And no, you really don't understand. I'll vote for Bernie because he will be better for you. He will be better for your kids and for your friends.

I think he understands you a hell of a lot better than you understand him.

I'll give you 2, but, uh, Vietnam? Tibet? India? You don't have to go back even as far as Korea to find China invading other countries and committing atrocities.

He's got a terrific point and you keep helping him make it with your rather oblivious use of language.

This idea is as ridiculous as the opposite extreme, which is imagining that giving the government more money will lead to better education and other social services.

You're both wrong.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that there are many organizational and institutional issues in government agencies which can blow through influxes of funds without any appreciable improvement in services. Yet it's equally true that there are government agencies and programs which run at efficiency levels which beggar private alternatives in comparison.

Tired aphorisms are never going to be an adequate substitute for an intelligent examination of the actual problems faced and a realistic appraisal of the various strengths and weakness offered by public and private approaches.

But... but... but... everyone else in this thread is saying that you get what you pay for! How could that logic possibly be wrong? :/

Because the supply of land (which is also required for homes) is finite; any project that removes a large chunk of it from the market is going to drive up the price of the remaining available space (and by extension, homes that might be built on it).

The ads are not "relevant" to you, they are what advertisers want you to see.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

The advertisers don't have enough information to to give you really relevant ads.

Then isn't the solution, if you want what the GP professes to want, less privacy?

Best thing to do is block ads and just google when you want something.

Ironic that you're citing one of the biggest data-aggregating advertisers out there today as a relevant source, when you appear to be arguing against exactly what they are doing to present you with those results.

I'm not much interested in Hollywood versions of classic books, ever since Peter Jackson took a book that is much shorter than any of the books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and stretched it out to what promises to be a trilogy in it's own right.

I'm not saying it's right for The Hobbit, particularly, but there's nothing inherently wrong with taking a short book and making a long movie, or series of movies, out of it... books are dense, most are given little chance to have all their themes, sub-plots, and characters portrayed on the big screen. It's not always wise to do so, but such a common objection to adaptations is "Aw, they cut my favorite part from the book!" that I think most fans would prefer stretching their favorites out if it meant fitting in more of the source.

Again, not exactly what Jackson is up to, but nothing at all wrong with taking a short book loaded with story and making a movie long enough to do it justice.

...regularly sweeping money into a bank account will also get your account frozen.

I'm not saying I trust PayPal all that much, but this is simply untrue. I have businesses that use a couple of different PayPal accounts, and regular sweeps are de rigeur for us, and we've never had any account frozen by them.

Part of the reason we sweep them is to guard against just that possibility, however.

It's also important to sweep the account you are sweeping into... usually, the wire transfer capability works both ways. So they can, without additional authorization, suck funds back out of your bank account. (if anyone happens to know a bank that will let you prevent this sort of outgoing transaction, I am all ears)

If the funds aren't in that account, you could get hit with an NSF charge from your institution, but you'll have an easier time arguing with them about it than with PayPal, and a $30 bounce charge is a lot less than $50,000 or whatever amount PayPal might decide to sit on instead.

You know, I agree with your sentiment entirely, which is why I feel bad calling this out:

A serious firewall would be a good start.

It's really not. In fact, the firewall is the last thing you should think about.

That's not just because there are so many exploits right now that are for all practical purposes indistinguishable from normal traffic, although that's a good reason, too. It's because the best defenses are always layered defenses, and those start from the inside out.

Far too often I see people begin and end at the firewall. Even if they intended it only be the start, they're thinking rarely progresses much further into the network... why should it? They think about all the stuff the firewall is going to catch, and it seems to take care of so many problems it's hard for them to imagine what else they need to do internally to lock things down. They've succumbed to the "enumerating badness" fallacy, classically described by Marcus Ranum in his must-read Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security.

That's exactly backward, though. Where you want to start is at your core data, with the assumption that everything else has already failed, and what can you do to mitigate the disaster of penetration at that last possible level.

Then you work your way out, doing the same thing at each level.

Because almost no one does this, firewalls today are the thin, crunchy shell over the juicy taste explosion of vulnerable systems that crackers crave.

Yeah, but the only "problems" with plastic bags were also with the users. So why try to pin the blame there now? Just regulate cloth bags, too!

I'm waiting for this whole exercise in un-scientific nanny-stateism to run full circle. My only problem is that I no long have a state-approved bag in which to put the popcorn.

Hansel and Gretel shove a little old lady into on oven and broil her, and that's been broadly accepted as children's fare for two hundred years. A little justifiable homicide shouldn't be a big issue all of a sudden.

As others have said, it's perfectly possible to get a job in IT without the corresponding degree. But if that's what you're interested in, and you're looking at CS programs, why not do both? Apply or start in on the CS degree and simultaneously look for a job in the industry. The fact that you are at least starting down that path educationally might assuage some potential employers who might otherwise look at your move as one tinged with desperation ("Couldn't get into grad school, now hopes we're going to pay him for his tech hobby while he re-groups and looks for another psych program... no thanks!").

I wish I could tell you more about the job environment and the relative merits of comp-sci degrees these days but I suspect they've changed since the late nineties when I got into it. That was the wild west, and employers cared far more about what you could do than what your degree was in. I was already working in IT by the time I started college, and I consciously decided against a CS degree... at the time, the degree programs I was looking at were hopelessly outdated compared to the technologies I was already working with.

I got my degree in English instead, and I've never regretted it. In fact, communications skills have been some of my most valuable assets when competing for jobs. If you have practical knowledge and the ability to articulate it, you're far more valuable in most IT organizations than a geek who may know more, but can't communicate it. So your psych degree might actually prove more useful than you think.

But if you have the resources to go on and get a CS degree also, and you really want to work in the IT industry, then you should go ahead and get started on it.

"Considering how much talk there is of an enterprise false flag operation, if it was ever intended it probably won't happen because of all the talk about it."

That's just what they want you to think!

Well, that's job security, innit?