obfuscator

Nope, actually serious. Obviously it's not as much as being full time, but it's still a thing. Due to demand primarily. I know if any urban stations take volunteers, and if they do, I doubt it's paid. Found the vision reqs: http://www.ofai.ca/candidate-information/medical-requirements-become-firefighter-ontario Lucky you :P You're out east, no?

Yes, I believe most volunteer positions at rural stations in Ontario are paid. Interesting. I got the feeling that in the GTA and around (within 100km) things are fairly competitive even for the volunteer positions.

That's interesting. A friend of mine did the examination for a local department (semi-rural) here in Ontario and passed with flying colours except the vision test. Failing that alone was enough to disqualify him. I guess that department must have had separate standards...

Congrats, when did you decide to go into firefighting? Just kind of joined the department when I became old enough, 14 here to join as a junior, and kind of fell in love along the way. Probably decided in the last year or so to actually pursue it as a career. This cert is nice because I get it free from dept, presuming I pass. Is it wildland or city stuff? I would love to do volunteer firefighting but I don't have 20/20 vision so I can't.

Okay, fair enough. I didn't say those were useless, I said they were unnecessary for certain types of programming. Big difference. Sure. Certainly a lot of that is seen from under-educated programmers and that lack of knowledge has immediate, tangible, negative effects on the quality of their code. Not knowing what context-free grammar is won't have the same effect.

Certainly basic rules of English are not as well known as one would hope, I don't disagree. Okay, I don't disagree. Uhh okay. Not what I said at all, but okay. Not necessarily, that's my point. Let's try this another way. Can you write a compiler without a solid foundation in computer science? No. Can you write a php script that shows a record from a database without a solid foundation in computer science? Yes. You can argue whether or not one should do any sort of programming without a solid cs foundation, but that doesn't change the fact that thousands of people do it every day, and some of them do it reasonably well.

Yes, but you don't need to have a doctorate in linguistics to write a good book. Calling it unskilled is probably a little unfair. I'd say less-skilled. To analogize: for a beautiful symphony to be performed, someone needs to write it, and some people need to play it. I'd say playing is not as impressive as writing, but it's still critically important. Also, people have been predicting the death of unskilled programming for quite literally thirty years, and it's yet to happen. Excellent programmers could figure it out, but they might not know right now or have learned it formally. Ultimately, I think we're on a different page regarding just how much knowledge of these things you need. Any competent programmer should know the difference between the stack and heap, but someone who builds straightforward web applications for a living doesn't need to know how to write a static analyzer.

I never said you should limit yourself to necessary knowledge, I just said that taking courses on compiler theory isn't necessary for the majority of programmers, which is true. I also wouldn't call that liberal arts. Having a general knowledge, sure. Having to actually write a compiler, no. There are plenty of excellent programmers using high level languages who have little or no experience with low level languages.

I never said you didn't need to have a good grasp of software development, I said that understanding complex compiler theory and other abstract things isn't necessary for the majority of programming. I don't need to be able to write an OS from scratch to be able to understand keeping app footprints small is a good goal.

You don't have a class that teaches push down automata, context free grammars, and Turing machines? Those are all really important to creating compilers, and the two classes we had on it both liked to imply that CFGs were one of those things that every programmer had to know. Not every programmer writes compilers, drivers, cryptography software, or operating systems. The vast majority of programmers deal with (relatively) straightforward business logic and that stuff is overkill for that sort of job.

Civics are dope, always super great cars. Except mine, which has proven to be a piece of shit. But I love it anyways. yeah plus they're cheap, and easy to fix. that's the main reason I want to get one. I don't care too much about cars. I have a matrix now I'm pretty happy with but I doubt I'll find another deal like the one I got...so a civic it is

my next car is definitely a civic edit: or a truck if I've moved by then

Do most people where you are drive those sorts of cars?

Seems like we have a fair number of Canadians around here. Have we done a "country" poll recently?

Unless you manage to completely remove guns from a society (only really possible in specific isolated circumstances), making guns harder to get will ensure only criminals have them. Even so, that doesn't mean less crime will happen. Someone who's been murdered doesn't care whether it was with a gun or a knife, they're dead either way. Guns are still effective self defense tools faced with any kind of criminal with any kind of weapon.

You likely won't see any guns unless you go out of your way to look for them. Carry of any kind is essentially illegal for anyone non law-enforcement.

Even in America what gun control has been instituted has had questionable results. For example, Chicago has the strictest gun control of any city in the states, but one of the highest murder rates. Compare that to Houston, which has some of the most lax gun control, but one of the lowest murder rates. In several notable cases violent crime has dropped sharply when concealed carry legislation was passed (in florida, I believe it was Miami or Orlando). There is room for some tweaking of American gun control legislation. But as you say, people expecting transformative results are in for a rude awakening. And in contrast, states like Vermont with some of the laxest gun laws in America have a rate of gun crime comparable to Canada Speaking of Canada, lawful firearms owners are 3x less likely to be commit a violent crime, compared to the general population.

Even in America what gun control has been instituted has had questionable results. For example, Chicago has the strictest gun control of any city in the states, but one of the highest murder rates. Compare that to Houston, which has some of the most lax gun control, but one of the lowest murder rates. In several notable cases violent crime has dropped sharply when concealed carry legislation was passed (in florida, I believe it was Miami or Orlando). There is room for some tweaking of American gun control legislation. But as you say, people expecting transformative results are in for a rude awakening.

I enjoy reading muggi's posts and seeing his POV, even if I don't agree with all of it. When people post here talking about an idea, or a problem, it's natural that others are going to respond with their opinions or advice. That's part of healthy dialogue and shouldn't be stifled for any reason.

I basically agree, but there are occasions where you can make a big difference. For example, one guy I know of started a campaign to win a specific riding for a political party in our last federal election and it ended up going over (and it was a pretty close race). Without his specific campaign and outreach it could well have gone the other way. So it is minimal, but individuals can and do make a difference sometimes. Sure. But working on direct options doesn't preclude you from working on indirect ones as well. You're right, but the analogy isn't perfect. To complete the analogy: You HAVE to be a member of a club (live in a country) and MUST conform to the rules of club or force will be used against you (which will significantly decrease your personal happiness, most likely). In addition, changing clubs cannot be done without some effort, and many clubs have major disadvantages compared to the club you were originally in. So, if one makes the decision that their current club is their best option, they can still have an active interest in improving it. See above. Just because one is active politically doesn't mean they don't also actively make changes to their life to better it. ------------------------------------------------- I care a fair bit about a bunch of different issues (politically speaking), so I take some interest in politics (including occasional activism of sorts). However, the majority of these things will not be personally detrimental to my life one way or another. If it gets to the point that a political decision is made that would have a substantial negative effect on my life, I would gladly take the direct option (of moving, essentially). There are a few things I can think of that would cause me to do that. However, there are some things that would not be a major enough inconvenience on my life to warrant leaving the country or province (the club), but would still detract from my personal freedom (and happiness by extension). In these cases, where direct action is not appropriate, I take indirect action as a less effective but still potentially useful alternative.

I probably wouldn't vote at all. I don't know if it's fair to say you have NO control. Extremely minimal control, sure (at least from a single vote perspective). When you add in the effect you can have from volunteering/campaigning/running, it can be significant.

I'm not actually surprised trump is doing that well. The rest of the republican field is pretty bland. Luckily I'm not American, so I don't have to choose...but if it came down to Trump vs. Sanders for president I would really struggle.

That's ridiculous. A good chunk of jobs require id in and of themselves. You don't even need "Photo" id to vote. See here: http://www.elections.ca/content2.aspx?section=id&document=index&lang=e There are about 40 different ways to prove you are whom you say you are. I personally know of at least one case of voter fraud. 78% of Canadians reported drinking last year. Contrast that with election turnouts (60%) and more people buy alcohol than vote. My point is, requiring identification is not an onerous requirement for the vast majority of Canadians. Although that situation sucks, it's A) a tiny minority of people who would have this issue, and B) I doubt it was that important to them. Money paid through social assistance programs should be more than sufficient to pay for getting identification if that was prioritized by the recipient. See the link I provided above. There are a multitude of different ways to be identified. Every time I deal with the government, or applying for anything, period, I research what information I need to provide in order to do so. Common sense. Elections Canada is supposed to be non-partisan. Avoiding all advertising helps them maintain that standard, since advertising is targeted by nature and could involve perceptions of them being partisan.

How does it hurt low income families or first nations when they can get photo id for free? Once again: It is completely reasonable to expect people to be able to prove they are who they say they are when carrying out an important civic duty. No one complains about having to provide ID to buy alcohol, but ask people to do it to vote, and shit hits the fan? Ridiculous.

I'm inclined to agree that voter fraud is probably not a widespread issue, but I think it's entirely reasonable to expect people to prove they are who they say they are when they're carrying out an important civic responsibility. Here you can get a health card with photo on it for free, and I suspect that would suffice as ID.