1. Find person on Facebook 2. Print out their picture on color printer 3. Use picture to login to their account

I've worked with (actually, had to replace) a visual programming language before. One huge problem with the language was printouts. It's very hard to print large programs. If you have a conventional text-based programming language, you can print out a 10000 line program on a printer, and it's comprehendable.Now try that with a visual program with 10000 interconnected blocks. You have to print it in sections on letter-sized paper, then tape it all together, and it becomes about 20 ft wide and 15 ft tall. In order to show someone a bug in the program, you needed to schedule a conference room so you have a large enough table to unfold the printout. Another huge problem was inserting new code. With a text-based programming language, you can just insert a new line. With this visual programming language, you had to move all the graphical elements out of the way to create space so you could plop down a new graphical element. It turned what should have been a single keypress operation into a five minute task for rearranging graphical elements. I could go on and on, but needless to say, managment thought the visual programming language was a "differentiating feature against our competitors". The people who actually used it hated it.

This is not "how to exploit NULL pointers" ... this is "how to exploit a kernel NULL function pointer". Well, duh. In other news, security researches find exploit for systems with blank root password.

I think this is just one facet of a larger problem, which I call the "impeding American Cultural Revolution" aka "The rise of the idiocracy". If you look at conditions today, they are similar to the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: disrespect for the science and facts (climate change deniers, creationists, birthers, teabaggers, health care death panelers, etc) and the glorification of the common man (Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Gretchen Carlson dumbing herself down, etc). The scenario which scares me is: the idiots vote Sarah Palin into office, and she prevents control of greenhouse gases until a massive global catastrophe (where we lose a significant portion of the world's arable land) that makes the Three Years of Natural Disasters look like a minor problem...

Let me translate the original post so non-programmers can understand it:

"Upper management at the car garage I work at recently declared that all car repairs should be done with a single tool. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one car repair project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the tool used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same repair tool for every repair project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' mechanics will be forced to use?"