If you look at the WHO status updates, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.who.int%2Femergencie..., the virus is now in almost all countries. Closing the borders will just create walls with the virus spreading on both sides.

And closing the borders disrupts supply chains, research and trade. Responding in that way would kill far more people than the virus itself.

Yeah Iâ(TM)m Dutch. Youâ(TM)re right, I should have said âoeconservativeâ. The Dutch word âoeLiberaalâ is used for conservative parties.

This story is about The Netherlands. We have now has liberal governments for 20 years. They have shifted power from employees to employers in many ways, from reducing protections and social security to strengthening anti-competitive clauses.

So new jobs pay less and are less secure. Not because of automation but because the laws have changed.

Exactly. The NLRA was even enacted after the arbitration act. No jurist for almost a century thought it was possible to dislodge the NRLA by amending employment contracts, and for good reason :)

In the market, useful websites beat secure websites.

So by natural selection, developers that ignore security multiply, while those that focus on security die out.

Agreed, Oracle engineers are typically well off. Or even people who work for a 3rd party Oracle consultancy.

If you contrast the lifestyle of an Oracle engineer with an open source engineer... well, let's just say only one can afford a car.

A bank going broke is a bad thing because it hurts people who are unrelated to the bank's behavior. For example, a plumber could lose his pension; a butcher could lose access to his current account; a big payment to a hospital could be lost.

An economy runs better it has a trustworthy financial system. We should share the cost of bank failures so we all sleep better.

Obviously, that means the price of the expansion is also $60. :)

I think that's on the high side, especially giving economic conditions. It's also a bit sad that they require you to buy the earlier expansions as well. That's a very high barrier for new players.

First, when you buy the new expansion, you get a level boost to 90 for free. You only need to buy it separately if you want multiple characters at 90.

Secondly, being good with your class is now only required for Flex level raids and higher. You can see all of the game without knowing how to play your character. Blizzard has at times re-introduced minor difficulty in 5-mans (heroic 5-mans at the start of Cataclysm, Icecrown 5-mans) but while some people liked that, most of the players didn't.

Thirdly, you say you'd be "mad to pay" $60. I could easily see myself having $60 worth of fun trying out another character class. What other things can you buy for $60? You can easily spend more just eating out in a good restaurant, and that'll give you only two hours of fun.

Google has had a huge positive influence on people's lives the last decade. Search, Android, Maps... wow. They took a lot of real risk and made the right choices.

Banks are basically part of government. I'm not quite sure what JP Morgan does, but I don't think they made many people's lives better. They also don't take any real risk (they're government backed, after all) and ... they did not make quite the right choices.

The numbers are too large, but I do not doubt that Google's number should be larger.

It's impossible to use templated code (even "well tested" code like the STL) without having to debug template issues yourself.

Even std::list is so unbelievably tricky to use that writing your own C list would give you better quality.

For a reasoned distaste of C++, see:
http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html

A proper distaste of C++ is best acquired by taking over a legacy C++ project.

Reading Linux Torvalds on C++ might be instructive:
http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

Totally agree. I've maintained a couple of C++ codebases in my time. It would take weeks to expand my C++ knowledge to where I could understand the favorite language patterns of the old maintainer.

Running old C++ code through Valgrind is hilarious. It's hard to believe how many things even experienced C++ coders get wrong.

The LWN article linked to is about "Copyright assignment" (http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/529522/854aed3fb6398b79/)

The author seems to complain that he cannot retain copyright over his work.

Does that mean he doesn't want to code for free anymore?