"How many of us liked shop? How many young people should be training for skilled manufacturing and service jobs rather than getting history or political science degrees?"

I don't know, perhaps you could ask someone who could give you an answer based on prior experience - like an economic historian?

Carpenter Who Cut Off His Fingers Makes "Robohand" With 3-D Printer, Cuts Off Other Fingers With 3-D Printer

"The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?""

Two words for you: "git blame".

A leading contender for the Francis Fukuyama Award For Public Fatuousness.

Wow, it's always a tough competition, but this may win "Ridiculous Slashdot Headline Of The Week".

Logic 101, folks. Let's recap that headline:

"TCP/IP Might Have Been Secure From the Start If Not For the NSA"

Now, what's the story here? One of TCP/IP's designers had access to some then-bleeding-edge crypto *that was part of an NSA project*, but couldn't include it in TCP/IP because it was secret.

Now, can we support the idea that "if not for the NSA" that crypto could have gone into TCP/IP? No, because "if not for the NSA" that crypto *wouldn't have fucking existed at all*. The NSA wrote it. So the choices are "code written, but not available for use" or "code not written at all". Practical difference for the purposes of TCP/IP: zip.

Ah, ISWYM. Sorry, Slashdot threading always makes it tricky to figure context :/

Now I see the context, I agree with you, and nothing in the debate seems to have suggested that's his position.

He contributed to the campaign for Proposition 8. The text of Proposition 8 was this:

"Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

The state of affairs prior to Prop 8 was that the state supreme court had determined that marriage between two partners of the same sex was valid and recognized in California. Thus Prop 8 was, very clearly, precisely and inarguably, a measure that specifically abolished marriage for people of the same-sex.

Marriage is not a right, no. But the right not to be discriminated against by the state *is* a right.

No-one has a right to demand that the state (federal government, state government) be in the business of defining marriage and granting particular privileges to people it considers to be 'married' at all. It wouldn't be a violation of anyone's constitutional rights if the federal government, or a particular state government, just got out of the business of marriage entirely.

But as long as governments choose to recognize a state called 'marriage' and grant particular benefits to people they consider to be 'married', people absolutely *do* have a right for that to be implemented in a non-discriminatory way.

It has been pointed out in other sub-threads, but not this one: this is not a question of personal beliefs, but financial support of active legal discrimination.

"I think it's wrong for two people of the same sex to get married" is a personal belief.
Contributing to a campaign to pass a law to have that belief enforced by the state is not a personal belief.

"Look for real companies designing and building real products for proper customers."

Specifically, if you're an older programmer, look for very large companies with very old products that are so mission-critical they cannot be redeveloped. Or find a good recruiter who does.

My father spent the last ten years or so of his career contracting out at obscene per-hour rates to shops which needed people who could write COBOL to maintain silly little things like, you know, nuclear power plants and the back ends for national banks. Not *important* stuff like apps for ordering coffee, but it pays a living.

He was still getting pleading emails from recruiters two years after he retired.

I'm assuming the OP is Canadian. I doubt many Americans would manage the "Tie Domi doing figure skating" reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

(basically, it's Dancing with the Stars...ON ICE!)

What exactly are we building those absurd arctic "patrol ships" for, do you think? Patrolling? For...polar bear poachers?

Canada produces plenty of copyrighted works, sure. We don't exactly *export* a lot of them, though. I'm not sure how much demand there is in South Korea for episodes of Trailer Park Boys, Murdoch Mysteries or Corner Gas, and those are some of Canadian TV's success stories. :)

Compare and contrast with the other AC whining about evolution below.

When you're being accused by nutters from both sides of being biased towards the other side, I'd say you're doing a reasonable job of being neutral. See also: the BBC.

From summary (and presumably TFA):

"one of the most terrible sins on Wikipedia is to edit articles for pay, or otherwise violate the 'neutral point of view' policy"

but...that's not what NPOV is about. NPOV isn't a conflict-of-interest policy. It doesn't say anything about editing articles for pay.