We were running a casual guild, open to all, no requirements except "don't be an asshole". Even that was too much for some people.

I was saying that basic was an intermediate stage that noone wanted to bother with. If you want memory locations and jumps, going straight to assembly is the easier route, IMO, because it drops the syntactic clutter of C64 basic. If you want conditionals etc. you are better off with Pascal.

Don't teach people GOTO and GOSUB, teach them loops, conditionals and data structures. Then teach them assembly.

No need to learn them a bad intermediate language nobody uses. And even most C64 owners dropped it ASAP and went straight for assembly.

Why o why do people drop Pascal? It's still one of the best languages to learn how to program: it's typesafe, compilers plenty, and you can easily create custom types (records). With pointers to records you can make lists, trees etc. - all the constructs basic to the trade.

He means he needs time to grind all those cards and get them in one deck together. Not much skill involved, no.

For me, that was the reason to quit as well. When there was no longer a need for 80 people to behave in a guild in order to even have a shot at running Molten Core, or Deathwings Lair, the pressure on behaving yourself dropped. By the time 10 people were enough for everything, every guild had fractured and you could just PUG everything. For me, the social aspect of the game was the most interesting. When that went out the door, the appeal went as well.

I'll never regret my time spent as part of the leadership of a large guild though. It gave me a lot of experience in dealing with people - enough even to quit my job and start out for myself because I felt I had outgrown the job I held at the time.

The problem with eugenics was not just that it said that culling undesirables was a way to improve the species, it also specifically designated who was undesirable: the poor, the retarded, the jews, blacks, and everyone who differed from the social norm in general. Now tell me: what genetic condition would produce dissenters? Or unemployed? The whole concept was way more retarded than its victims.

I was a permanent worker with a job for 3.5 years and one for 10 years, then I went freelance and got all kinds of 6 months/3 months/12 months contracts. That gave me a different perspective. What I see is that there is zero correlation between length of employment and how good someone is. I know a couple of freelancers that have very long CV's, but they're not so hot because they're hot potatoes that don't deliver. And I've seen a few people who stayed for years at the same company because they couldn't get anything else. And all the situations in between.

Anyone selecting workers based on their history alone is basing himself on a KPI with very low predictive value. The reason *why* someone left is much more important.

I run projects with companies that last for 3-6 months, delivering complete data warehouses (at least the first iteration, documentation and trained permanent employees). And that includes the time to start things up, get the resources, people and materials, etc.

18 months is longer than my longest project to date. I've had to fire someone from a project where he wasn't making a positive contribution in *week two*. Let alone 18 months. I really can't imagine that.

Maybe it's a bit like the people who claim you need years of experience with a certain toolset to become proficient. To which I reply: "so getting a Ph.D. in physics or CS is easier than learning the quirks of your tool? Get a better one." The same goes for your business. If it takes 18 months to learn the quirks, there's something wrong and perhaps you need to bring in someone with a fresh perspective for a second opinion.

This system was actually prevalent in more countries, like The Netherlands. However, the pension funds *did* check any suspicious last-minute pay rises (over the last few years before retiring). My father worked for a company that did that once, the pension fund inquired, they couldn't provide a good reason and the pension fund said: "okay, we'll not harm our client, but every cent we have to pay above the normal pension she'd have received otherwise will be payed by you". They then pre-calculated the pension and fined the company for the full amount. They never tried that particular trick again.

So my view is that the last-month pension isn't the problem by itself. It's the lack of checks and balances which made it untenable.

In the financial sector (locally), it's impossible to work *more* than 4 days a week. You don't get any contract offered with more than 36 hours (4x9). I work slightly less, because I'm on schedule with 4x8 (and a bit). Fortunately I got a new contract with a 50% pay rise this year.

Are we talking about the bitcoin that was used on Silk Road? Because i'm pretty sure it wasn't the Red Cross and the Salvation Army trading their stuff there.

Yes, I'm sure that will deter the mafia when they come over to collect their assets: "it wasn't me! honest it wasn't! I just happened to find the bitcoins at an auction!" :)

Given the FTC complaint, if the statements made there are true T-mobile's going to be paying a lot of money this year: The FTC claims they made it impossible for the customer to detect the fraud in the first place, ignored all warning signs from those that managed to detect it anyway, then did not provide full refunds in all cases but partial at best, none at worst - and told those customers to deal with the scammers themselves while failing to provide the contact details they had.

If these things can be proven (should be pretty easy, the accusations are highly specific), T-mobile is looking at a pretty hefty class action suit.

What are you *doing* to that poor steak??? With that much shit tacked onto it, you might as well eat fishsticks.