The Bloater Drive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloater_Drive#Bloater_Drive
I always thought that would be neat.

Here's a free Monty Python reference - How to play the flute. Just blow in one end and move your fingers on the outside.
That's just what I see happening here. If you think about it, there is a complicated procedure just to be able to get up and start running.
1. Download a (free) programming language.
2. Install it (watch out there... some humps to consider).
3. Find and install dependencies - like an editor, utilities and other tools.
4. Get book(s), reference materials and start collecting links to help sites, forums etc.
5. Learn about APIs, drivers, I/O interfaces
6. Make sure you've got a printer.....
7. Start programming your idea

It's probably simpler to enrol in a course (if one exists) and use that to give you some basis to set yourself up.

But somehow I don't think the author is talking about classical programming. You can't just pick up a programming language that can demonstrate your idea and if you try, it's bound to be the wrong one.
Better advice would be to find out how programming works, what each language can and can't do, what elements you need, what you need to interface with and what you expect as a result. Is it doable?
Maybe all you need is server side knowledge and some html? Certainly easier than playing a flute.

Well that puts me (and probably a whole lot of us) as 'file sharers' as we cracked Printshop and a couple of Apple games way back then. Strangely, we all owned the software anyway, but now we had working backups because those 5.5" disks were pretty flakey. My experience of BBS was pretty much from the ground up and it was online games that were the attraction for me - as well as meeting the local crowd - fun times.

Oh so true! Introduce pot lids and turn it down to simmer saves enormous mats of energy. +1 on thermostat settings.

Single mums do survive here with handouts. a $30 prescription drops to $6 - Free or low cost travel, free medical and dental, rental assistance if they don't live at home, free schooling, concessions on power. If you can prove aboriginal descent (not sure if it is 1/8th or 1/16th), a child with ADD or ADHD or some other disability, then payments go up.
No joke, but a typical weekly wage here for a shop assistant is around $500-$700, most of that goes on rent, food and power - food is very expensive here. If you can tick enough boxes, a couple can get similar income from welfare. A single mum coping alone at parent's home with 1 child can make do as there is a strong family network that most can depend on. One family I know brought in $1200/fortnight on welfare as the woman was paid a carer's pension to look after her 'disabled' husband, 3 children with 'disabilities'. Another family fosters 2 children for a total of $1200/fortnight. The gov hands children under state care to 3rd party organization who place these children into vetted homes. It's the 3rd party who pays the family $600/fortnight/child, so you can see that the gov finds this cheaper than institutionalizing them. Generally these high payments exist because the gov. finds it cheaper to pay individuals to care for others in a family setting. This works for older people too where aged carers come to their homes to help, delaying institutionalization for some years.
The US Republican naysayers on Obamacare + other welfare initiatives have pointed out that there is not much incentive to go to find work because it is cheaper to stay at home, live on food stamps, cheaper drugs and other benefits. To some extent that is true for here, but I think you've got it much harder.

You think so? Well you have a point when it comes to food and power. Some of the negatives are massive toilet paper usage, random blotches of talcum powder everywhere, little strips of plastic from bandaids, extraneous bobbypins in strange places, untold amounts of hair and body products in the shower, lids, even more lids with nothing to put them on, boxes of tissues, a steady stream of magazines that apparently are rarely read, random strands of hair, a collection of fabric softeners, room deodorizing thingies, pillows with frills on them that irritate you enough to wake you, electric blanket settings that are way too hot, peculiar alterations in furniture placement that means you have to re-route all the carefully placed switches and cabling just so you can have the AV on the other side of the room, junk, more junk, then no room for junk, so you throw the first lot of junk out, vases with dying flowers, continual chattering like an overdub from a reality show and maybe a complete disinterest in what you're doing. There's probably more.

So much for political correctness. It may of been necessary at the time (Think Star Trek New Generation), but I think it's passed its use-by-date.
We're all are taken with feminism and you are sprouting the PC version of this as it has been ingrained into the common conciousness of men AND women. So it's right that you have that view. Women will take advantage of relationship situations a lot more than a man, especially if Mr Right is nowhere to be found, 2nd or 3rd best is good enough as long as they bring in the sheckels, fix leaking cisterns and don't smell too bad. That's not a mysogynistic statement either.
It's a gamble with them. Just ask a 18-25yr old single girl what they want in a man. I'm pretty sure the word 'love' is not high up on their list. How they behave while their on their chase can be seen as sociopathic.

There is evidence (in Aust.) of single moms who keep having babies making enough from baby bonuses from welfare, effectively cheating the system. That's OK with the government as they want to increase population. The strange thing is that the kids grow up and replicate this behaviour. I've seen married couples pop out extra babies just for the additional payments. As long as the kid remains dependent and in one form of education - even past the age of 18, more money comes into the household.
So yes, it is a profession and it's called raising children and there is a lot of single mums here - all wanting boyfriends for physical support and more babies.

Platinum coins are already sold as bullion. They are minted, but not in general use. So any bill banning platinum coins will fail. A bill banning a trillion$ platinum coin would be different as no-one in the world can actually buy that.

So you are a renaisance Italian then? Or part of the Lombard group? How is it in your fairy world?
The world went fine for millenia without banks, and even those countries that had them (like Arabia and China), their purpose was as a storehouse and not control.
Today's banks are intrinsic to the Western economy AND the system is abusive and broken. Just look up the Lima Declaration (1975) and the new world economic order of how the Western powers and multinationals decided how and when developing nations can advance.
That's only 1 example of the importance of 'banks' are. It's all basic bullshit, designed for multinational expansion and backed by banks. Read up on Nauru, South America and the rest of the 'developing' world.
Now there's nothing wrong with banks, just the banking system as we know it today. Banks are a law unto themselves - like the billions of cheap loans in Euros to countries, eventually devaluing their own currencies through exchange rates, so their government and citizens can't pay it back. Now most of Europe is under control of Germany (read Euro-banks). Everyone is in default or broke and all thanks to the banks. FYI: people hate banks because they control your money and profit by it. The safest thing a person can do is to buy bullion and not put their hard savings into a bank. Lets see... @+20% increase per year, I'll double my worth in 5 years.

Irrationality, stemming from bipolar hormonal ebbs and surges aren't safe in a vacuum.

I always keep in mind that the code I'm working on will be assembled, and the assembly is smaller and tighter with assembly oriented coding. So I do comment out working code and replace it with an alternate if I think it could be more efficient.

I've made a snap decision not to moderate on this topic, though it interests me immensely as I'm a bit of an Ameriphobe if that's the right expression. Reminds me of an insightful article by Michael Moore who wrote recently:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/gun-violence-united-states_b_2358115.html
From the outside looking in, USA has a lot of problems - an elected government that can't compromise, shackled and impotent, increasing rate of poverty, delusional media and massive debt. The Y and Z generation must do something to shake things up and get something working. I don't know what though.

You missed the point. It IS democracy that you have the electoral college. That's the will of the people.

And John Clesse was disappointed by the local selection of girls, as the models they hired didn't arrive from London in time for the shoot.