helveticar

Yes, exactly this. A second chance is a safety net, available mostly to those with the circumstances or resources to deploy it. One helpful circumstance being youth (plenty of time), while an obvious resource is personal or, more likely for the younger, parental wealth.

Attitudes to risk taking are similar, e.g. your fear of high wire walking depends hugely on whether you have a safety line or not. Wealthy kids might pride them themselves on taking chances where the reality is that in their whole existence they have never been exposed to the possibility of paying the price for failure.

There is an incorrect anecdote about Willie Sutton who was allegedly asked why he robbed banks. "That's where the money is" he is supposed to have replied.

Be where your prospective SOs are likely to be and do what they're doing. To begin with get used to making friendships with these people; it may develop it may not, but you will be more comfortable with other people and improve your social skills.

For a British kid from an impoverished background this was (early 70s) my Internet, vast range of content, intelligently selected and with capsule reviews/extracts of everything which was included.

When, 20 years later, I first saw the Web this was what I hoped it would become, I was disappointed.

Raising prices is difficult, charging when people are used to free is near impossible. Most of your free users were never going to pay anyway so there is no point in having them use your product at all.

Trial periods still seem good to me (as a customer, not provider), the best I have come across offers a 30 day trial BUT those days need not be consecutive, use it one day a week and the trial lasts 30 weeks.

I wonder where the "If they have nothing to fear what are they worried about?" brigade are.

People like accountability until it is applied to themselves.

I've read the first 2 Slow Horses books. A wonderful antidote to the hyper efficient slick characters featured in e.g. Bond films. Even screw-up spies have their moments.

Perhaps too British to appeal to non-Brits.

UK tourist towns were highly seasonal. No one wants to go to Blackpool in December. Providing accommodation for asylum seekers or whoever was year-round money with cost savings as those people's complaints could easily be ignored.

Brit Boomer. I grew up in a single parent family near the bottom of the heap in England. What kept us going and saved me from early death or a life of crime or drug dependency was the welfare state. The NHS, free school meals and host of other measures meant that there was a safety net in place, even so much was done by charities like the NSPCC. Later there were grants, with tuition fees paid, to go to higher education. For me, seeing how the other 50% or so lived was truly eye opening.

Post Thatcher, the safety nets have been allowed to fall into disrepair if not discarded entirely. Modern Britain is not a place to grow up poor in.

It seems you have a perfect excuse for the short period.

"Relocated, family were unhappy, have made a difficult decision for my family's sake."

There is a difference between academic learning and vocational training. The UK used to have higher education institutions called Polytechnics, I went to one. These taught degree courses qualifying you for working life. Architects, chemists, computer scientists...

I did a 4 year degree, the third year was spent working for an employer. At the end of the final year much of what I'd been taught formally was outdated or irrelevant to the workplace. Many of the useful skills came from practical projects and that third year.

Polys got phased out and renamed Universities, a valuable distinction was lost and no one was fooled.

Here in the UK the educational system is equally stratified. Now, it is true that excluding the very few admitted for sporting prowess (rowing at Oxbridge) the typical student at an elite University is of a higher calibre than the typical student at a non elite University. This is due to selection.

BUT, children of the affluent are able to access much greater educational opportunities than children of less wealthy parents. This means they have a better education and are better prepared to pass the entrance procedure at the best Universities, while equally capable but poorer children are disadvantaged from the outset. However strenuously denied, the suspicion that "people like us" are being selected is difficult to avoid.

I went to a second tier University where many of my fellow students were affluent but not good enough for an elite University. Even then it was clear that their life experience and future expectations were vastly different to my own. I have, I believe, succeeded on my own merits in the UK tech industry but even so I have ended up financially and socially below where the affluent kids started.

In a class based society birth and/or wealth are a far greater determinant of life success than talent or any other attribute. In this, the UK and US are identical.

Perhaps subscribers get to call it XX, or even XXX?

Rebranding requires careful thought and planning and even then is often unsuccessful. This name change hasn't even been given a second's thought.

The morons were doing the electing.

I'm kind of old and kind of appalled. As ThomFox said perhaps it is a way to look at your other stuff or perhaps as I suspect it is a way to screen out older people?

How old was the hiring manager?

Nothing to do with productivity, confuses quality of work with quantity of reported work hours. If results are the same or better who cares how many 'hours' of work are recorded?

Title is very misleading. The dates appear to be from the copyright at the bottom of the page. Work on Visicalc started in '79, by '99 it was long gone.