KDE used to be the goto for new Windows expatriates...like circa 2008. I think XFCE does a way better job being familiar.

This. I no longer have access to my AOL email address, so this list is the only way to get my MySpace password X-D

If you're watching Fox News (or Faux News if you're so inclined), try 30 minutes per hour.

And besides which, what evidence is there that being on psychoactive drugs is a detriment to IT productivity?

Exactly! You know those unicorn rockstar productivity programmers who are 100x more productive than the average programmer? All abuse stimulants, the best of which are total meth heads. Not something I would enjoy working around, but if that's what you're looking for, hire the anorexic, jittery, spaced-out, word vomit guy, he's what you're looking for.

I've been working for Fortune 500 companies for the last 20+ years. Since I'm pegged as a "enterprise" tech, it's often difficult for me to find work in medium- or small-sized companies. Probably because I can easily replace five people by myself because I'm single and have no friends.

FTFY

You bring up the 50s and 60s and conveniently forget to mention top tax brackets were still sky high throughout the 70s and early 80s, and that certainly didn't help us then. The top tax bracket was 70% until 1982.

The prosperity of the 50s and 60s happened despite the high taxes and inflationary fed policy, which created a fair amount or resource misallocation, started the steady march of offshoring capital that continues today, and led to the dismal long slide until '83.

The whole "blame the rich" thing is totally misplaced bile and is populist fodder to focus the sub-100-IQ crowd on political issues. If someone makes 100x the income you do, they do not consume 100x the resources. A Maserati has the same basic amount of raw materials as a Camry. A Coach purse is essentially the same as a generic Kmart leather bag. They just tend to misallocate their resources, spending $500 for something that should be $50. Since they are never going to be meaningfully productive anyway, its actually better that way, because competing with the rich on the same playing field for resources sucks...ask anybody who lives LA or NYC.

The real problem is misallocated resouces in the broader economy. If house prices are inflating in an insane way, regular people who would otherwise be meaningfully productive, are spending their time doing $5k of repairs to a house and flipping it at a $20k profit, taking much more capital out of the market than the the value they supply. If the fed is pumping money and the stock market has nowhere to go but up, average people will invest their money in these fiat paper resources instead of investing in their own personal infrastructure, such as starting a new business or tackling a potentially profitable project.

When everyone is taking out more capital than the value they're providing (toxic capital flows), the house of cards collapses and you get a recession. Sure you can pump money into the balloon to keep it going, but it needs to come crashing down somehow. These people flipping houses need to lose their arse, and then move on to something more productive. The people "investing" in paper stock ticker need to lose their arse and invest their money into actual infrastructure that will build our economy later.

The reason we're stagnant and not growing is because the fed pumped, the government bailed out, and saved the parasites and their toxic capital flows, and they're still not moving on to building something real. We'll continue to have plunge after plunge with no meaningful recovery until we accept the necessary pain that comes at the bottom of the market cycle to clear the toxic actors out of the system.

Speaking of real estate...when a "climate scientist" says "hey, there's no problem!" they're admitting that their research is unnecessary and would end up losing their research grants and soon after their McMansion. I wonder if we'll ever get a survey adjusted for the "need to eat" bias. Lol

OK, since this whole story is flamebait...actually "Java developer" would be better there. I mean if you work a job using the busted old training wheels you picked up in college, ya know you might not be the brightest candle on the Titanic. Some related insults...."default parameter", "guppie", "bug mill", "platform whore"...

Even so, in the big picture Netflix is insanely cheap. The opposite extreme is online dating services who want 20 bucks a month to serve tiny JPEGs, text messages, and mobs of hired fake users who chat but disengage when its time to meet up. As an alternative to a $150/mo cable bill it really rocks.

Wrong...see you have this thing called deflation. If currency is concentrated in a few hands that do not let it go, than the economy acts like it doesn't exist and you get deflation. The effect of one person becoming enormously wealthy in a short period of time is only temporary.

Taxes do not create prosperity, they simply transfer power from corporations to government. We've never had progressive taxation...the rich have never paid their prescribed share, ever...tax evasion and offshore accounts have been around as long as there have been taxes.

The real problem is trade and currency imbalances. Politicians are perfectly OK trading our prosperity for power while countries and corporations have been conspiring to create, expand, and game these imbalances for profit, resulting in an enormous transfer of wealth and prosperity overseas, particularly to a certain communist dictatorship.

JFK was wise to place an embargo on Cuba, and should have done the same to other communist regimes.

Meanwhile for the last 35 years (thanks Ted Kennedy!) we've been letting in more poorly educated unskilled labor than we've needed with no leverage to ask for a raise, slowly driving down wages, as manufacturing lifts its skirt and runs overseas. We're at the point now where the average american must work two jobs to keep pace...the prosperous one income household has been gone since the 90's (thanks for NAFTA, George H.W. Bush!).

Yep! Just like the ACA is a poverty tax with 1000's of pages of language to bury and obfuscate that, so are the "solutions" to climate change like carbon credits. Regulatory action and carbon taxation act like regressive tax levies since the costs must passed down to the consumer (people with a child's understanding of the business world like Bernie Sanders like argue that point, but it is reality). A poor person with a $100 electricity bill and $10 carbon surcharge pays a much higher share of their income than a middle class person with the same $100 electricity bill and $10 carbon surcharge.

Bottom line, the left needs money for expanding government programs. Sure, taxing the rich sounds great on paper, but they have accountants and of course they will find the loopholes the politicians put in place for their own benefit.

To get real money you have to tax the poor! But an overt poor tax would make the left's base rebel, so they have to wrap it in some kind of candy coating to make it palatable. "Affordable Healthcare". "Save the Planet". Etc, etc. Which has worked quite well, we've got millions of self-professed intellectuals not asking but demanding a regressive tax increase on themselves and haven't the slightest clue about it.

At least someone is FINALLY giving some pushback. Look at current state of USB 2.0 Micro. How many other cable types have you ever had that needed to be replaced weekly if used a lot, and yes I'm talking about every brand, even the expensive ones.

Ugh...you meatspace engineers and your radians, butchering the beauty and purity of geometry. Clearly you've never enjoyed a spherical hamburger of uniform density in a vaccum.

Slashdot is kind of my warm up, perfect for when I wake up and the drool has yet to dry. When the coffee kicks in I move on to these:
https://www.reddit.com/r/techn...
http://arstechnica.com/

And then some more in-depth evening reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/progr...
http://regulargeek.com/

In real life, white people tend to have more privilege.

That is too broad, and invokes something resembling the survivorship fallacy. You're only focusing on the success stories. There are a more white hicks, rednecks, drunks, and crazies living in squalor than successful ones.

Some more plausible explanations:

* People who were taught some class and groomed to act and dress in a professional manner have more privilege.
* People who were taught marketable skills, such as fundamentals of the trades, repair, crafts, and technology at an early age have more privilege.
* People who received corporal punishment as a child are more humble, and thereby more privileged.
* And most importantly and likely, people who have had to (or watch a parent) kowtow to a crazy white woman learn to accept responsibility and fault for the actions of others gracefully, leading more effective management skills, and thereby more privilege.