Why should I use Hangouts? It talks to only a few people in my circle of friends, all of whom also have accounts with some non-google resource.

I'm asking myself the same question about Picasa - Google has made it very difficult to share pictures outside of their ecosystem.
 

Wouldn't this be yet another reason to abandon Google+? I mean, it's great 'n all, but almost nobody I know uses it. Which kinda defeats the purpose of a social network. It's like, let's invent a social network for hermits. Nobody talks to you, but that's what, you know, is supposed to happen.

Google has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they don't "get" social - and equally has demonstrated a stunning inability to learn from their past mistakes.

The whole point of a turing complete machine (within the limits of finite amounts of memory) is that it isn't a different machine for a different program. The appeal is that one machine can run a variety of different programs; in theory, perform any calculation for which it has enough memory.

So no, no matter what software you have loaded, you haven't made it a different machine. Not even if you load different microcode. Only if you are burning fuses or proms (real proms, or at least some kind you can't erase for one reason or another) are you making it something in particular.

Wild snails are dirty. That's why you feed them corn meal for a while until you eat them. I don't know how you can tell when they're done, but I've never really given too much thought to inspecting snail shit.

Not if his mucus has anything to say about it.

Try reading past the first sentence of my post, and get back to me with your clever plan to easily and transparently support both ASCII and EBCDIC format.

There are no "good" companies out there; that's the thing you don't seem to understand. There aren't any companies which are going to give you a generous raise each year (at least enough to match what you'd make at another job elsewhere, i.e., keeping up with the "market rate"); that's just not the way companies work any more. Companies treat workers like dirt because they're shortsighted, and because a fair number of employees (like you, it seems) put up with it because they're afraid of losing their jobs, and are willing to work 60-hour weeks for years on end just so they can be seen as "loyal", even though company management doesn't give a shit and will sack you as soon as it helps them make this quarter's financials look better.

A killer stereo and huge TV don't cost anything, BTW. You can get a huge TV now for under $1000; to someone making 6 figures, that's really not a lot of money. Nice stereos cost quite a bit less than that these days. And it's not like you're going to buy a new one of these every year. If you want to point at things which Americans usually waste a lot of money on, it's 1) car (with giant car payments), 2) cable/satellite TV (worse if you get the stupid sports packages), 3) alcohol (not really expensive from a store, but at bars and restaurants it's insanely overpriced). Living in a "ritzy" area is not a waste of money, because the alternative is living in a ghetto and getting shot at or robbed on a regular basis. Thanks to the housing boom, a decent house still costs $250k-500k in many cities, even after the housing bust (prices went down, but not that much) (yes, decent houses are much cheaper in other places, but these are generally non-tech cities where Slashdotters are not going to have an abundance of jobs to choose from, and consequently salaries are far, far less, even less than half as much).

As for your cousin, what was his field and his specialty, and where did he live? He was doing something seriously wrong if it took him 10 years to find steady work again. Was he one of those people who became a "web developer" in the dot-com days, with no degree or credentials whatsoever? If so, well no wonder he couldn't find any work after the bubble popped. People with degrees and real credentials and experience haven't had that problem. Moreover, was he one of those people who absolutely refused to move from whatever little city they (and their extended family) have lived in their whole lives? That's a career-killer too. You can't be a professional and be unwilling to move to where the work is, and do well. If you're dead-set on living in a certain place, then you need to forgo education altogether, and just get a job out of high school doing something that's in high demand in your local area (like working as a grocery cashier for minimum wage), or perhaps get an education in something that there's plenty of jobs in your area for (like medical technicians; every little city has several hospitals and lots of medical clinics). Don't bother getting a college degree if you don't want to move to where the work is.

Anyway, sorry about the asides, but the point is, if you have a good education and experience in the software field, and you're willing to move to where the work is, there's plenty of jobs open for software developers, regardless of the economy. I got laid off in 2009 when the economy sucked (along with my entire team; company decided to toss out the whole department because it didn't think its profit margin was high enough, even though it had customers lined up with guaranteed high volumes for years), and I had another job in a month at a 20% increase in salary. Combined with the 4-month-equivalent severance package, it was a pretty sweet deal. And I'm no rock-star performer either. All that stuff you read about high unemployment and no jobs doesn't apply to software people.

WIth regards to what's going on with the NSA, this bill is being passed specifically to tax the NSA. It doesn't tax any other organization. And they waited to put this on the floor after the NSA had already begun construction. That sounds pretty unconstitutional to me.

I take it you didn't actually read the text of the bill, then?

The bill pretty clearly includes any military installations in Utah, including Utah National Guard.

And what it seems to do is establish an equivalent of the pre-existing municipal tax on energy to military installations which were previously exempt from such taxes.

So, the government is going to have to write the government a check?

The US Government is going to have to write the Utah Government a check.

Which really isn't all that unusual - the Feds send money to the States every year. This is just the NSA whinging that they shouldn't have to follow the law.

Which, come to think about it, also isn't really that unusual....

As far as I can tell this is just not true in my area.

If I have to drive farther for meat, I might as well just buy factory farmed crap or skip the meat.

Can you say "hunting season"? Sure you can.

Seriously, easiest way to guarantee your meat is antibiotic free is to shoot it yourself.

Shareholders, as they are otherwise uninvolved in the operation of the corporation other than the selection of executives, get to enjoy the limited liability. Executives, as actual decision makers, don't get to enjoy that protection if they decide that dumping toxic waste right into the river is a good money-saving idea.

I'm outright mean when it comes to this, taking a downright military view of responsibility - IE the idea that 'constructive ignorance' is no excuse. If you WOULD have been aware of the activities if you'd been exercising proper command and oversight, you're still guilty even if you hid in the executive offices snorting coke off of prostitute asses.

The directions this sort of research could be taken next are so amusing.
First, A potentially communicable source of disease resistance. Nose picking: Beneficial Adaptation for both picking up AND spreading immunity?

Now anyone and everyone can get access to training and education, to better themselves in their spare time.

Just like anyone could previously by reading a gorram book at the public library.

Calling a set of taped lectures a "massive open on-line course" is just another silly bit of overhyping "X, but on the Interwebz!" Yes, it is nice that the net makes more content available more efficiently, but this is an evolutionary step, not any sort of revolution.

Compaq used to sell insanely expensive and over-engineered PCs. I seem to remember my company paying $30k for a desktop PC from Compaq in the early '90s.

Compaq had very good WORKSTATIONS and SERVERS, but their PCs have always been cheap. I distinctly recall their later 90's PCs, which were non-standard over-sized motherboards, with all (cheap junk) components integrated onto them. They were right along side companies like Packard Bell in the race to the bottom.

Their workstations and servers, however, were always very nice. They used large fans, with plastic ducting, multiple thermal zones, etc, decades ago. They got the benefit of all that DEC engineering expertise and experience when they bought up the remnants of the company.

The same should be said of HP as well. Their desktop PCs were junk, but their workstations were heavily over-engineered and well-designed. I remember late 90's ~200MHz HP Workstations with numerous slots for memory, and a riser card that gave 6 PCI slots, as well as 2 ISA slots, which kept those PCs expandable and relevant far after their expected shelf life. Little touches like only two levers to pull to completely remove the case made them a pleasure to work with, as well.

And to Compaq and HP's credit, when HP bough the company, they dropped their own Netserver line, and rebranded the Compaq Proliant as the HP Proliant server, and that has now become the best selling x86 server brand out there, so they did something right. Though I'm still fairly annoyed at the licensing, limitations and clumsy proprietary tools to interface with their iLo out-of-band management.

First they came for Weev.
Then they came for the reporters. ...

Could it be that Dell discovered the hard way that their servers are, in-fact, too expensive? Companies like Dell and HP are seeing declining server sales due to projects like OpenCompute that are bypassing 1st tier vendors and going straight to ODMs for simpler, cheaper servers. Some of the companies buying these cheap servers include cloud service providers like Amazon.

Obviously Dell can't do that with their own in-house offerings, so perhaps they just couldn't compete with vendors running on cheaper servers.