I feel ya, especially in regard to the plethora of programming languages. I learned BASIC, and DOS because I needed it to bend the machines back then to my will, but never had a need for COBOL, and when Pascal came out, I lost all interest in programming, because I could see that programming languages were evolving into their flavor-or-the-month phase of life.
I did learn FORTRAN, the Latin of dead computer languages, because it contained built in advanced trig functions, like inverse tangent, and I needed those for some astronomical programming I was doing on a VAX at the university. It was already a dead language when I learned it, and about the only people that used it any more were physicists and astronomers. Now, it's true that you can program BASIC to do advanced trig using subroutines, but I'm lazy, and did not want to type all that extra code when all I had to type in FORTRAN was ATAN to retrieve an angle from a tangent.
Later, I got into hacking for a while, and a close brush with the law in connection to that hobby sparked an intense interest in encryption. They can't gig you on what they can't prove, y'know? Then there is also the fact that encryption can keep your private information (like banking stuff) secure from hackers if properly used, so there is that to consider above and beyond mere legal concerns. I never hacked for profit, only for fun, but the government tends to take a dim view of all of it - they get jittery, it seems, when someone retrieves software from their computers to back engineer it and see what makes it tick.
Anyhow, porn seems to have sparked the financial revolution on the internet - at one time, I believe 2/3 of all internet sites were porn sites, and when Wall Street saw how well that was going for porn purveyors, they decided to get in on the money making rackets as well, and sell everything from widgets to wombats across the wire for easy cash. The internet has never been the same.
Then came along Google et al to make selling stuff easier for Wall Street by stealing everyone's personal data and profiling them using said stolen data, and it was the beginning of the end. They found ingenious ways to get around encryption for the profiling - in order to avoid the data collection, one would have to disconnect entirely. If the information was flowing - and what good is a web connection if it isn't? - then Google and Company were intercepting it, analyzing it, and profiling with it... all in an effort to assist Wall Street in discovering just which sort of can opener you will buy.
Then Google and Friends discovered another customer that they could benefit from by selling their profiling data - gummint. Then they got even cozier, doing the dirty work gummint wasn't allowed to do, like censoring free speech, and a diabolical partnership was formed. Big Tech and Big Gummint, both standing naked in the same shower washing each other's backs.
It's all down hill from there.
.
I did learn FORTRAN, the Latin of dead computer languages, because it contained built in advanced trig functions, like inverse tangent, and I needed those for some astronomical programming I was doing on a VAX at the university. It was already a dead language when I learned it, and about the only people that used it any more were physicists and astronomers. Now, it's true that you can program BASIC to do advanced trig using subroutines, but I'm lazy, and did not want to type all that extra code when all I had to type in FORTRAN was ATAN to retrieve an angle from a tangent.
Later, I got into hacking for a while, and a close brush with the law in connection to that hobby sparked an intense interest in encryption. They can't gig you on what they can't prove, y'know? Then there is also the fact that encryption can keep your private information (like banking stuff) secure from hackers if properly used, so there is that to consider above and beyond mere legal concerns. I never hacked for profit, only for fun, but the government tends to take a dim view of all of it - they get jittery, it seems, when someone retrieves software from their computers to back engineer it and see what makes it tick.
Anyhow, porn seems to have sparked the financial revolution on the internet - at one time, I believe 2/3 of all internet sites were porn sites, and when Wall Street saw how well that was going for porn purveyors, they decided to get in on the money making rackets as well, and sell everything from widgets to wombats across the wire for easy cash. The internet has never been the same.
Then came along Google et al to make selling stuff easier for Wall Street by stealing everyone's personal data and profiling them using said stolen data, and it was the beginning of the end. They found ingenious ways to get around encryption for the profiling - in order to avoid the data collection, one would have to disconnect entirely. If the information was flowing - and what good is a web connection if it isn't? - then Google and Company were intercepting it, analyzing it, and profiling with it... all in an effort to assist Wall Street in discovering just which sort of can opener you will buy.
Then Google and Friends discovered another customer that they could benefit from by selling their profiling data - gummint. Then they got even cozier, doing the dirty work gummint wasn't allowed to do, like censoring free speech, and a diabolical partnership was formed. Big Tech and Big Gummint, both standing naked in the same shower washing each other's backs.
It's all down hill from there.
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’