PHP developers.

"C/C++ is where you make the big bucks."

This is true, but does that somehow change the rarity of them though? I've found C/C++ jobs tend to be highly regional - there are plenty in places like London and Cambridge, but barely any in much of the rest of the UK for example.

"And yet employers seem to discriminate heavily against people who have not been working with the latest version of .Net, and expect us to pass tests on the most obscure and arcane features of .Net 4.5, many of which as far as I can tell, will probably never be required in basic web solutions anyway."

Personally I learn all the new features of new versions of .NET even if they will actually never be useful. Why? So that I do know whether they'll be useful or not rather than complaining I didn't get a job for not knowing about something with a throwaway comment such as "It's probably not useful anyway" - how could you know? you don't even know what it is.

Interview questions like that are there to check for one thing - whether you're one of those best of best developers that does know the language inside out. If you can't answer it you're telling the employer "I don't actually give a shit about programming enough to care about that thing".

Most programming can do pretty much everything you want at a very basic level with only the most simple constructs. 90% of new features in languages nowadays are there to help you write faster code, more secure code, or more concise and readable code or some combination of those sorts of traits - if you're not learning these features then of course you can program most things with the language, but you're not making the most of the language and so your code will take you longer to write, be less secure, or be less performant or similar. This is true not just of .NET but many other languages like Java, and C++.

It's not as though language release notes and feature lists are particularly long. You could get a firm idea of what's in a version update like .NET 4.5 in about 30 minutes. Asking someone a question on the most recent language features simply just helps employers select those who want an easy ride and aren't interested in self-learning from those who know the technology inside out and understand the direction it's heading in. .NET 4.5 adds in some pretty decent features for automating parallelisation of many tasks. It's possible they were simply probing to see whether you'd just use the classic programming constructs to write a single threaded solution to something that could be handled in a more parallel manner automatically, and with less code. This is pretty common in interviews by employers who know their shit and want people who also know their shit - it weeds out the people who want to do things the way they've always done them, even if that way no longer holds any real advantages.

Don't assume that because you didn't get a job that you didn't need what they were asking for and that they're stupid. Yes this is true sometimes, but often just be humble and accept that maybe you didn't actually know the things they needed you to know for the job or for the level of ability they're seeking.

"If you can program in C you can write a program that runs on pretty much everything that you'll come across that you might want to program."

Right, but more slowly, less maintainably, and inherently less securely by default than many alternatives.

Which is really the point isn't it? Different languages have different benefits, your argument is premised on the fact that being able to write for more different platforms (except those you can't) is the ultimate trait in a language one should gun for.

But many people wont ever write anything other than for say, Windows, or for the web for example, in which case writing C code is a really really bad option and you should probably learn something else.

(FWIW I was also born and bred on C, I love it, and agree it's worth learning even if only out of academic interest, but I also think people should learn more than just C, and perhaps not even C at all if they're web focussed and have limited time to dedicate to learning).

Well Fox News and the Daily Mail have a track record of lying about Snowden, The Daily Mail still makes claims that he's a Russian agent even though even the NSA themselves accept that he is not.

As such, better to play itself and not waste time with those with a track record of lying about this particular topic no? especially when there's an alternative with a slightly better track record mentioned in the summary itself (and more interesting detail FWIW).

So it may be up for grabs for you, but for myself and I suspect many other's it's far more preferable to have sources that don't have track records of actually outright lying about shit all the time, especially on the subject in question.

They took her glasses hostage to take her purse. It's a trick as old as time, getting something by threatening something else that's more valuable.

Casinos can eject whoever they darn please and they don't need a reason for it.

And they don't have to be fair about it.

The person who snatched them off her face and ran is guilty of robbery and should be prosecuted for it.

This lady may have stirred up trouble but she is still a victim and no amount of provocation gives her attackers any excuse.

You're right, but the fine is entirely down to the ICO. Remember the ACS: Law guy who was chasing file sharers over porn on bittorrent and left a list of his accused on his website for all to download stating personal information and associating their names width different flavours of porn?

He was fined a pathetic £1000 because the ICO didn't want him to endure the hardship of potentially losing his $1million house simply because the guy provided a "sworn statement" that he couldn't pay a higher fine even though he blatantly could.

There also seems to be a lot of picking and choosing about holding individuals liable - i.e. it seems to never happen even though the Data Protection Act explicitly allows for that.

Is that they're fining a non profit organization supported by donations.

If this was a business I would see more sense, but somehow fining charities doesn't sit well with me.

A better solution would have been to not fine the organisation but to use the clause of the data protection act that allows individuals to be held responsible and fine the contractor for being so negligent as to store personal data insecurely and anyone at the organisation who allowed it.

A rare scientific law means it is settled.
For most of them their are theories. the strength of the theory is based on the amount and quality of evidence for it, and lack of evidence that disproves it.

The issues we are having isn't a problem with the science per-say. But people who religion/political stance is hindered by this science. So they will blame the people who came up with this conclusions as manipulating all their data to come to the conclusion.

While they are situations where scientists manipulate their data to make their conclusion, however if the peer review is thorough it is usually disproved, or at least found to be not-reproducible.

The biggest problem is the media posting confusing a hypothesis with a theory. So average joe who doesn't know the difference, see those scientists getting it wrong again!

Education is a funny thing.
It has all the trappings of a big business, however there is utter dislike of the idea that they run like a business.

Because getting a Professorship job is so hard in Academia and a pressure to obtain tenure is so high, that they will be more willing to skip steps in order to get the next big thing out. If someone dies in the process, that means there is now a job opening.

Why the assumption that our current economic methodology of building our future on the premise of ever growing population is the only option? It seems a little unfair to say to women - tough shit, you all need to have at least two kids, so that our fucked up pension system continues to work, but we'll make things nice for you and give you advantages over men to make up for it.

World population growth is slowing and reaching equilibrium, it's inevitable that we're going to have to make some kind of change to more sustainable living rather than relying on the next generation to pay for the last generation. It's not a bad thing either, because the earth only has finite resources to go around so the premise of perpetual population growth forever is an unsustainable fallacy regardless.

So given that we're absolutely going to have to change, because it's not our choice anyway then why not focus policy towards that rather than continue to prop up a broken unsustainable system which acts against genuine equality and also sustainability?

Nonsense. There's no need to make it literally impossible to unlock a stolen iPad (probably unattainable, and certainly liable to deprive legitimate owners of the use of their property) - you just need enough of a hurdle to make it unappealing to thieves. I'm sure that the value of a stolen iPad is much less than $400 - and equally that the value of a locked, stolen iPad is much more than $0 (just use a bit of sleight of hand to sell it to some mug and leg it - thieves don't generally do warranties).

A solicitor's letter (for US readers: Solicitor = Lawyer, and probably a notary public to boot) is easy to verify and should be more than sufficient to confirm the identity of the new and previous owner. No thief in their right mind is going to go through the risk and expense of obtaining a credible fake solicitor's letter for the value of a stolen iPad - and I'm sure that bent lawyers are even more expensive than real ones.

Requiring a legitimate owner to produce a court order is going to cost them more than the value of a legally acquired iPad.