While I agree that focusing your entire life around succeeding at your job is not the way to live your life, I disagree that you need to work just enough to be able to do the things that are unrelated to work. The comfortable balance point is different for everyone and, for the lucky few (which I count myself a member of), the things they really enjoy overlap substantially with their jobs. The last time I was laid off, I had 4 offers on the table when I made my decision for the next position. I could have taken the position for a Wall Street firm making up to six figure salaries, or the position that was 9-5 and nobody ever worked more, or the one I actually took. Sure, I work some long hours (a 2 month stretch of 70+hours/week), but sometimes I don't. I get to solve some problems that are extremely gratifying to me both professionally and personally, which is a huge benefit. When you're off visiting Europe, I'm figuring out how to reduce an hour long ingestion process down to 60 seconds by researching more efficient data structures and algorithms. At the end of the day, I'd wager good money that I got just as much enjoyment out of my research and implementation as your did riding around the countryside. Plus, I get the side benefit of it also being good for my career.

It's not a matter of whether it's more dangerous or not, it's a matter of whether it's dangerous enough to be worth the cost of disallowing it. I'm of the opinion that it's not. The same holds true of radios and passengers... both result in worse driving, neither to an extent that its worth banning them given the cost of doing so.

On a side note...

I contend that if you're stupid enough to think not being rude is more important than driving safely, then perhaps you shouldn't be driving in the first place. If I'm on the phone and I get into a situation that requires my attention, I pay attention to the situation, not the phone. The same EXACT thing is true of a passenger. Both my wife and I have told each other on occasion, when the other was a passenger, to stop talking because we need to pay attention to the road (heavy rain, traffic ahead, etc). If you're not willing to do that, get off my roads...

> There is plenty of evidence that cell phones are a major cause of driver inattentiveness and accidents. As there is for radios, CBs, babies, passengers, etc. Obviously, banning all these things from the car should happen at the same time. The point is that we need to decide what things are worth the risk of allowing them in an automobile and what things aren't. For those things that are, the driver needs to be responsible for making sure they take the steps necessary to mitigate the risk (more room between you and the car in front of you, ignoring the passenger/baby/person on the phone when there's something more to pay attention to on the road, etc). Personally, I think requiring hands free operation of a phone while driving a car is reasonable. It mitigates the risk of talking on the phone to some extent (making it more like talking to a passenger) and is easily accomplished (even if it just means using the speakerphone). Taking away hands free is more of an inconvenience than it's worth and introduces additional risks (like many cars pulled over on the side of the highway halfway in the lane because there's no shoulder, etc). It's just not worth the cost involved to ban it.

Apple is happily having other companies banned from releasing their smartphones in various companies using patents. One can hardly expect the Android base to not respond in kind.

You must not be doing the same whiteboard problems I have. The ones at Google in particular can easily fill up an entire whiteboard with code, but they're only one example.

Even more important to me, paper/whiteboards don't have the ability to move code around. I'm an extremely non-linear coder; I write the code as it comes to mind and add the pieces needed to it as I see they're needed. Not being able to move code around, refactor, wrap blocks in checks, or even just add lines of code in above what I'm currently working... kills me.

To be fair, since the internet is global, every government that tries to enforce it's own rules on it is engaging in the acts of a vigilante. That's doubly the case when they go after businesses that are not physically present in their own country.

If I was going to be in Australia for more than a week, I'd do my best while there to adjust my accent so they could better understand me and do my best to learn to understand them. If they came here, I'd expect them to do the same.

In theory, anyone can learn to understand any accent. It's a matter of best use of time and environment, though. If you're one of the minority speaking with (or having trouble understanding) an accent and you're in that acccent's home environment, then it's on you to adapt. As you take away "minoring" and who's home environment you're in, the responsibility to adapt changes targets.

Instead, they decided to build their own dead language. That's a solid plan. That being said, Tcl isn't dead and it's actually a fantastic scripting language to add to other programs. It's actually pretty solid as a full development language, too. It has it's warts, but so does every language.

What you're saying is certainly true, but keep one thing in mind... they're shutting down the trains in New York (subway and metro north) on Saturday for the duration of the event. The amount of people that use mass transit dwarfs that of DC. The fact that it's closed is going to have a huge impact on the traffic,

The company that makes (publishes) the game gets payed once for each copy sold/being used in the wild. If two people want to be able to play the game, then they get paid twice.

The companies that resell used games get payed once for each time they help transfer ownership of one such instance of a game from one person to another.

Admittedly, its slightly more complicated than that... but I don't see what possible issue can be raised by game companies without the same issue being applicable to any product that has a physical representation that's all that's required to use it, ie one that can be resold.

Even better, imo:

char c = 1["abc"]; // c = 'b'

Type 2 Diabetes is often caused by life-style choices. Type 1 Diabetes is a medical condition caused by a failure of the pancreas to do it's job. I know you said "often", but the distinction between the two types is fairly significant.

The definition of professor depends entirely on the locale and university in question. Your definition, while one of them, is not the only one. Poking around dictionaries and wikipedia will provide other definitions (up to and including anyone that happens to teach at a college/university).