I can't imagine that there will be a time in my life where I'm going to want to stop building stuff. I might "retire" and work on my own stuff or FOSS or something, but can't imagine that I would retire as in not work on something constructive. My dad is in his 60s and is the same way so I'm expecting that attitude isn't going to change.
I don't suspect finances to be a sticking point for myself either. I enjoy what I do, and don't imagine that will change. There are things that make what I do less enjoyable, such as meetings, this years flavor of workflow management practices, project management, et al. However, there is satisfaction in building things, discovering new things, and a satisfaction in being a part of something that helps to improve peoples lives. Similarly, my father in his 60s has managed to find things to keep him busy and is continually teaching himself new things after work as his father before him. I don't expect my desire to work and learn to ever fade; just who, and what I work for.
No. The older crowd has seen its share of Ponzi schemes and economic bubbles and is simply less naive.
This. I've all but given up warning my younger friends and colleagues. Wisdom is earned, not given after all.
The going rate is around $1 per 1000 solved catchpa.
The threat of terrorism is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
Copyright protection is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
Child porn is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
The Olympics!? They're not even trying any more.
The world in 1984 is a global symmetric system.
You have some of the prerequisites for that system in place:
Perpetual war on X
A vast military-industrial complex to destroy the excess of human production.
Choice between two indistinguishable political ideals.
However the 1984 world is also in equilibrium. Once big brother exists, he will always have existed.
You're discounting the possibility of being conquered from without.
I call rule 34 on rule 34
The function requires an animation loop and event handler otherwise it does nothing. After that, it's way more than 140 bytes.
Right, the American legal system would only destroy someone's life if they wrote a circumvention for a copy-right protection system.
Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more than the estimate the job will cost.