Considering most of the PDP-11 coding I did, my fingers, a pencil and some paper was the only assembler ... there was definitely a time I would've been in support of programming an assembler.

Commonly by who?

In virtually all cases, generations are pegged at 20 years. The common "Gen X", "Gen Y", etc are all 20 year spans. In fact, virtually every named "generation" of the last century were equal or slightly less than 20 years.

Even if you go by the average age of first birth, in virtually all of the "1st world", its right around 25. The peak averages are barely 30, and globally its in the low 20's, depending on the source.

So by either definition, there's definitely time for two generations ... and if you're talking about the average time in a given position (which is a more meaningful generation when speaking about engineers), you're looking at more like 15 years -- or time for three.

Well, to be fair, telling people what you're doing makes doing it pretty useless when "what you're doing" is covert surveillance.

Well *clearly* this is why networked locked phones are in the public's best interest!

It's still superior to the "slashdot_editors" package.

Its a lot like speaking a second language you're not that familiar with. Your natural flow and grammar doesn't always work and the response you get back isn't always what you expect. It just takes your brain more attention to handle it.

The brain also tends to have a greater problem following dis-embodied conversation. It takes less effort to talk to someone you can see than someone you can't.

There are nuances to how the brain processes things that tend to be a surprise the more we collectively learn about it.

Apple was fighting jailbreaking since iOS 1.0 because they knew in iOS 7 they were going to roll out an anti-theft measure.

I'm not sure if you mean rate or amount... it is, in fact, the lowest amount. Well below the cost of living.

I suspect that's why the rate is so low -- you can't live on unemployment, so you won't get many people on it very long. People will either under employ themselves to get by, or will move out of state.

Um, the IRS's job is to make sure that political groups opposed or in support of the current administration doesn't get tax-exempt status under that program.

The issue isn't that the IRS did that to the right-leaning organizations, but that it may not have with the left leaning organizations.

And given that the majority of the names of the organizations in question made it clear just with their name that their primary purpose was politics, the IRS didn't do anything wrong in calling them out for further investigation.

And, from your reply and clear bias in the off topic IRS issue, its clear you don't have an ability to think or reason independently, but I figure its worth pointing out that I didn't, in fact, say it was a misguided policy goal. I simply said the issue isn't either of the parties.

I've been asked to do something as part of my job, have no idea how to do it, can you help me?

Sounds to me like the dimwit submitter is just as incompetent at doing what he's been asked to do as the IT manager.

Which given that and the presupposed IT manager's incompetence suggests its actually the CEO that is the issue at the company.

B players hire C players.

More specifically, the people involved in creating programs like this transcend any particular election cycle.

Its not the parties doing it, on either side. Its the inertia of huge organizations following misguided policies stacked on policies, most likely created by people who really believed it was the best thing for the country.

"Do less" isn't an idea that creates a motivation for change, so time will always trend these sort of things into doing more and more.

Its not.

If it was the one caused by overheating, you may have had luck having them cover it anyway... at least at a discount price.

There were other kinds of RROD events, though.

No. I assume you understand the difference between a CD and an MP3?

Why is a store selling the media (the CD) at all relevant to a discussion about selling the content (MP3)?

Those stores absolute do *not* sell "used" MP3s.

The GP didn't day he bought them because they red-ringed. (And, if he did, he's a moron because they were covering those failures well out of warranty -- and the newer model never had the issue.)

I've bought three, also. The first one did, in fact, red ring quite a few times and it never cost me a penny to replace it. Second one was bought because my Samsung TV's component input shit the bed and it was cheaper to buy a 2nd gen 360 with HDMI than a new TV. First one is still running for streaming music in my garage. The third one was bought because my girlfriend was spending too much time playing Dance Central and things like that and it was impacting my game time.