Well, times have changed. If you want to look up, you'd better get packing.

True for individual churches and smaller independent churches.

Not so true for the larger denominations which can have budgets running in the hundreds of millions to billions.

For example, the mormon's recently purchased and will operate several tens of thousands of farmland as a tax advantaged church business. And they have a really plush HQ. It's similar for the catholics and other large orders.

... or a Space Baby?

Wasn't a monolith shaped object spotted on Mars recently?

Fernlicht goes further. At night in the countryside, you can often use it because you're literally the only car on the road.

Or maybe that's just me because when I drive long distances at night, I make it deep in the night so there's no traffic.

I've rarely driven through NRW, but at the northern edge to Niedersachen, around Osnabrück for example, there's definitely lights on the Autobahn. There most definitely are in Berlin, Hamburg, etc. But yes, it's mostly near and in the large cities.

Perhaps you have missed it, but in our last release we released a preview release on FreeBSD?

I had missed it. That's good to hear, to be honest. Excellent news, in fact. In that case, I withdraw my criticism over that.

I'm still very un-fond of some behaviour of the file dialog box. If you're around to listen, I'll happily elaborate.

Seriously? I think a million is conservative. The number of people who will read the header article is more likely to be closer to 4 million.

From the wiki:

In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7 million unique visitors per month and received over 5300 comments per day.[2] The site has won more than 20 awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for Best Community Site and Best News Site. Occasionally, a story will link to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon is known as the "Slashdot effect".

(to the other commenter-- this didn't feel like an advertisement to me. But- you could be right. Even if you are wrong- as I said- doing this regularly would result in it being corrupted by business interests- so even if this ISN'T an advertisement- if we do this enough, they would start to be dominated by advertisements).

It's leveling out faster than that. India and China have been experiencing 20% inflation for high skill jobs and 100% inflation for low skill jobs (still making under $5000 a year but... at 100% a year...).

The quality of workers available thru offshoring has been dropping since 2005 BUT-- offshoring companies have a unique advantage in that they can turn on and off large numbers of workers at a given client rapidly. I.e. you have a project that needs 20 developers, 3 analysts, 1 architect-- and on two months notice- you've got it at an agreed upon rate. Turns out you only need 15 developers or you need 25 developers-- and you've got it.

Meanwhile- the private company has interviewed 17 candidates- offered to 5, and gotten 2 to accept. And 1 of those may not work out. And the private company has a shitty reputation for being a sweat shop PLUS no training PLUS layoffs while the offshoring company values programmer candidates (because they are revenue sources unlike at the private company where they were a cost).

But.. don't trust that the offshore people *really* have the skill sets-- probably 15 of the 20 they send you will have no skill set to a 2 month training course and they'll be training them on your dime. And the offshore people tend to say YES to everything-- which management loves-- but which results in expensive failures. I.e. Can you do the impossible and delivery it in 90 days, "YES! We'll do our best!"

Five million dollars later.. a piece of crap is delivered in 90 days. It finally works (maybe) well enough to use after 180 days and isn't really fully functional for a year... or more.

A fundamental problem is the technology in IT is still changing TOO DAMN FAST. When I started- you could learn a skillset (Cobol, JCL, RPG, Vax Assembly) and use it for 10 to 15 years. Now- outside of maybe SQL- there is a new technology every... single... year... If you miss the boat- you quickly become unhireable.

But you can't really master it and you are always working tons of hours on your own time mastering the new languages and tools compared to the management and sales team who is doing maybe 12 hours of fluffly training combined with drinks in vegas and who are making more money and who don't have to work nights, weekends, and holidays (especially holidays since the systems can be quiesced then).

And then- even if you manage to keep up- massive age discrimination at age 50 (some as early as 45. my god- i pity the poor kids) without legal recourse. Infosys for example requires your high school graduation date on the job application. Not that you graduated. I.E. The EXACT date when you were 18. It should be illegal.. but it's not.

I'm glad I was able to make it, retire, and now I only program for fun again like I did back when I was young. But I did that by living on half of what I made (which was a lot thankfully).

The last year has been one of the best of my life. I'm playing ultimate frisbee again, time to frolic with the girlfriend and time to spend with the grandkids. Life is Good.

Oh.. and way too much minecraft.

Yep, and unfortunately it seems to be patented to the hilt so anyone who can't afford one will just have to risk losing a few fingers until other manufacturers are allowed to do their own versions.

I don't think there is much of a taboo on discussing climate engineering. It's just that all of the proposals I have heard about are just stupid / won't work / would screw up things more, etc. Then there is the "what could possibly go wrong" factor.
It's fine to discuss climate engineering but they'll have to come up with something much better than anything now out there.

I only have local gov experience. It doesn't take much money before the game is all about power. I don't assume that all the wealthy are distracted by the money game; some realize it's just a means to power and power is what they really are addicted to. Luckily, it seems that many are stuck on their money addiction or things would be so much worse than they are. Bigger government isn't much different than little government; similar organizational problems and human nature - I doubt you have significantly more insight.

Public funding of the press: A flawed society will produce flawed results no matter how perfect the system is - it runs on human power. Public funding of the press is not a big problem. If you can't do it right then you are already SOL. Funding the press today in the USA isn't going to save this sinking ship. It is too late. This is how democracies die, they are slowly undermined and people don't notice problems until things are too far gone... so patches appease them and prolong the inevitable fall into despotism in the cycle of life for all democracies. My point is, the founders were wise to fund the press with no strings attached and to separate it as much as they could from government power. Today we have a completely separate press that is still a corrupt lapdog, so arguing that complete separation works should feel really foolish. Citing already failed societies as an example of why something doesn't work is a poor argument. Well, Linux really sucks -- because on my old computer it crashes all the time.... (never mind that nothing runs well on it because it's practically dead.)

Walmart - my city didn't want one; it was our right to not want them. My city fought them and LOST because ultimately it came down to a lawsuit that we would likely win AFTER bankrupting the city. The point is you don't have real freedom if you can be squished at will. No, Walmart doesn't have more rights than the citizens of my city.

I am a participant, an active responsible citizen and any civil society has a government by which the citizens' collective power is manifest. We the people give the government it's power; and that applies to all kinds - the oppressive tyrants only rule at the submission of their citizens (until they rise up - the power always is theirs.) If people do not participate and good people don't get involved then ONLY the self-motivated parties seeking power will run the show. My theory is that the more successful the democracy the shorter lived it will be until it starts into despotism; a happy content citizenry is not vigilant. Politics is not pleasant. never will be. reality sucks; so suck it up stop escaping to the TV people!

Surely you must have volunteered or been part of things where nobody cared to be in charge except the jerk everybody hated because they were a control freak? Next time others having learned their lesson step up. Same kind of thing but a smaller scale. Often, if it's not bad enough people will just tolerate the bad situation because to unseat the jerk is more effort than it would have to stepped up in the 1st place.

Some people still try to debate things that are already settled and others look for solutions before everything becomes a problem. Mankind has a huge list of fuckups to fix - but we either continue as is or we continue to try to improve things. Your viewpoint is incredibly pessimistic. Very few people would say life was better 200 years ago than it is today. Let's take that viewpoint and move forward with it.. We need more Star Trek and less Water World.

Either way, we should be investigating options like these.. You're being pessimistic during the initial stages of discussion - so it brings very little to the table.

There is something called "SawStop" that very rapidly stops the blade and, in the case of a table saw, pulls it down out of the way before it can do serious damage. The trigger is some kind of capacitative sensing I think. The moment the blade touches skin it stops. There are videos on YouTube if you are interested.

I can't help wondering if buying a saw with better safety features would have been a wiser investment though.

Ok, you get all the issues resolved. Then comes the physics and economics... so you get your Mr. Fusion to power all these flying cars from bits of trash thrown into the affordable reaction chamber, then you have to find a way to transform all that waste heat the things are going to give off in huge amounts times the number of cars. Remember, nothing is going to be 100% efficient and anything using propellers... Then you have the majority of horizontal movement energy wasted because after 60mph most of that is put into pushing against the wind...

All this so you can save some money and time on roads? It takes almost nothing by comparison to roll you around on the ground at slower speeds. We have troubles funding the cheap individual vehicles today... or at least people complain a whole lot about the costs and it's not so bad that we are driving at half speed to save on gas which costs less than bottled water.... but the energy costs for flying are just much greater.

Insurance... imagine the insurance... and all the GM recalls not performed...because the death toll doesn't cost them enough $ (and the likely continuation of tort reform means they can afford even more damage.)

No I did not.
I did not say anything about mp3s. And I told you that three or four times now.
I certainly did not say that "I can here the difference". I said "people can hear the difference if a tone is acompanied by an overtone or not" that is all.
In fact I never heared a 320kps mp3, mine are all something like 190, don't know it in fact.