, microphones speakers, you name it hooked up with chewing gum and electric tape. Finally when I was 17 I was given an 8088 - this was right after the first socket 7 Pentiums came out. I was overjoyed to have it.

Within a year in the business world I was ahead of many peers my own age who grew up immersed in computers (yes I moved to a metro area). Within two or three years the country bumpkin origins story was nearly completely neutralized - with one lingering exception. I never really learned to program. I do alright when I need to alter some code, but I'm not a coder, and I never found time to really learn to do it well. I was always too busy doing massive amounts of sysadmin, cabling, hardware, various whatever else work. It's still on my to-do list but it matters less all the time.

You're a very fortunate man.

I too am fortunate. My wife is by no means a techy geek type, but her dad is, her brother is, most of the people around her growing up were at least a little on the geek side of things so she admires the fact I am one, but that was good enough in my case, especially since I was already mid-30's when we married. I'm well past my live and breathe geek things phase, having someone who is happy with what I do with it works great for me.

It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with. Most of these guys secretly want a geek girl that's close to equal but just slightly better than them in certain areas so they have someone to push them and compete with.

These are the same guys wondering why women are so focused on fashion and reality TV, things which are not logical.

Each of these geek guys secretly wants to be asked by a pretty young thing real technical questions about what they do, not "how can you spend all of your time in front of a computer?" but "exactly what is this compiler you're talking about?"

I'm 37 years old, I've been a professional geek since I was 18, I have come across these geek girls. The place I came across the most of them was an ISP that attracted young people in general. Even in that place most of the females saw what they did as a job to make a few bucks, but roughly 5% were interested in doing what the slightly older guys did (which included me, one of the older people there at the age of 21).

I have become convinced from my own interactions that this just is not a female thing. I helped anyone who asked for help, I encouraged learning, self research and gave good long explanations that were fit for a classroom environment. The fact that I have seen women do well, succeed, and run with the men tells me they can. The fact only a few of them would take the initiative to do it when you had someone like me, and my other employees that I encouraged to help and to train any who asked - and did - yet only about 5% wanted to know more than the minimum causes me to wash my hands of it - stop trying to guilt trip me for being good at my job when there are proportionally way less women who can keep up.

Since that job I've worked with other women, other good women who I consider my level. I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty. Nope, most wanted to do the paperwork - which I didn't really mind, because I hate paperwork, but other than title and the official list of duties these women were not my direct peers. Even at the worst of these jobs there was usually one or two women would would run with the guys, but for each of them there was two or three that wouldn't. A man taking the same attitude towards work as those others wouldn't last more than a week or two before being let go.

I'm getting pretty tired of these guilt-tripping affirmative action programs. Instead of giving me more of that 5% or 1 in 3 depending on where I was I'm worried these programs might work and flood the workplace with the 95% or 2 in 3 that the natural dedicated geeks, yes, the men and the women who will run at their level will be expected to carry.

I miss the Dockers with the almost hidden zipper on the leg to hide your phone in.

I really don't see what this has to do with Open Source though.

Exactly! There's no reason women's clothes should cover 70% of the sales floor while the 15% devoted to men (after baby items and household goods are accounted for) should happen. Just make everything kilts, togas, jeans, and T-shirts!