You obviously don't recognize a shorthand expression for C AND C++. Different languages, sure. Separate languages, not entirely. Doesn't matter since I'm not a programmer by trade. I took programming to understand how software works on the hardware.

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that Google isn't another generic Silicon Valley company.

All Uber needs is one good lawsuit, say, a driver running over a boy scout with a little old lady in the crosswalk, to make all the profits disappear. The business model haven't been tested in court yet. So liability may not be limited to the drivers.

Looks like Uber is becoming the next Amazon by pursuing every possible angle to maintain growth while in search of nonexistent profits. Looking forward to the Uber Phone rollout.

I thought it was because all the gravity kept getting sucked out of the ozone hole.

Putting your kids out on the streets wouldn't be good for society.

Protecting the data center from EMP is one thing. If the pipes to Internet aren't protected against EMP, data entering and leaving the data center will get corrupted. Garbage in, garbage out.

The dean fought back against the college administration. As a student, I was frustrated that EVERYTHING was taught in Java because it didn't require a site license. The job market then had too many Java programmers. (If Python becomes the new teaching language, we will soon have too many Python programmers.) I jumped at the chance of learning shell scripting and C/C++ during his Unix administration. I was bitterly disappointed that the assembly language class I wanted to take got cancelled in my final semester.

Old George Carlin joke:
Here’s a good example of practical humor, but you have to be in the right place. When a local television reporter is doing one of those on-the-street reports at the scene of a news story, usually you’ll see some onlookers in the background of the shot, waving and trying to be seen on television. Go over and stand with them but don’t wave. Just stand perfectly still and, without attracting attention, move your lips, forming the words, “I hope all you stupid fuckin’ lip-readers are watching. Why don’t you just blow me, you goofy deaf bastards.” The TV station will enjoy taking the many phone calls.

Re-imaging a system takes a minimum of four hours. You have to track down the location of the system. You have to browbeat the user into surrendering the system for most of the day. You may have to backup multiple user profiles (some systems have 200+ users and 50GB+ of data). The re-imaging process takes ten minutes. And then you have transfer the user profiles back, return the system to the user, and field phone calls for a month as the user(s) nitpick over the system as they believe you broke something.

My job as a security support specialist is to fix the system after the automation had FAILED. Otherwise, the system won't communicate with the servers, won't get patched and updated, and becomes a security risk to the rest of the network. Maybe someday my team will get replaced by a code monkey. Maybe someday Microsoft will stop writing operating systems with spaghetti code and major vulnerabilities.

Fixing each system is a lot faster than re-imaging each system. That would be a huge waste of resources. Everything is done remotely in the background without inconveniencing the user. A typical fix takes 15 to 30 minutes. My team fixes 1,000 systems per week.

The only person complaining about my associate degree is YOU. I'm quite satisified with my second associate degree, which Uncle Sam paid for with a $3,000 tax credit, and making the college president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major. (I earned my first associate degree in general education after graduating from the eight grade and skipping high school.) Perhaps you're trying to compensate for something, say, a lack of rigor?

I work on a team of 20 security specialists responsible for 80,000 Windows systems. We each have 15 to 20 years of IT experience. About 10% of the systems don't patch properly, have broken antivirus clients, incorrect software versions, unauthorized software, and many other issues. We remediate (i.e., fix) 1,000+ systems per week. Information security is a growing field.

Actually, my instructor was the dean of the department.

I went back to school beween 2002 and 2007 on a part-time basis while working full-time to learn computer programming. The market for IT classes was still hot and most classes had waiting lists in 2002. Healthcare became the new money major that everyone chased after. When I graduated five years later, all my required courses for graduation were cancelled as they weren't enough students and took them as independent study classes. Back then everyone had laptops in their backpacks.

Actually, they're not. Traditional publishers sell ebooks at higher price ($10-$20) to cover their declining print publishing business. The sweet spot price for ebooks is $2.99. If traditional publishers didn't have to prop up print, they would make more money on ebooks.