so i guess you know what you're talking about then.

weird. everywhere i've worked, i've always made significantly more than the contractors.

references? no? okay then.

no, scheduling vacation weeks ahead of time during contract negotiations is not the same as "whenever you want".

and p.s., that's exactly how i've scheduled vacation, as a salaried, employee for 20+ years.

yep, you are clever.

ooooh here comes the troll!

on the contrary, i was going on ONLY what was said, you're the one that's reading between the lines.

contractors most certainly do not simply take vacation when they want. their clients need things done just as much as an employer needs things done from its employees.

sure you can take as much "vacation" as you want, as long as you don't need the pay. however, i wouldn't count unemployment as as vacation.

so negotiating a fixed amount of vacation ahead of time in your contract qualifies, as the parent post states, "taking time off when you want"?

good try.

you do understand that when a company offers vacation, you get PAID for the time off, right? what you are "earning" is paid time off, not simply the right to take time off.

i'm not sure you know what "universal app" means. it means a single binary that runs across multiple platforms. it doesn't mean the exact same UI, or the same UI stretched or shrunk to different screen sizes. the binary can inspect the device on which it's running and render different UIs and experiences.

please link to the successful apps that you've authored that rival something like gmail or facebook in their complexity. writing a good, stable, easy to use, beautiful app is hard.

making a virtual profit of $.6B (by writing off more than they paid), and gaining all of Nokia's assets including patents, land, and buildings? doesn't sound stupid to me.

it's interesting how i joked about you copying my troll, and you get out of that that i take myself too seriously. it's like you have this rolodex of cliche phrases and you are throwing them out at random regardless of the context. your first response was barely intelligible by the way.

oh come on at least you can do is come up with your own troll. how lazy are you?

i live in silicon valley, where BMWs and Mercedes (US luxury cars) are the norm, so yeah, #2 is quite true. for #3, i realize i'm well off compared to much of the world, which is exactly my point. the observation that someone has something nicer than you isn't license to revolt against the system.

maybe english is not the first language here. do you know the term "whoosh"? it's the sound of an important contextual point passing quickly between your ears.

no, it's the realization that any large bureaucracy is going to lose some things in the exchange of hands, and that not everyone is going to agree on how taxes are used. people use the "they are wasting my money" argument constantly. let's be honest. it's mainly about rationalizing not paying your fair share.

unreasonable. i seriously doubt greece knows how it's elite class gangsters are evading the law. let alone the EU's ability to prove or deny that through some sort of an audit.

why do lenders make loans? because they are good people and want to help? no, it's too make a profit. they lend when they expect to be repaid with interest. the EU banks have a very high chance of repaying a debt, which is why credit was opened to them.

greece has very low chance of repaying their existing loans, let alone repaying a new loan.

same reason when an individual walks into get a new car on a loan their rate is going to be highly variable based on their credit history, or they'll be denied all together.