It would be surprising to see what Google does with its own XXX site.

Programmer porn

While you battled with your 7-figures about a single world, I registered every other word in the dictionary and created new niches of porn.

You should check out our wildest newly added categories: categories

(while joking, that list does sound like it could be made into a porno.)

They were just as smart if not smarter then us today. The key difference was they didn't discover a lot of technology we take advantage of.

That "discovery" is part of our historic background and social evolution. We have have rediscovered the knowledge stored in the East (they transcribed the Greek wisdom and had mathematics and astronomy) with the crusades giving us "Enlightenment" and later making knowledge accessible. The desire to make knowledge easily accessible produced the bookpress. Without the ability to write, all that had no purpose or maybe some people going around singing about.

Also, don't judge a fish's intelligence by its ability to mount a mountain; Cavemen knew how to operate in a world that we cannot even phantom, not by choice but by necessity. But we operate in a world a cavemen wouldn't be able to comprehend either, and we use our tools by necessity to come to a simular result (we live, eat and play).

and the engineers will walk away if they're not paid

A government, or any "large coorporation" renting "talent" acts as a milk-cow. Often alot of money is burned in "processes" which are in place and have become too rigid to operate ^properly without outside influence: you have your internal taskforce doing jobprotection and learning progressively how to avoid to work too hard

Whenever you contract a firm you can put in conditions as penalties. I've seen large firms burn cash in their "penalty period", with teams working day and night for months in order to get prestige (resumé of the company) and often to be selected for follow-up projects. so they weigh the cost against the benefit.

Some projects will go easy and they will be overbilled. Others will burn alot of resources but get carried with the buffer of overbilled projects and secure the future.

For clients this means, they have some "sort of guarantee". If the contractor overestimates his own capacity (buffer cash, their internal talent, projections, ...) or made a proposition to cut short in order to eliminate competing contractors.. They go broke and default.

So the conclussion is; both parties take risk and try to negotiate to limit the risk and to present themselves capable to reduce risk to a minimum. To ensure this, you will have lenghty contracts. In time of excess and big budgets, people will be less cautious and take more space as there is no need to tighten things up as it allows.

What do they exactly mean by "flexibility and expressiveness of other dynamic languages" ?

I remember a demo at a Microsoft Developer congress where C# would be able to execute and rebuilt itself dynamically.

At the time it got me really excited (as I've bumped into many problem which would have a much more beautiful solution should I be able to compile during runtime.) but this seems yet another technology?

I've had FAR TOO MANY worthless instructors in my CS / IT classes who could do nothing on a keyboard but tell you everything you could ever wish to know about the damn theory.

I see you lack experience in your domain: So you are going to fire them and replace them with you until you become the same within the system ? Where you have to deal with kids who "know better as you" and think "they understand the world", or whatever vision an experience educator will embody. And then lower your wage to pay for the early retirement of the other ?

So you'd switch the problem from a flexible and creative group to a group who is supporting by carrying mortages, paying studies, feeding and sheltering the younger group ?? So the younger group has a higher income potential with less responsabilities? What planet do you come from ?

The problem is economical, and the lack of taking risks; I always see in these kindof discussions "there isn't enough work" or "They don't want to give me a job" but in the current climate, that job always "sucks" or "isn't paid enough" or such and what not. But complain "the rich aren't giving you work" while those who are creating work are "giving it away to lazy idiots"...? *mouth falls open*

Why not get together with your friends who do not have a job and are highly qualified, are trained in business and creative professions. And while you are are sending out applications, you apply that which you have been taught and start your own business and create work. If it's worthwhile, people will give money for it. If people give a buck for it, you have a buck to spend.

and reinventing the wheel (and face it, unless you're changing the energy source, that's EXACTLY what this is), is the real waste

Agreed. It would be MUCH cheaper to partner with Chinan, Europe or Russia to lift cargo. (or to come up with a joint-program with Europe to design the next generation craft). Even investing or offering engineers to private space agencies (spaceship ONE) would be astromnomically cheaper and much more productive.

The potrayed advancement in technology and advancements are null, even animation shows a design that's quite simular to what we've seen around for a long time.

My windows machine has been up for 2 months.

My Mac hasn't rebooted for god knows how long.

I assume, then, that you never shut your computer down for the night. Or for the weekend.

The common PC at home is never powered off unless my gf feels "sorry for the machine and wants to give it some rest" (once every few months)

The PC in my appartment is never powered off.

Allow me to point out several meanings of "portmodern" other as "wooly fluff".

It is or a philosophy or shift in conscienceness and awareness:

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement away from the viewpoint of modernism. More specifically it is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the problem of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place.

And the political style evolved OUT of that shift:

Postmodernism in political science refers to the use of postmodern ideas in political science. Postmodernists believe that many situations which are considered political in nature can not be adequately discussed in traditional realist and liberal approaches to political science. [...]
postmodernists believe that people resist realist concepts of power which is repressive, in order to maintain a claim on their own identity. What makes this resistance significant is that among the aspects of power resisted is that which forces individuals to take a single identity or to be subject to a particular interpretation. Meaning and interpretation in these types of situations is always uncertain; arbitrary in fact. The power in effect here is not that of oppression, but that of the cultural and social implications around them, which creates the framework within which they see themselves, which creates the boundaries of their possible courses of action.

Or an indicator in time:

Postmodernity (also spelled post-modernity or termed the postmodern condition) is generally used to describe the economic and/or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, in the 1980s or early 1990s

May I ask you to direct your saturated notion of this word and associated frustration to those who use it for misc. fluffyness to review their meaning and out-of-context-usage of the word.