Oooh, I can't wait to ignore Microsoft products on Linux as well!

PostgreSQL for me thanks.

Hmm. I cannot reach the site.

Naturally, anyone within earshot of an idiot with a smartphone has opted in as well?

I was going to post a comment how I would like to have a local instance of OSM for my state/region.

Is it possible to calculate directions/routing locally too?

try out maps.me

Bret Easton Ellis also has an excellent podcast: http://podcastone.com/Bret-Easton-Ellis-Podcast

I see a couple of things missing in the comments thus far on George Bell's isolation.

First, his age. When he was younger, he was (presumably) in love with, and almost married, a woman whom he stayed in touch with for the rest of his life. He also had close relationships with friends. For some people, the "desaturation" of life that comes with age makes it feel less worthwhile to pursue the things that once made them happy.

Second, some people who do not socialize are not necessarily devoid of the inner need for friendship and companionship - they may have learned that the pain and risk that can come with social connections outweigh the advantages.

When a man becomes old, disabled, and considerably overweight, interacting with others might not be a particularly pleasant experience.

There are no "solutions" to the "problems" George Bell had. They are a part of the human condition, and they were his experience of life.

Echoing some of the sentiment elsewhere in comments, I liked programming a lot more when I was more of a one-man show, instead of a team member with other people doing business analysis, project management, client contact, and basically everything except pulling predefined stories off a scrum board and delivering them.

I'm sure it's more efficient and effective, but it feels like factory work now.

Like you, I did enjoy it more when I was contracted to do the 1.0 version of something and where I was basically working alone to a spec.

Though I prefer the modern tools.

I think part of "the system" involves learning and lending institutions informally forecasting what the lifetime return on a student's education will be, and then attempting to maximize the return on the student loan(s) as an investment on those future earnings.

The learning and lending institutions clearly fucked up big-time in their forecasting, along with everyone else who was irrationally exuberant in their optimism about the future economy.

Now they are stuck between students on one hand (who have been sold a bill of goods and are seriously pissed about the pittance left over after their loan payments, if they're able to pay back at all), and the investors on the other hand (which includes not only evil bankers' money but also people who have been sacrificing in good faith for decades to contribute to their retirement accounts).

So the stage is set for a nice messy society-destroying generational war that should distract everyone from the forecasting mistakes.

> How much of it is due to needlessly churning out new editions to cut off the used book market?

And there is all the more incentive when the instructor requires a book he has written himself.

When the crying person gets this all resolved, perhaps the crying person will want to consider alternatives to Facebook, such as diaspora*.

"The alternative" is almost certain not to be an alternative Web-based service, but a set of protocols allowing for interactions between independent and independently hosted systems.

Diaspora was a valient effort, but sadly, appears quite doomed (I was an early fan and user).

From everything I've seen/read during the security research phase for my project, trusting in the computational/security integrity of endless P2P nodes is not a road I want to go down.

There really is nothing _a priori_ wrong with the centralized system, PROVIDED said system/operator makes strong Privacy / Data Sovereignity guarantees from the word go.

Fair point. It's not necesarily the case that you'd see extensively P2P nodes. But again, a distributed protocol based system would allow for local supernodes, competently administered, to exist.

There's also the issue that client nodes, under any model, also require security updates and practices. The universal P2P model really isn't far from that, and certain auto-updating models seem arguably preferable to present offerings.

Despite all the best will in the world on the behalf of the developers and users of Diaspora and other platforms designed to replace Facebook, there is no alternative to Facebook until everyone moves there.