I disagree. There are crafts people who do awesome woodwork, but woodworking is a hell of a lot easier to learn that software development. Also, my dad was a welder, a very good one, but most of the welders he worked with were drunk fools and did 'acceptable' enough work. If you have half a brain you can learn to weld and even fabricate metals. I've been in that world and I know exactly how smart those people all are (hint: most dropped out of high school).
Everyone I know that "treats it like a day job" falls down on keeping their skills up to date. This is a tough field and to do it well, you are studying a lot.
Too bad the business model of VMS was so bad, eh? UNIX, and more to the point, KILLED VMS on every front. And yes, I have had the displeasure of having to use VMS and code in it and deal with the special snowflake sysadmin people who operate VMS, the most recent one being just two years ago. What a time! What mystifies me is that there are still many companies out there who refuse (stuck?) to migrate off of ancient OpenVMS Alpha hardware--all because the IT people stomp their feet and throw tantrums and won't let it go. Where are the rational tech people? Still advocating these monoliths for job security...
VMS had its day, its day is over. Learn. New. Skills.
I enjoyed using VMS in college years ago. I am now biased because I have never been mistreated as a professional developer so badly than while dealing with that VMS admin! The man was so toxic that the company should have fired him many times over but refused because he was the "only" one who could kinda sorta run their database (note: they had to restart the application daily to keep it running and the boxes had all kinds of memory issues and they were buying used hardware off of eBay to keep it running--this is a major healthcare company mind you, thousands of customers whose lives are at stake).
Time marches on, skillsets have to be upgraded, which is apparently too much for some people to accept.
Because it's an unsubtle polemic that misses its target. All government inefficient? Check. And wrong. Charity as the single solution to collective action problems? Check. And has substantial real-world limits due to the free-rider problem. Medicare inefficient? Check. And ludicrously wrong.
Dropping a standard-issue screed into a thread tends to attract downvotes because it isn't serious.
At a completely different scale to those mentioned by others, council housing maintenance by Darlington Borough Council in England. I used to work for them and looked at privatising it; it was too damned cheap to be undercut by any of the private companies.
Government is full of bits that work very well, as well as bits that work very badly. Governments are complicated; sweeping statements are usually wrong.
Is there a podcast that will stop me wanting to vomit as the bus driver breaks hard every 10 seconds, or help me battle my way through the queue to get onto said bus?
I don't know where you live, but the stress of commuting alone has led me to want to get out of the business. Companies have got to smarten up! There's no earthly reason why dedicated knowledge workers need to be on some cube farm or stupid newsroom office every day. It sucks.
Gambling has always been a tax for the mathematically illiterate. Casino gambling has always been a scam and this proves it--whenever someone too clever comes along, they run right to the muscle to get their money back.
"Tax for the mathematically illiterate" is an mean thing that smug people say to pat themselves on the back and feel smarter than the "peons." It's like saying "people who go to concerts are too stupid to figure out how to buy a CD."
Even if you 100% know the odds are nowhere near your favor its possible to get pleasure from the act of putting down a bet, even if you lose. It can be a form of entertainment.
I, personally, don't get this pleasure but I can understand other people like different things than me.
Whether or not it should be legal, its additive potential is too much of a burden on society, or is ethical is a different question entirely.
