The problem is, QM only proves true complexity, not true randomness. In other words, a limit to what human beings, working in four dimensions, can know. To prove true randomness, you'd have to account for *all* possible causes, including those that appear from our frame of reference to move backwards in time (like quantum entangled particle spin, or certain waves that appear to break the light speed barrier). True randomness requires uncaused events to happen. And that's about as easy to prove as the existence of God. Having said that, there is a third possibility pointed to by probability and quantum mechanics that is in between you and your friend; quantum universes. That way the future (and perhaps even the past, since there were many possible paths to get to the current state) is an infinite state machine; but every state gets "hit" someplace in the tangled wobbily bits of the multiverse. Ok, now that I'm talking like Doctor Who, I'd better stop. But it would be wise of both of you to consider the possibility that a lack of randomness does not necessarily imply predeterminism.

Given the dialect of English used on Powerpuff Girls and other cheap Asian animated stuff that is on that channel, that explains a lot of Engrish Errors I've been seeing in Eastern European & Russian manuals.

Both. My post secondary education focused less on syntax, and more on methodology, so I was taught to teach myself further skillsets. Syntax is easy- just hit F1 is what to remember for syntax. LOGIC, especially boolean logic, is harder. It helps if you're already pretty much a black and white thinker- thinking in terms of on or off. Ultimately, if-then-else is the most powerful statement to learn in any computer language. Once you've got the syntax of that, you can do anything.

Forgot my keycard when I was supposed to be at work early- now I'll have to work an additional 15 minutes into lunch to make up for it.

I'm not at all sure that a Prius isn't a geeky equivalent of a sports car- especially given the hacks that are in the wild for improvements such as plug-in recharging and adding laptop batteries and tweaking the internal software for faster speeds on electric only.

I separate the programmers in my life and on teams I work on into two groups- those who know the fundamentals and those who don't. I find the guys who don't- mainly younger programmers who have graduated from college post 1997- have a very GUI-centered view of the universe. .NET in general has a gui-centered view of the universe. This can be really useful if you're focused on end results and the GUI. It's not terribly useful if your application is not scaling well, or you need to hand-optimize anything at all. The best team, has both types of programmers on it, the project is split into tiers, and the lower level a tier is, the more experience you need on it.

Does that include moderating the 50 blogs "transition team" Obama would like to link to the site?

As long as you don't mind the low bandwidth of the tribal drum link, anyway....

It is really that high in the private sector- I'd expect government sector to be WORSE- they've got a union to deal with.

Yes, especially given Obama's wishes to use Web 2.0 governance techniques more. I'd expect they'd need to add a staff of at least 40 moderators for the topic-separated blog alone (and those moderators better be knowledgeable in both XHTML and the specific legislative track their blog is on). 6 people and a budget of only $1M, for the primary way the first GenX president will communicate with his constituents? Ridiculously small. You *MIGHT* get away with that for the basic IT staff, but when you add the content consistent with the office to that, it's going to explode.

US$124k/year really should get you a reasonable lifestyle anywhere in the world.....I would hope.

Have you tried the unions and guilds yet? TechsUnite and Programmer's Guild have a lot of people willing to do such work for another month's mortgage payment.

Windows 7 is only blindingly fast because it hasn't had any time to pick up any malware yet.

Mentioned above- along with the programmer's version

Or the programmer's version: "This is the project that will never end, It's bugs go on and on my friends, Some people started coding it, not knowing what it was, And they'll keep on coding on it forever just because" I've had a few projects like that.... :((

A centemeter is a fingernail (width). I'll agree on kg.

Likely wouldn't work in this situation- he's reporting that the service isn't deallocating memory on shutdown.

I'd add one more thing: If your system keeps a log for *any* reason, then instead of inline comments, write a function that writes a time-date stamped time to the log, then put your inline comments into string parameters for that function. It'll help for finding any logic bugs in your system.

I see nothing to separate you from the other two million PHP freelancers out there. Here's your problem- you're focusing FAR too much on a single technology/language, and not enough on a specific industry that you've already worked in. When it comes right down to getting the contract, knowing your customer's industry is much more important than if you use PHP, ASP.NET, or some other scripting language of the week. What you really need on your site is a resume and links to past work.

Joe Woodbury wrote:

Try 6%. This is valid since that's how it's been calculated for a long time and which is how you create a legitimate basis for any economic measurement. You can't compare numbers calculated one way with numbers calculated another. You may not like it, but

My point is that isn't how it has been calculated for a long time. It's how it has been calculated since the Reagan Administration, basically. If you use the same calculation we were using during the last depression, you get the 14%.

Joe Woodbury wrote:

(Strictly speaking, if you count every adult over 18 and who is not unemployed, the number is over 50%. So what?)

"not unemployed"? No, about 60% of the adults over 18 are unemployed. But the grand majority of those are either independently wealthy OR disabled to the point of being worthless OR self-employed, and not even the Depression-era workforce figures included those three groups.

Joe Woodbury wrote:

(The same thing happens with inflation numbers; too many people get all uptight since it doesn't measure everything, but you can't measure everything and constantly changing what is measured and how would make any inflation number meaningless over time.)

Well, actually, with a large enough computer network you CAN measure everything, but only WalMart cares to, and they're not trying to measure inflation but worldwide just in time shipping. I'd be happy if they just went back to the Carter admin CPI which included fuel, food, and housing in the consumer price index- instead of the current inflation measurement which only measures a bunch of stuff that doesn't change to keep people from panicing.