There aren't that many quality goods and services to spend your ransom money on in prison -- my understanding is that the selection is mainly limited to cigarettes, cell phones, drugs, and "protection".

Didn't Apple go through this exact same issue with the iPhone app store a few years ago, and they fixed it?

You sound like a typical Democrat voter: anyone who disagrees with the Democrat party line is automatically a "nutcake gun-owning, violent conservative", Obama somehow isn't at fault for anything his administration does but Bush can be blamed for all current Democrat policies, and calling Obama on his pro-Bush policies is somehow "hatred of technology and science" and makes one a Holocaust denier.

Honestly, I used to think the Republicans were the nutty ones, but these days I'm starting to believe it's really the Democrats who are insane.

You are misinformed and ignorant.

Sounds like a typical American.

I wonder if it fell victim to the Capacitor Plague. It might have just needed some new electrolytic caps.

We already have what you're asking for: it's called "QML", which is part of the Qt toolkit.

Still why people live in such places

Because that's where they're allowed to live. You think some European country with a nice, mild climate is willing to give up a large fraction of its territory so that the entire population of the UAE can relocate their country there?

While I share your pessimistic outlook for the foreseeable future, forever is a really long time. Are you willing to say that absolutely nobody will be living in a permanent space colony in 100 years? 500 years? 10,000 years? If so, what makes you so certain?

And how did you learn to write good code that's efficient and make sense to others? Maybe you're the rare case of a person that can just intuit what is good code and what isn't, but I think most developers (including myself) learn how to write good code by first writing lots of bad code, and then suffering the consequences until they learn from experience what works and what doesn't.

I find this comment somewhat scary.

If the reason people are pronouncing etc "ett-see" is because they don't know, here's the deal: etc is an abbreviation for "Et cetera", which means "and so on". You're supposed to pronounce it "Et centera" for the same reason that if I wrote "Brocolli w/ carrots" you'd read it and pronounce it as "Brocolli with carrots", not "Brocolli double-ewe carrots."

Interesting point, but be that as it may, our southern border is completely wide-open so it'd be trivial for them to sneak across with all the guns they want.

Yes, but a relevant fix on a kernel driver doesn't make you any money at all, whereas some shitty iOS fleshlight app can make you rich and famous. Just ask the guys at Rovio. This is one of the fundamental problems. Programmers have to make ends meet too, and there's apparently no shortage of fools willing to spend money on some stupid iOS/Android app.

I wonder if, "a few years ago" as you put it, the smart people working on some product in Linux distros were still young, in college, and didn't have many bills to worry about. Nowadays, they've gotten older, are married, have more expenses, etc., so they've had to concentrate on jobs which earn them money. Also, it does seem to me that the cost of living has risen greatly in the US in the last 15 years, largely thanks to the housing bubble. Back when I was in college in the 90s, it was easy to find a nice apartment for $400, or share an apartment for $200, and gas was $1/gallon. Now gas is $4/gallon and you're looking at a minimum of $1200/month to rent anything decent; you might get something for $600 if you rent a room in someone's basement and get a PO box because your landlord refuses to let you have your name associated with the address and receive mail there.

Thanks, "Assmasher". I value your learned input.

If the terrorists really wanted to change things in America, they should blow up Congress. The American people wouldn't mind much since everyone here hates Congress, and there wouldn't be any collateral damage (except maybe aides, but they're really minions of the Congresscritters anyway).

Unfortunately, the security there is probably pretty good actually; it's a lot easier to go after civilian targets.