You seem to think the institutions are racist because they wanted some "very sharp" kid to get a GED ?

Not at all. I don't think the institutions are racist at all. I think they saw talent.

And because of (and in some cases, despite) the efforts of people who have fought these fights for many decades, there are now such opportunities. There was a time, not that long ago, in my lifetime in fact, when this young man would have not gotten the opportunity because of the color of his skin and his station in life.

Now his job is to make sure he gets as much out of them as they get out of him. That is the hard fight.

Now I'm wondering if we've entered the era when crackheads are more technically competent than the average Slashdotter...

A distribution of the expected returns would be more useful than the mean expected return, which can be dominated by a handful of best-selling titles.

Yeah, hate that $13 billion *developers* have made so far.

That money's been spent a long time ago. A lot of it on development of more apps that have not been profitable.

Assuming your figure of "$13billion" is correct, of course.

Anyway, this article is about the marketplace, not about the relative handful who have scored big on an app, then hired a staff, invested in their businesses, took venture capital and private equity and now are well and truly fucked.

It AIN'T the men, its the stupid as hell clothing industry thinking any guy besides metrosexuals give a rat's ass about that. I don't know how many guys I've talked to the past few years that are ROYALLY PISSED that they can't just go into a store and grab a pair of size whatever and know it'll fit. We don't care if you call it a 37 or an ummagumma just STICK TO IT so we can just walk in and buy a pair of damned pants without having to try shit on like the girls...is that REALLY so much to ask for?

As for TFA? The correct answer is "we don't know shit, it'll probably change, but for now the number pulled out our collective asses is". hell they can't even make the math work without "dark" this and "dark" that which should automatically be replaced with a little stick figure shrugging its shoulders. I think the only thing we can truly say for certain is how things work in this one little teeny tiny itsy bitsy area, anything else? Its just wild guesses with a LOT of question marks in there.

Calling someone retarded is no less insulting than screaming nigger or faggot at them...are you telling me that is acceptable? or how about Linus flipping the bird to a major manufacturer that a LARGE part of the community REQUIRES to do their jobs? What if Nvidia said "ya know what? Fuck you Torvalds, from now on? They can buy OSX or Windows" and called it a day?

he is not only giving FOSS a bad name, which is pretty bad considering what RMS did in public left Torvalds pretty much the ONLY face of FOSS that didn't look like a loon, but he is also giving every stereotype of IT, that IT is full of maladjusted man children that behave like 14 year old punks, credence. We get enough of that shit without Linus acting like a fucking prima donna, thx.

Exactly. They're the type of people who always shop at the same supermarket, where the tomatoes cost twice as much as anywhere else and have a glossy wax coating, are all the same, approved size, and are utterly free of any flavor. In fact, they don't even know how to cook, and don't know why they're buying tomatoes in the first place, except that the reanimated corpse of Steve Jobs told them to. They buy their precious, shiny iTomatoes and dutifully display them in the crispers of their iRefrigerators. Then a week later, they toss them out and go back to the iGroceryStore and buy the new, upgraded iTomato 5S, with even more shiny and even less flavor.

Once we're stepping out of the realm of advanced cruise control and into active driving, it will clash even if they don't want to take responsibility. "I didn't expect my car to make the turn and fail to yield, you can't expect me to undo every mistake" "I saw it coming and could brake down, but my car didn't realize and speeded up and caused the accident" "I tried to hit the ditch and avoid those school kids but my car refused to go off the road, running them over."

And once you've seen the computer do a maneuver 99 times you'll assume it will the 100th too, even if it's got some kind of sensor glitch meaning that no it won't. It's one thing to see a situation in front of you and slam the brakes in a duel with the computer, but then you'd have to co-drive all the time. It's another thing entirely to see a situation in front of you, wait a few moments, realize oh shit the computer isn't going to do anything then hit the brakes.

And one thing that's important to remember is that accidents are generally not legally punishable, the driving must be negligent or reckless for that and being surprised and acting panicked is legal for a human driver. If the car is going the posted limit, obeying traffic regulations and hits the brakes it may meet the legal minimum even if there will be an accident and the result might be sub-optimal, unless we hold autonomous cars to a higher standard.

As the backup driver I'm certainly only human, my reaction could certainly be surprised and panicked. To roll that liability past the car and onto me there must have been some rather damn obvious reason why I had to intervene. It would have to be reckless or negligent of me to think the car can handle it better than me. If it ever got to court I'd argue that's just not true, in perfect hindsight maybe it was a poor split-second judgement but that's not a crime.

Or the TL;DR version: I doubt you'll ever be held legally liable for not taking over control, that you might or possibly should have yes but not that it was reckless or negligent not to. So in practice I think distracted driving will be legal, if not in theory.

Expanding fiat currency leads to economic reduction, stagnation and often collapse, history is on my side, you don't have anything on yours. 1971 - the year of default on the US dollar was the beginning of the end of USA economy, since then the productivity has been shrinking, deficits and debts growing, government growing and individual freedoms shrinking at an increasing rate.

That's one example, obviously there are thousands, including USSR, Weimar Republic and at least 30 examples of countries destroying their currency that way in only the last 100 years.

As to whether any amount of inflation of fiat currency is bad, yes, theft and thus misallocation of resources from those who produce to those who do not produce in the free market (not enough to be compensated for it by more than what the stolen or inflated currency allowed) is not good by any stretch of imagination, unless you have your head stuck all the way up into your ass.

Wrong, you do not get to rename rising prices into inflation and expansion (inflation) into rising prices.

Notice I got modded down for daring to say this type of behavior is NEVER excusable, I don't care if its from Cook or Ballmer or Torvalds you should act like a PROFESSIONAL, not a spoiled brat halo player. And I'm sorry but cursing anybody out in public, along with flipping the bird to companies who don't do to suit him? He's acting like a brat NOT the head of such a large important project. and the fact that so many will put up with this prima donna behavior and actually make excuses for it? Just shows there IS A REASON why IT has such a bad name.

Why, in theory, build out municipal fiber when internet service is already offered by two respectable private businesses?

Because places have done it and saved the population money and provided better service?

If there's been consolidation to the point where there are only two providers, I completely understand a municipality providing the competition. I lived in a town with municipal power generation. It was cheap and the service excellent. Until a group of Koch-backed corporatists got elected to the county board and privatized the service without public hearings or comment.

Home energy bills doubled within six months.

Oh, of course not. It just demonstrates the hypocrisy of the accuser.

If you look up the definition of "madam", you will see that Lucianne Goldberg fits the bill rather well.

As to 'increased money supply being always bad' - you are putting words in my mouth.

Expanding FIAT currency, as in paper not backed by anything is always bad and the history is my witness, every time it was done it led to long term economic damage.