If you don't want pay union dues, which are essential for a union to function effectively, then don't join a union.

My father was a union man. His dues more than paid for themselves.

As I pointed out, the majority of their users were completely unaffected. Of those who were, most were out for less than a day. I should also point out, that many of those affected only experienced slowdowns.

The same was true for the Great BlackBerry Outage. The phone still functioned as a phone, as did apps. Messaging (Email and BBM) were really the only services significantly impacted, though every message was ultimately delivered. (The same can not be said for their competition.)

The infamous BlackBerry outage as really very similar to Apples MobileMe outage -- except it was significantly shorter and impacted a significantly smaller portion of their users. Well, and RIM didn't drop a single message -- I can't stress how important that fact is in terms of reliability.

The points? The "BlackBerry is unreliable" bit is absurd as they're dramatically more reliable than the competition. Your carrier is much more likely to be down than BlackBerry. Other companies regularly experience outages far worse and far more frequently than BlackBerry, yet still maintain a reputation for reliability.

There isn't much to argue about here. I contend that the outage hurt RIM far more than similar outages hurt other companies simply because of their absurd reliability. When they have an outage, it's big news. When Apple, Google, etc. have an outage, it's not surprising in the least and thus gets far less press coverage, if it's reported in the media at all.

You could have said the same thing about RIM in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010...

Apple is actually doing significantly less than RIM did when they were on top. If the beliefs about RIM have any truth to them, we should see Apple fall hard over the next few years.

Now ask yourself: What has Apple been doing for the past few years? What are they doing right now?

Which is very odd. They're more reliable than, well, everyone else. Hell, they're more reliable than our electrical service!

The only reason that Great Outage (which didn't even impact most customers, and most of those were affected for less than a day) was even newsworthy was because BlackBerry's services are so incredibly reliable!

Compare that to Apple's month-long MobileMe outage, the uncountable outages afterward, the regular iCloud outages, and even their recent month-long developer center outage. Those aren't even news. It's just par for the course. Yet Apple inexplicably maintains a reputation for reliability.

Even Google, with it's incredible reputation for reliability, has regular outages. Gmail seems to have a major outage every year. Still, their reputation is not impacted at all.

BlackBerry has a minor (what their competitors would consider minor anyway) outage and their reputation for reliability is shot. (Even though they didn't loose a single message! Everything got delivered eventually. That's amazing!)

Customers don't respond well, but they quickly forget. Except when it comes to BlackBerry. Then they remember. Probably because they're constantly reminded by people who seem to have some pathological hatred for cell-phone manufacturer.

The problem is that the majority think that they're included in your 10%.

Driving is dangerous. Safety should ALWAYS come first. It sure as hell should come before your ego.

Translation: "I'm of a superior intellect and thus can do more things in tandem than other people. I can talk on the phone or text and drive safely because I'm well above average!"

I would not want to share a road, or even a parking lot, with people like you.

Because driving is an excellent time to push yourself to your cognitive limits?

How about this? "Know your limits ... and stay well below them while driving!"

Don't be silly. The theremin actually works.

You're joking, right?

If not, start here.

You've nailed it. All I can say is that ...

... this part should be bold as well!

(And printed on t-shirts, bumper stickers, captioned on pictures of funny cats, etc.)

Here you go. Let's just say it's a bit better than a "quick look" at a couple of job websites.

Sure it does. It's found a nice niche with high-traffic sites. It's share as a server-side language for the web sits at around 3%. I'd call that pretty minor!

Obviously! Now try to put that in the context of the discussion.

Let's not pretend that programming is anything like engineering or any other type of professional work. Anyone can become a programmer in their spare time -- and build a career for themselves afterward. (It's not exactly difficult. Children can easily teach themselves computer programming. I'd bet that a sizable percentage of Slashdot users were hacking away on the family micro before the age of 10!)

The same can't be said for physicians, lawyers, electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, or hair-dressers. Think about that. The bimbo at the chain salon in the mall is held to a higher professional standard in her industry that the average developer.

The other AC is right: The "profession is a goddamn disgrace".

I'm not sure why you're comparing RoR and NodeJS to PHP and Java, so the following might feel a bit confused. This is my take.

The RoR fad is over and Ruby is starting to fall in popularity, so I don't expect to see it pass PHP (which, despite the hate, is actually growing).

The NodeJS fad is just beginning. I'm not comfortable making any predictions about it just yet, though I suspect it won't gain much ground in the near-term, for practical reasons. JavaScript, on the other hand, isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It seems to get more important every year.

Java is essentially dead on the browser. While it has a nice niche on the server, it's not really a significant player. Under Oracle, the best I can say is that its future is uncertain. Still, I wouldn't worry about starting a new Java project. If it's dying, it's got a lot of time to recover.

Anyhow, what I see isn't a lot of instability and change, but a rather stable and safe set of languages for the web.

PHP is practically ubiquitous, and owns quite a bit of the web (~80%). With lots of companies deeply invested in PHP for both public-facing sites and internal intranet apps, it's not going away any time soon. That makes it a very safe choice for new projects.

I don't think I need to explain why JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Love it or hate it, it's pretty much your only option. Java applets aren't coming back. While Flash is going to hang on for years, it's essentially dead and thus unsuitable for new projects. You're ultimately left with just two safe choices on the browser: "use JavaScript" or "don't use anything at all".

Looking back 10 years, things are basically the same. PHP was a smart choice for new projects, and JavaScript was still your only real choice on the browser -- though "nothing at all" was probably the smarter way to go at the time. (That's a long time. Think how much changed from 1993-2003 vs 2003-2013.)

So I'm just not seeing that "languages used to program on the web are changing all the time" like the parent asserts. What I've seen are a few of fads come and go, each failing to gain against a now near standard set of tools.

If "keeping current" means jumping on the latest bandwagon, count me out. I'll happily play with new things as they appear, but that's just for fun. I'd have to be crazy to make any sort of serious investment in what is very likely going to be the next passing fad. That said, I'll happily agree with you that new fads on the web appear infrequently enough that keeping up isn't difficult at all.

It should be required that anyone claiming a "logical fallacy" must formalize the argument, and from that show how the alleged fallacy applies and what impact the error has on the conclusion(s), if any.

Perhaps it's because you're relying on an absurd poster from a website which caters to the lower-end of the "I don't need a formal education" faction of the skeptical movement rather than a textbook?

The scare-quotes you've placed around the word "argument" are curious. Can I safely assume that you're a member of the aforementioned group to which the poster from your link was designed to appeal?