Don't forget about the Andromeda Strain! (1969)

...and there's my alma mater sitting tied for 11th :-)

The school that, I will most emphatically add, cost me less for the duration than Harvard costs per *semester these days!

thousands of babies across the globe suddenly die in their sleep...

Actually in a way they have... since bringing said pocket knife to school is often an expulsion offense the kids are only learning those skills now at home or in scouts/other program like that. I'm not that old but even when I was a kid we used "dangerous weapons" all the time and leaned how to use them properly in *school (as well as the other listed). The bubble wrapped world we live in doesn't go for that so much.

I think Ben Affleck starred in that one...

Doesn't help as much as you'd think since many users hook up to their company WiFi to make their phones and tablets (especially tablets) work right.

I have one of my browsers permanently proxied through an SSH tunnel out of the office. Not 100% (nothing is these days... how much to I trust my shell provider really?) BUT at least I know I'm getting out of the government office I'm in where I *presume they are accessing anything and everything they can.

Zombies.

They already took away the ability to disable ads this week... We have always been at war with Beta.

Ditto. Run by the university too. So far as I know there were no psych experiments going on but then again Madison has a fairly active psych department so who knows ;-)

As for this study... why people drink? All for their own reasons... but mostly because they can.

I could write a fairly in depth thesis on the subject just based on my past 20 years of spending ~5 nights a week in a bar (the last 2 of which without alcohol) but I don't feel I would be contributing anything new to the subject (and neither will these people)

This story is what it is... what I'm mad about is how quietly in the past day my ability to disable ads went away. If that's the way it is so be it but poof there it went with not so much as a whisper!

1) This is a projected shortfall for 6 years from now not now. That being said I rarely give credit to such speculation as the logic behind is usually lacking.

2) Having recently been in the job market there are *TONS of jobs available in the Software field at least in my area (Minneapolis, MN) but even more so searching nationally. You may or may not have the skills or experience or desire to do certain types of development but there is no shortage of computer jobs at the moment.

Thanks for the fairly sane post :-)

I've been handed "failed" projects numerous times... I'm good at taking them at fixing them. (and because of that it's a regularly offered job to me) One thing that hasn't been mentioned is initial code analysis. A well crafted, *objective (no slandering the original developer), review of the code in advance can go a long way towards easing tensions later. When you demonstrate the issues you are about to fix and *then fix them you are more likely to get the credit you deserve.

Another note: if the original code was written by your *single well respected member of the company then if it is truly terrible then there should be very little stopping you from taking the re-write route (assuming the intended product isn't infeasible). You are better off designing the product properly from scratch anyway instead of trying to piece-meal repair something as terrible as you imply.

Anecdotal: 1 contract job I was given they literally gave me the entire source repository in advance of the interview and asked me to check it out (project that was WAY over budget and over schedule). They wanted me to "finish up a few features" and deliver. I wrote a long plain text email review of the code telling them how bad the entire situation was and the job was given to me (with orders of magnitude larger budget) before I even went in.

When I started working in the industry companies were all looking for 10+ years of Java experience when the language had only existed for 4 years. Companies will always ask for the impossible... job hunting 101.

As for the OP's question my current job is a great example of what he may go through:

I've spent nearly 15 years writing standalone j2Se applications for a variety of uses. I'd bumped into Web in a variety of ways but it'd never been my actual job and so got very little of my time. There are a number of other technologies as well such as JPA, Spring, etc that I'd seen, maybe fixed, but not created in.

My current job has been a learning experience as, although my foundation in base Java is quite solid, almost every technology/framework/etc we're using here was new to me 1st day on the job. I was very clear about this in the interview. Their response / reason for hiring me was exactly right: You're a great programmer the rest of this you can learn.. we're not worried about it.

Obviously this takes a certain amount of intelligence on the part of the hiring manager and some skills to get past the filters but honestly *every job I've ever had has used some tool or skill I didn't possess on hiring. It's almost in your better interest to find the job and let them pay you to do the learning once you know exactly what you will need to do *that job.

Only aside I would say is if you've lived in a world of *pure C then you probably need to wrap your head around OOP concepts. They're not that hard really but it's enough of a different way to interpret the world that you should get your head moving in that direction.

I'm slowly switching off as I'm inspired to do so but many of my domains are still on register.com (part of N.A.)

They are constantly pushing WebLock on me via near daily email BUT it has never been automatically added to my service. Particularly at that disgusting price who would?

Honestly I'm guessing an Id10t error here... He accidentally opted in and is now complaining about it. I'll give him a small benefit of the doubt that they push it so hard that's it's actually kind of easy to accidentally opt in BUT it is not forced as far as I've ever heard or seen.

I think it doesn't really matter how safe the auto drive is or how attentive the driver is when it goes to answering the OPs question. The legality will be (should be) exactly the same as when you're using cruise control. When I driver engages such a "tool" to "assist" their driving they are not handing liability over to the "tool". If I engage cruise control and look away and cruise control propels me into another vehicle that has stopped in front of me I am still 100% liable for that accident (with a possible lawsuit potential towards the automaker if I *tried to disengage cruise and it refused to do so).

Similarly with Auto Drive: When I engage it I am handing over the *control not the liability. The potential for lawsuits against the automaker becomes greater because, frankly, the chances for finding a "hole" in the algorithm that results in a crash is greater BUT from a purely legal standpoint the driver is still liable for anything that happens while they are behind the wheel.