There is being solitary and then there is solitary confinement. Much like yourself I also live alone and love it, but I see the difference between the two.

The main difference is control. While I am alone, this is the main beauty of it: I can just trully relax and do whatever I need/want knowing that I am ultimately in control of the situation. I can spend it doing various chores at home, indulge myself on the net, go for a walk in the woods and even end my solitude for a brief while to talk to a good friend when I got some insight to share.

Now immagine you are locked up between four concrete walls with a toilet and bed. The first few days (Week at the very most) will probably be nice and relaxing. Afterwards I will just simply be going insane from boredom. I will probably hang myself or smash my head open within two months of this.

Of course solitary confinement as it actually happens is probably different than just locking someone up for years with nothing to ocupy him/her. Still, it is very different to choose to be alone rather than being forced to be alone.

Please see a psychiatrist.

They really, really do help. You will not be looked down upon, you will be given specific to you help rather than just the generic "How to feel better" crap you find in books and online. Also it will not be the "Here take this pill and go away" treatment that you get from general practitioners. It might be a little pricy (Especially if you don't have insurance), but worth every single penny! This is your direct quality of life and means to make a living we are talking about here.

At the very least they will advise you on how to get out of this self-feeding loop. Without proffessional help (Your family and friends are doing all they know to help you, but they just don't know how to do that) you will not be able to break out of this and things will just get steadily worse. Take it from someone that have been in this situation for several years before finally biting the bullet and seeking help.

Finally if it gets so bad that you seriously start planning out your suicide, you owe it to everyone that care or ever cared about you to seek proffessional help immediately! Taking your own life will send the people you know right into deep depression themselves: Do you really want them to go through what you are in now?

Well, how about you make it constructive rather than just stating that you hate something along with cynicism towards the community your are trying to reach. What is your alternative to the Turing Machine that will work with existing Von Neuman architecture and bypasses the "Parallel Programming Crisis"?

It just shows that the Slashdot readership has grown up, gotten jobs, families and financial commitments. This site doesn't seem to attract young geeks anymore (Guess that niche is fulfilled by Stack Overflow, Reddit, Facebook, etc) while existing members are aging and don't have the time to spend on such hobbies.

It would be very interesting to do a poll on the age brackets.

The whole point of the article is that these employers are few and far between, while vast amount of programmers turn 40 and get laid off in short order. Thus next time you get laid off, you will need to compete against massive number of very experienced 40 year olds all trying to get hired by that rare smart employer that did not discard the resume as soon as he/she saw the birth date.

Or you can do what everyone does and become a contractor. If you are able to market yourself very well, this is the best option. If not, you are fucked.

So then they just double the amount of shares effectively cutting their value/dividents in half. New shares are of course distributed among the upper management and you get shafted.

Sorry, I am still bitter from learning this the hard way.

EE Majors are not idiots. They are well aware of the predicaments you listed. Even if you tell them all this they will still go into EE just as CS students don't all change into Law or Finance.

It is because they are passionate about what they do and don't like CS. Would you really want to spend vast majority of your life doing something that you just can't stand? Will you be able to go this extra mile (That all supervisors will judge you by) in a position that you abhore? When (Not if) you will get screwed over and need to look for another job, will you be able to get motivated to do it all over again?

In my opinion, career must be more than just money. You must enjoy what you are doing in order to persevere through all the downsides of the job.

Nice troll, alas too easily idenitified as soon as you get to third sentence. 6/10

That is the jist of the rallying cry of Bolshevics during the Civil War and it seems to have worked very well in getting people to follow them. Lets hope that the world will learn from that incident of history and will never see a repeat of it.

According to Wikipedia Helen Keller was both deaf and blind.

In practical terms, it is impossible to design our roadways to work with such pedestrians in mind. A current, loud vehicle design is just as dangerous as a silent one to these people.