Your arguments are specious at best; children trading cups do not have an employer/employee relationship. The company is not "eating the cost"; providing these meals is certainly treated as an expense, which means they are writing it off and thus getting a tax break. Seen in this light this is a tax-dodge; a way of compensating their employees, (and receiving a tax break on the expense) while their employees do not pay taxes on the benefit.

This is demostrably false. non-geeks complain about DRM when:

1) they are unable to play content they have purchased because the DRM is broken
2) the DRM cripples their machine
3) the DRM interferes with their use of other software

All of these things have happened. DRM is a losing strategy long-term. I say this as an ex-employee of a company that sold DRM to both the movie industry and gaming industry (hint: they managed to get Congress to mandate licensed use of their tech in VCRs).

There was a book, subsequently made into a move: "The Mouse that Roared". The only flaw in their plan was that their tiny little invasion force actually landed on the East Coast, managed to capture a Doomsday device the US had built, and thereby won the war. Hilarity ensued!

I don't think "Encouraging more kids to learn to code" makes any sense at all. That is a top-down approach. Not everybody is cut out to be a coder, in the same way that not everybody is going to become a professional athlete, or a doctor, or any other profession.

Please DON'T tell kids that coding is guaranteed to make them financially successful; first of all it's not true, and secondly that is the wrong way to find your passion. First and foremost kids should be encouraged to find their passion, and THEN figure out how to be successful at it. And success does not always have to be measured in $$$.

If we want to increase to pool of talented coders, the right approach is to provide opportunity for kids that express an interest to have the tools they need to figure out if coding is the right thing for them. Some of them will find that it is; some may not, but they may find their way into something related and will be the better for having had the experience.

You have obviously never worked on a government contract.

I think you could make the case that the Allies won the war in large part due to superior cryptography. If the British (and later the US) had not been breaking the German and Japanese naval codes for most of the war, things might have turned out very differently.

NO NO! We hate it here! It's terrible! Don't move to California, the weather isn't nearly as nice as you think! And there are all these liberals everywhere! And the GAYS!

By all means move to the East Coast; or Texas! Anywhere else but here.

(wink wink).

signed,
lifelong Californian

There is such a thing; they are called Physician's Assistant, or PA for short. They can do nearly everything a doctor can do, including prescribe most medications. The education requirements are significantly less than that for an MD.

Considering that they just announced a loss of 1.7 BILLION and their CEO resigned, I think 5 years is optimistic. BB will be out of business much sooner than that.

This is really a question of your priorities, and a little bit about whether you think your current company is likely to be successful; I say that because a small company generally has much better growth potential, but also a much higher chance of failing.

Personally I think the pay rise you mention is pretty small change. The convenience of the commute is nice. But it seems to me much more important to ask yourself if the new/bigger company offers you a better career opportunity than your existing one. Another important consideration is the personal relationships you have at your current position. In my 25+ years in software, those relationships have been far and away more important than any other consideration.

News flash: convenience trumps security and leads to data breach/leakage.
Our other top story: dog bites man; film at 11.

Dude. Nice nerd honeypot!

Much as I'd like to see this myself, the brief window of time that AGP existed, means it will never happen.

Ah, but you are so wrong. Try a google search on "entropy gathering". There are well known ways to generate truly random sequences without any "special" hardware, using environmental noise collected from device drivers and other sources. There are Linux distros whose /dev/random implementations use these techniques. On other Unixen the EGD (Entropy Gathering Daemon) provides random sequences in a similar way.

See the Wikipedia article on /dev/random for more info.

The thing is, merely pointing a gun at a police officer is a felony. I don't think "I was just firing warning shots" would be considered a valid defence.