This. My last job was at an after market buy/sell/trade website where I got to take over the whole project mid-rebuild after the previous staff walked out/botched the job/etc. The user base was under constant attack from phishing, fraud, scams doing literally everything you could imagine including hacking accounts. The users complained about it constantly, people were losing trust in the site.

The owners only concerns were that I add new functionality. One of them wanted me to build a blog in the midst of all this. Also were totally willing to sell user information to ad companies if it meant better ad deals.

The core of the entire business was the part that was under attack. Being the only programmer there and realizing that there would not be a job left to complain about if I didn't do what needed to be done, I finally just started doing everything once all attempts at communicating the level of importance had failed. Built and integrated security features that had been present in the previous platform. Developed anti-phishing tools. Added intrusion detection for accounts. Built my own anti-spam system. By the time I was done with it, user complaints had nearly stopped and people were significantly more comfortable. Trading went back up. Crisis was over.

Owners didn't think I was working hard enough.

In the end I collected enough numbers to measurably illustrate the impact that my work had on the company, so I resigned with an awesome resume addition in hand that promptly landed me a muuuuuuuch better job with a better company.

Moral of the story: Do your due diligence. Try to communicate the importance. If you can provide numbers that put things in perspective for somebody more business minded - do it. At the end of the day though, owners who don't understand probably won't care. In this particular situation, if I didn't take the action that I did the company would have gone under. Others may be different though, so you need to be able to measure the cost of a breach in financial terms because that is the ONLY thing the owners will care about.

Outside of that, C.Y.A.

Totally agree on immigration. The biggest issue with illegal immigration is that most taxes in the country are only paid by legal citizens (excluding sales based taxes) so it's effectively cheaper to live and work in the US illegally than legally. The Fair Tax that would eliminate the income tax, replace it with sales tax and pay out a monthly stipend to every legal US citizen to offset that tax against basic needs.

It pretty much turns immigration into a non-issue.

Web programming jobs are highly remote-work oriented and a basic knowledge of javascript is required for just about all of them. If you're a purely client side developer, clearly it's important.

Outside of that though, saying "Javascript EXPERT! Eleventy-billion years experience!" does absolutely nothing for a server side developer unless that job happens to revolve specifically around Node.js (in which case the job will probably just say Node.js).

Know a server side language well, deeply. Know databases. Basic competence with Javascript is all that is required outside of that. If you don't know any Javascript, it will probably disqualify you for most web position but on the scale of determining factors it's probably around a 2 in terms of level of importance.

I don't have mod points, but you are correct sir.

While that might work initially, other businesses see that and make decisions to never get involved because of it. There is no situation short of bad working conditions where unions have any actual benefit long term. In the short term, people might be able to extract higher wages but in the long term they'll both kill the business and drive others away.

There is a reason that almost all new manufacturing in the US is located in the south east and it's not because all of those businesses thought union heavy environments were a great place to take their businesses.

That's not the reason for decline in income. The reason for decline in income is lack of jobs because of all of the cheaper off-shore labor and increased the supply of workers in the US. Wage laws, regulations, and an environment generally unfriendly towards manufacturing ultimately drove any industry that doesn't HAVE to operate in the US OUT of the US to places that were happy to have the jobs at all.

If you had all of those jobs back and a thriving manufacturing industry again, the supply of workers would be much thinner, unemployment would be virtual non-existent unless by choice and because of that the wages / compensation would increase in order to attract and retain people. All we've done in the US is drive away a lot of jobs. There's plenty of places in the US where income levels are just fine and those are the areas where there is demand.

You create demand, the income levels will take care of themselves.

The Boeing thing has been especially interesting. As they've started things up in SC, Union workers have come down from Seattle trying to get people to organize to try to convince people that they aren't making enough. The general response they're getting is that most people are just happy to have a job...which is a point that a lot of people tend to forget when they start talking about wanting "more" vs wanting "anything".

In order to bet well on a framework, you have to pair general population with investment psychology. For example, let's look at Code Igniter.

CodeIgniter is a PHP framework. There are A LOT of PHP frameworks. The reason there are a lot of PHP frameworks is because of the language and the community. Most other languages are specifically built for web development, so the frameworks in them add all of the tools you need to handle web development more efficiently. Because PHP has so many of those tools, everybody rolls their own framework. As PHP frameworks become more mature, you start to see speed issues because unlike Java/Python/Ruby/.NET ALL of those PHP files have to get loaded on every request, creating a lot of disk I/O. It's server-suicide to use a PHP framework without APC configured. This leads to a conundrum of framework maturity vs framework speed in the PHP space. The language needed 5.3 and 5.4 to make frameworks REALLY feasible.

But without even getting into all of those details, the sheer fact that there are dozens upon dozens of frameworks in the language is generally a HUGE red flag. If there are that many choices, nobody has got it right. If there isn't one, distinct, clear leader in the space then there isn't going to be an ecosystem AROUND the framework contributing to plugins, etc. Additionally the framework fragmentation will generally mean that you will have a very hard time finding people who use the language who already know that framework. I spent 5 years as a CakePHP developer and I've lived everything I just described.

The end result is that if you want to use a framework PHP itself is a bad choice because there isn't a great option. PHP is great for many things, it's just a valid point in the framework discussion. Because of the level of framework fragmentation your choice of framework is basically "how do I want to organize my code" as the only actual benefit...which really is almost the same thing as just rolling your own.

If you look at other languages:

Ruby has Rails
Python has Django .NET has MVC
Groovy has Grails

For the last 2 years, I've been using Ruby on Rails. For one thing, it's basically the standard bearer for web frameworks. Within the ruby ecosystem, pretty much EVERYTHING makes sure that it works smoothly with Rails. It was really the clear choice from the time that I was making choices the only thing that prevented me from using it was the very stubborn "but I already know PHP" line. I looked at Groovy so I could deploy on Java infrastructure, but jRuby solves that problem for Ruby as well. If I was in a .NET shop, the choice would be MVC and if I was using Python it would be Django. Until PHP gets a "main" framework, there will not be a good framework option for PHP. Laravel seems to be going the right direction though, so that's one to keep an eye on.

In the front-end space, anything Flash based has pretty much always been a bad idea unless there is no alternative. Front-end web development should generally always follow a philosophy of graceful degradation, meaning everything should work without javascript and javascript should be used to enhance the experience with only a few exceptions on the actual-in-browser-application front. jQuery made graceful degradation EASY while also emphasizing compatibility (you could use jquery and prototype at the same time, that wasn't the case with most JS tools) and as such, took over in popularity.

The short answer to all of that is simply this: the market leader leads for a reason. Look for the market leader that works across the broadest set of platforms and you'll generally find your answer.

I don't know what gets into designers that makes them think stuff like this is a good idea. I spent about a year and a half working for a 14 year old web company that had a huge, loyal user base and a system that everybody in the community was very happy with. It was the system that had grown the entire community from nothing and fended off all competitors.

Then they brought in a consultant and a new design. They broke the site, broke the design and generally caused a complete and total uproar. Nearly sank the company and created a major hornets nest of competitors actively stealing traffic. Everybody thought it was going to be the next major "Digg" failure. I helped them survive and the only reason I even came on to help is because that company had a massive network effect of buyers and sellers. It would take a coordinated effort or a clear competitor (a Facebook to your MySpace) to get all of those people to leave...so they had some time.

Digg had no network effect. I could just start looking somewhere else for my general news around the internet.

Slashdot doesn't have a network effect either. Keep that in mind before you completely trash the site by converting into a web stereotype. Seriously, know you're audience. "News for Nerds". We care about data. We care about information. We care about functional systems and we don't give a crap about whitespace. The current design caters to ALL of that. The new design caters to NONE of that except what some designer probably told you was a really good idea/trendy/web2.0/upgrade.

You're putting the entire site at risk if you flip the switch on that thing.

Agnostics are smart enough to know how much they do not know. Atheists choose to believe that millions of educated people around the world believe in a fairy tale, commit their money and their lives voluntarily, simply because all of those people didn't ask enough questions? Based on your above comment, there should likewise be huge numbers of people around the world that believe in vampires, fairies, or Zeus...yet there are not.

Something I learned a long time ago - if a lot of people feel a particular way something, whether I like it or not there is probably a reason. Very seldom does anybody hold a belief without believing they have a just cause for doing so. Millions of people around the world have differing views on how governments should operate. Oddly, they are all valid in different situations even if they may not be my ideal.

A lot of people support gun control and a lot of people support the opposite. Both views are valid and there are strong arguments for both.

A lot of people believe abortion is the most horrible thing they can imagine. A lot of people believe it is a necessity of modern society. Both views are valid.

I respect people who are wise enough to respect other people's view points. I've been an atheist. I've made the arguments and I've walked in those shoes. I've talked to a number of other people with the same views enough to fully understand it. Atheism tends to result from anger towards religion and naturally leads to becoming an intellectual security blanket.

I'll tell you when I realized just how screwed up my views were. My father is a surgeon. One of the smartest, wisest and most generous people I've ever known and I'm extremely proud to be able to claim him. We sat down to watch TV one night when I was in town and I wanted to show him one of my favorite TV shows, "The Big Bang Theory". That led to him making a comment that he wasn't complete convinced of it before we watched the show. My immediate reaction was to think how stupid he was.

Do you have any idea how screwed up your views have to be to take somebody whom you have every ounce of admiration for and immediately think them foolish for not sharing a view point? That's messed up but people do it every day. Shortly after that I started to think like an agnostic. I was a lot less angry and I stopped thinking anybody foolish for having a different point of view. Eventually out of curiosity I finally sat down and read the Bible. After reading it, seeing the sheer degree to which it is manipulated, misrepresented, and butchered on a daily basis in public was shocking. Most people just don't realize it because they haven't read it. Just taking a line out of context here or there or a blurb here or a blurb there, without understanding the context with which is was written is an injustice. When you read it, you gain a completely different perspective on it. You understand who wrote what, when, writing styles of the different authors, variances in the old and new testaments.

There is a reason that many people used to just hand out copies of the New Testament. As a Christian, that's really the only part you should care about. The entire old testament is basically Jewish history. That's how I read it at least, but I'm not a biblical scholar. There is some excellent and time tested wisdom in Psalms and Proverbs that anyone can take to heart, but they aren't commands or beliefs you're intended to hold. Merely a lot of sound advice.

Christianity, when you really break it down is pretty simple: love.

When you realize that, you start to realize just how grossly misrepresented Christianity has to be for people to react so negatively to it.

Actually, Christianity in particular teaches that our degree of moral relativism is to compare ourselves to Jesus and that basically, we all suck. So be humble, patient, kind, loving, charitable and exhibit self-control in an effort to try to be more like Jesus.

The funny thing is that I was an atheist, then an agnostic for the better part of 6 years so I understand the view points very well. Since then, God literally and unequivocally changed my life in a manner that left no doubt. It shook every thing that I thought I knew or didn't know in a manner that I'm still coming to grips with today, but I understand faith in a completely different way now. I KNOW God exists and because of that, it causes me to think more critically about everything that tries to indicate otherwise. It's really easy to jump on a train of thought that appears to provide an explanation as a best probable case in the absence of God but when you start thinking as critically about the holes in those explanations as you do about the validity of faith, you'll realize there are A LOT holes on both sides.

But in the end it boils down to this:
1. An atheist chooses to believe that God does not exist and by extension of the belief has a strong and overwhelming tendency to view all people of faith as ignorant fools. This has a natural effect of making that person feel relatively smarter than all of "those people" providing a huge self-esteem crutch.
2. An agnostic is generally humble enough to understand how much he does not know.
3. A Christian either believes God exists or has experienced the grace of God directly, thus either believing or knowing respectively. God's existence can be proven to a person, but in the same way that if I walk down the street and talk to a guy in a blue shirt and then tell you, "yesterday I talked to a guy in a blue shirt" I cannot prove it to you. I know it to be true and I can tell you the story but you're acceptance that I'm telling you the truth depends largely on whether or not you view me as credible or insane.

After having doubted for so long I feel absolutely obligated to tell people about the changes that God has made in my life. It's difficult to get into on here, but just imagine struggling with something for 2 years to the point that you understand you are helpless to overcome it, then finally praying about it and having the struggle immediately end...permanently. There's much more to it than that and many things in my life since, but everything in my life I've chosen to trust God with has been blessed. My marriage was really tough for a little while (for both of us), and I trusted God with it and it's wonderful now. My finances and career were struggling (and I'm very experienced at what I do) and I trusted God with them and both have never been brighter. Each time I made a decision to trust God in this way, he answered in a manner that left no doubt (which is a much longer story).

And ask yourself that for a minute: as an agnostic just how convinced would you have to be? That's exactly how convinced I am and I tell everybody about it because I want for them exactly what I've been blessed with and more.

Was an atheist for 3 years of my life. I know what atheism is very well. The only people who truly deal in facts are agnostics.

Agnostics deal in facts. Atheists deal in beliefs. Christians deal in beliefs. It's one of the cruel irony's of the world. An agnostic takes no issue with faith by his very nature. An atheist despises it and depicts Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc as ignorant, foolish, etc while simultaneously feeling good about how much smarter they are than all of those people.

I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.

I don't know anything about them, but I have to ask why anything is too heavy in space? Is it too heavy when assembled on earth?

I've been preaching that for years. I'm leasing a Volt because I was scared to have to resell it the closer I got to the 8 year mark on the battery guarantee. Knock $8000 off the price of the car and let me pay $50 / month to never have to worry about that? Yes please. I'd buy this car in a heartbeat. It's the best car I've ever owned.

Exactly. I love the idea that "government" can just swoop in and fix things it has no expertise on. Government's channel money. Government's don't even do their own jobs effectively...why in the world would you want the government to "take over" a mess like this.

You want the government to throw more money at the problem...fine. If this reflects the opinions of...anybody I sincerely fear for the future of the US.