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Comment Re:Advice to my younger self considering an IT car (Score 3, Informative) 548

How did this get modded up? These kinds of statements say far more about the person saying them than anything closely resembling reality. I spent nearly 6 years as a plumber before I made the switch to programming and only one of these points has any validity.

better hours

Forget the fact that some summer days you'll wake up at 3:30 AM and head to the job site because by the afternoon it's too hot to throw a shovel (dig holes/trenches). Plumbing is the kind of work with mandatory overtime, 24-hour on-call shifts, AND inversely periods of time where work dries up completely (i.e., no pay).

comparable pay

In 3 years as programmer my income has surpassed the highest paid, 30-year veteran, Journeyman plumber at my previous place of employment. And good luck finding an employer that offers 401K contribution matching.

healthier lifestyle

Tell that to my great grandfather, my grandfather, several uncles, brother, and my father - all plumbers with severe back issues starting early in their careers and worsening to a chronic state in old age.

While I'm sure that poor pay and shitty hours are a reality for some programmers, they usually have a choice whether they realize it or not. Most blue collar professions don't provide you the option to quit and find better conditions in the same field elsewhere.

If you're overworked, underpaid, and unhealthy that is on you to do something about it.

Comment Re:Pigeonholing without purpose. (Score 1) 199

The porn I like is nothing like the porn my friends like, and vice versa. Not even my girlfriend and I agree on porn.

You may have just validated their point. You, your friends, and significant other all consume porn.

I'm also willing to bet that the illegal activities I've done in my life are nothing like the ones my friends have committed.

You and your friends are involved in illegal activity. Put two and two together and you've got a network of people (allegedly) illegally downloading porn.

Comment Re:BB is a business phone (Score 2) 185

Having supported BB business users before and during a transition to iPhones, I can say that in most cases a user's satisfaction with BB was inversely proportional to their exposure to Android/iOS. In short, BB users may simply not know any better.

Comment Re:No Surprise--Facebook is apparently not for new (Score 1) 216

If anything, I've always seen Facebook and Twitter as a distraction from reality (in the US). Perhaps the reasons too few people care about US foreign policy, Wikileaks information, and voting is because they're busy playing Farmville or catching up on the lasted Royal Wedding details.

Comment Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. (Score 2) 520

I've made it a point to avoid Facebook over the years for a lot of reasons. Chiefly because of privacy concerns. I've recently found myself single, and with a pretty lacking social network. With Facebook being *the* place to build these networks, I've had to reconsider the downside to whoring out my personal data. Perhaps the question should not be how we keep the data out of the hands of government and advertisers, but how to adjust to an age (and adjust a government) where nothing is personal.

Comment Someone explain this: (Score 1) 865

If the earth is 4.5+ billion years old, how can anyone be so blatantly ignorant as to assume that we can put stock in numbers like "the hottest decade on record" based off 200 years of climate history? I lean heavily toward environmental conservation, but for my own reasons. No one has ever been able to answer this question for me.

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"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system] made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977

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