Hell.. it takes a good 10 minutes to figure out what web site Sanjay "Shawn" Prakrameshi is trying to direct you to!

I got a call two days ago from these people. I strung them along until they gave me a web address to go to in order to download some software and run it on my computer. Then while they were expecting me to do that, I ran a WHOIS on the host and IP, found out who was hosting them (it turned out to be an American company) and I contacted their abuse team and reported the site as being fradulent. 24 hours later, their web site was shut down.

It also helps when you contact their abuse department, that you tell them you work for an antivirus company and you're going to add the IP address of the site to your blacklist. In many cases, there are hundreds if not thousands of web sites operating from the same IP. They will take quick action rather than have one bad customer cause 900 other customer sites to not be accessible.

I am not sure there's much advice us older programmers can give new developers because the industry is a lot different now.

In the old days we were often tasked with solving a problem, and we were more-often free to use whatever tools and technology were best, and we also thought of development environments as tools, which we could switch out if the application required something different. We also did all our own testing. I recently worked with a younger programmer on a project and it was miserable. He couldn't give me 20 lines of code that didn't have a bug in it, because he was dependent upon having some QA person test his work and an IDE that would hilight every mistake.

Nowadays there is so much abstraction going on in programming, people don't really seem like they're programming as much as they're using some sort of GUI development tool and plodding through innumerable amounts of API documentation and going on witch-hunts to try and figure out why something that's documented to work, doesn't actually work. I remember a big Oracle project I was on where my software wouldn't work properly and I couldn't figure out why. It took me several months of bitching on usenet to finally get a rep within Oracle contact me privately and tell me I wasn't crazy, they knew about the bug and just weren't acknowledging it. In the old days, there wasn't as much of that going on. Programming was simpler and less bureaucratic.

I think the reason there's no job security in programming is because basically, nobody's really doing any "programming" these days.

Modern programmers know less about machines and languages than they do APIs and UIs. Everything is so object-oriented and encapsulated, and there are so many square pegs developers are asked to fit into round holes, they're not really designing stuff as much as working on an assembly line sticking various parts-pieces together with no real sense of oversight of the big picture.

So the consumers love their team so much they always want to watch the team play. They just don't want to pay for tickets or pay for the TV channel to watch.
Maybe it is time for the major league sports teams to just give in and make watching their games completely free and supported by advertising. I mean we're pretty far along already. Adverts on the screen all the time, swooshing adverts on the screen intermittently, adverts between plays, commercials, logos all over the field, etc.
Let's just for for the gusto... "Frito Lay presents the snapping the ball the quarterback, as he fades back in the team's signature Cadillac move. He Snickers tosses the ball to the wide receiver who's catch is sponsored by Taco Bell and runs to the Minute Maid mid-field where he's taken down by Office Max's linebacker.

Look.. the teams in cities and states have 0 to do with the city or state any more, the players are from all over the world, training camps are in another part of the county and they'd relocate for a deal that made them 2% more money. The stadiums are owned by the team and they sell the naming rights to the highest bidder.
Just go full out commercial with this stupid professional games stuff.

Do you also "root" your car? I mean it has lots of computer controllers that you should have access to since you won the thing, right?

We need to stop finding different mechanisms to all vote on one day and instead allow in-person voting over a longer period, such as a calendar week.

Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.

As someone who is doing Linux in schools, let me correct a few things. - Imaging isn't done anymore, except for a base image with nothing installed. The tools to manage machines can take care of anything that needs to be set. - To set up our 1:1 Linux desktops we boot from the network, enter the machine name and user name, and walk away. Ubuntu installs with minimal software and Puppet. Everything else is configured through Puppet. Configuration includes software to be installed and creating the username and password of the student that is assigned to the laptop. We haven't hopped on the Chromebook bandwagon. Linux can do everything Chromebooks can do but so much more.

GCC is open source. If Linus is such a great expert on the issues with it then why isn't he fixing them? Probably because he doesn't have the skills.
If you don't have the skills to create a compiler or fix a broken one then you have no valid basis for complaining so loudly about the defect in the one you use.

Since Linus has such a great operating system he should have his own compiler so why's he complaining? Oh, that's right, 95% of what we call an operating system has noting to do with Linux. He was only able to create his kernel because gcc and the GNU project in general had already built all the tools he needed to use and stand on.

When Linus writes all the subordinate tools, libraries and programs needed for an operating system, then I'll accept his opinion on the quality of any of that.

CAs normally issue certs with 1-year validity. As they may not expire later than 2015-11-01, CAs will mostly stop issuing them on 2014-11-01. I guess you could ask them to cut a cert with a special, shorter lifetime but that would be hassle (and therefore extra cost).

NASA to Congress: We want to build a launch system that will be the single most important component in the US presence in space for the nest several generations. We need $20B for it from planning to first launch.
Congress to NASA: Screw that, you get $12B.
NASA to Congress: We can almost do it with $12B, we need an additional $400M
Congress to NASA: Justify the additional $$

Military to Congress: We need $10B to build a new strike fighter that no-one really wants.
Congress to Military: Here ya go
Military to Congress: Oops. We've crashed a bunch of prototypes, and still have major design flaws and systems failures. Another $10B should get us on track.
Congress to Military: Here ya go
Military to Congress: Supplier problems, we need another $10B
Congress to Military: Here ya go

Why are we so damned willing to spend money to kill people more efficiently and not to do science that positively impacts all our lives every day?

From SWA's web site: http://www.southwest.com/html/...

Do families get to preboard?
An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group.
**he fails this clause as his children are stated to be 6 and 9

Can groups assigned to different boarding positions board together?
Yes. However, in order to maintain the integrity of the boarding process, we ask that earlier boarding positions board with the later positions. For example, if a passenger is assigned position A16 and wants to board with a passenger assigned position A45, the passenger holding the A16 boarding pass should board with the A45 passenger.
The attendant correctly applied this clause and the customer disliked the enforcement of the rule solely because another agent had offered and exception. This is why companies so often state "no exceptions". Once you grant an exception you make the next employee look like a jerk for properly applying the rules.

Just because you chose to breed doesn't mean you get to just do whatever you want. We have rules. Following them, even when they don't get you what you want, is probably the best parenting you could do. This guy tried to show his kids he was special and didn't need to follow the rules. He'll never explain THAT to them, I'm sure.

That said the response of the attendant pulling him off the plane was unwarranted and stupid. She's created a PR headache, cost the airline money (I'm sure they'll give him vouchers), and probably delayed the flight as they had to account for all his luggage and possessions before they could allow pushback.

Where you sit on a plane has just about 0 effect on your arrival time at your final destination.
When you look at the overall travel time from leaving the door at your departure address, getting to the airport, flying, bag claim, getting from airport to your destination address; the 90 seconds you may have saved by seat choice is absolutely worthless. You're talking about 3-7 hours of total travel time and people think that a few seconds helps them in some way.

I also think that the boarding time has FAR less to do with the plan and much more to do with people's greed, stupidity and ignorance. Get in, put your bag OVER YOUR OWN SEAT, sit down, buckle your belt. Seems people suddenly forget that they need their book, have to piss, just have to ask a question of the flight crew, or any number of things other than getting luggage stowed and ass in seat.