this is more funny than you know. I have had 2 vasectomies...

The Odyssey (best selling single model of minivan) has a higher safety rating than almost all SUVs. It gets better gas mileage (28mpg) than almost all SUVs, and absolutely all vehicles with similar passenger capacity (7 or 8 passengers)... Not to mention resale value and reliability rating.

The Minivan is the practical and logical choice... Not to mention, with seats down/out, the cargo capacity is laughably better than an Explorer or other "large" suvs. I can (and have) move a washer and dryer in mine... which is my litmus test for "cargo capacity". (Explorer and Tahoe, which are "large" suvs, cannot fit a washer/dryer, even with all seats folded).

It is fine to hate Minivans, but to pretend they are somehow less practical than an SUV is kind of laughable.

Minivans are not dead. Pretty much every model still tops 100,000+ sales per year. (Mazda 5 being an exception, though it is really a subcompact with sliding doors, not really a minivan) 2013 model year sales ranked by top sellers:

#31 - Honda Odyssey
#34 - Dodge Grand Caravan
#37 - Chrysler Town & Country
#38 - Toyota Siennav #45 - Kia Sorento

Link

My reality is that they only sell $45,000 suvs or much cheaper minivans that can fit my whole family... So for me, they are here to stay. My minivan seats 8, a suburban seats 8. Most suvs seat 5...

that's just not true. You don't have to do new things to be brilliant. You can do old things, better.
Google search was not new, but it was better
When iPhone came out, there was nothing it did that my Palm Treo didn't do, but it was better
The Printing press, which revolutionized the world, was just a big screw press combined with some thousand year old block printing techniques... it was nothing new.
Every best picture Oscar ever was an old story, retold.
Shakespeare's Hamlet was a re-telling of a common folktale.

DRM is a publisher choice. It is a checkbox in the Amazon "publish my book" interface. All of my books sold through amazon are DRM free. If you want to know how to tell (since it is non-obvious)... under "product details" there is an item called "Simultaneous Device Usage" if that says "unlimited" it is DRM free.

My DRM-free, Amazon hosted and sold ebooks already net me more revenue via "Kindle Lending Library" (where customers may pick one "free" book per month if they are prime and kindle customers) than they do via sales.

The way the lending library works is they fund it every month, then they divide it up based on how often your book was checked out. I assume the ebook service would be similar, but better funded.

We already did this... Even a racist clock is right twice a day

In Marvel Lore, anyone who is worthy may wield the hammer and gain the power of thor... this has included

A horsefaced dude (beta ray bill who now wields a dupe of the hammer, sorta)
A frog named Throg
it has also been wielded by Storm (who is a woman) and Captain America.

This is a non-story, and not the first time a woman has wielded Mjolnir.

Animals in the Disney kingdom including Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Pete et-all are uplifted animals, but canines were resistant to the engineering protocols.

Pluto's breed appears to be almost completely immune to the uplift engineering (although he shows some signs of complex thought). Other canines like the marginally intelligent Goofy, and the devious, but short-sighted Pete show that the engineering has other flaws and or a slow mechanism for all canines, as these two specimens cannot be considered true type-1 beings in their current state. This can be further demonstrated by the inexplicable intelligence leap made in just one generation between Goofy and his son Max, the uplift process was certainly slower for canines than for other creatures, but it appears to be converging toward type-1.

the 10k limit is in place, but banks can be issued a fine if they do not report obvious restructuring. Federally dictated AML (anti money laundering) training requires that "any suspicious transaction" be reported, regardless of amount, and bank policy usually dictates $5000 now.

CFLs burn out at the same rate as incandescents for me, I have 8 year old incandescent bulbs still burning, and 1 month old CFLs that just burned out. I suppose I have fairly "dirty" power in my 1961 house though. I am scared to try LEDs if they supposedly have worse life than CFLs, which are wildly overpriced for a 1 month bulb.

well... generally if you can explain your personal project the rest of the interview is pretty much immaterial. Someone who thinks "hey I could write a program to solve this... then does it, pretty much embodies what I am looking for as a co-worker."

What I am looking for is someone who can code, and people who write code do it to solve problems... If you can't give me an example of solving a problem for yourself, you have to give me an example of solving a problem for your employer.

Compare it to an Auto-mechanic. - If you were a muscle car shop, one of the questions you would ask is "What do you drive, and what's under the hood?" And if they say "Well I take the bus" you would need to ask "So what's the coolest car you rebuilt for your last boss and what were the challenges?" But if they said "I drive a yenko chevelle" it wouldn't really matter what they did for their boss.

Normal humans can become programmers if they go to a technical high school, and attend a science program in college. Typically on slashdot we call them "H1B Visa holders." That is literally the entire philosophy behind the "Bachelor of Engineering" college system in India.

As a peer interviewer:
about 5% of the people I interview seem like "Obsessive programmers" - like TFA suggests (I recommend hiring most of the obsessive programmers).
about 10% of people I interview are competent programmers who are probably normal humans who write code because they have to pay the bills somehow..
about 85% of people I interview have 7 years experience as a "programmer" and definitely could not write code if their life depended on it.

I have found no discernible patterns in resumes to predict these outcomes, but in interviews it is fairly easy.
Question 1 - "So, what was the last program you wrote for yourself at home? What did you write it in, and why did you write it?" - If they have literally any example of programming they did "for fun" or to solve a real life problem, (and they aren't otherwise unhireable) they are hired.

Question 2 - "Describe the last class/module/function you wrote for work, why you wrote it that way, and what was hard about it." - If they have any reasonable answer, we will drill down into competencies... otherwise, they are almost certainly in the 85% category of people who somehow make a living pretending to code.

Almost all of the 10%ers who are "competent" but not "obsessive" have computer science degrees and are very serious about work, but not in to the "hobby" these are normal humans writing code, and doing fine at it. Lots and lots of them were educated in India.

The 5% obsessives were born into it. They (and I am including myself here) would be writing code even if it wasn't their job. Frankly. I have seen all kinds of educational backgrounds in the obsessives, usually computer science, but sometimes music or English, or Math or Geology or no college at all.

I guess what I am saying is that India already realized this, and has a population more willing to stick to a difficult degree plan "just for a job"

meh, you can put all the "non-querty" things on screen... 90% of the keyboard being physical is certainly different/better/more usable than 0% of the keyboard being physical.

If I were designing my perfect phone, it would probably look a lot like this, but bigger and with even more of a keyboard, which is why nobody ever asked me to design a phone.

I still miss my blackberry curve, and if I could have my 5.5 inch Galaxy Note screen size, Android KitKat, and a blackberry keyboard, I would trip over myself to give them my money.

Imagine this headline:
DC Comics donates statue for murdered boy's grave site.

That statue would cost less than the lawyer's fees for this fiasco and a hell of a lot less than a full page ad in the New York Times, but would get them 10x the goodwill.

#cultclassic #sarcasm #possibleJapaneseInfluence #dirtyBibleQuotes